Abstract
There is a widespread belief that the abrupt warming at 14.7 ka had a profound impact on the environment. However, the direct correlation between the global climatic event and changes in local environments is not obvious. We examined faunal succession in an intra-mountain basin of the Western Carpathians to assess the potential influence of the climatic change between Greenland Stadial-2a and Greenland Interstadial-1e on the local environment. We investigated three vertebrate assemblages (total number of identified specimens = 18,745; minimum number of individuals = 7515; 138 taxa) from Obłazowa Cave (western entrance) and a Rock overhang in Cisowa Rock, radiocarbon dated to the period before and after the global warming, between ca. 17.0 and 14.0 ka. Our data revealed that the major abrupt warming that occurred 14.7 ka had little impact on the local environment, which could suggest that ecosystems in Central Europe were resilient to the abrupt global climate changes. The increase in fauna population sizes and species diversities in local biotopes was gradual and began long before the temperature increase. This was supported by the analysis of ancient DNA of Microtus arvalis, which showed a gradual increase in effective population size after 19.0 ka. The results of palaeoclimatic reconstruction pointed out that the compared sites were characterized by similar climatic conditions. According to our calculations, the differences in the annual mean temperatures did not exceed 0.5 °C and mean annual thermal amplitude changed from 22.9 to 22.4 °C. The environmental changes before 14.7 ka had no impact on the activity of Final Palaeolithic hunters in the studied area.
Highlights
Environmental conditions are frequently considered a key component of the mode of life of Palaeolithic people, including both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans
To check the potential impact of global climate change on a local environment around the Greenland Stadials (GS)-2/Greenland Interstadials (GI)-1 transition, we investigated succession in very rich faunal communities documented at two sites in north Central Europe: Obłazowa Cave and a Rock overhang in Cisowa Rock, both of which are in the same intra-mountain basin, the Orawa-Nowy Targ Basin, Western Carpathians, Poland
We examined the impact of the global climatic change that occurred ca.14.7 ka, i.e. during the transition period between the Pleniglacial (GS-2a) and Bølling (GI-1e), on faunal succession at the local scale in the Orawa-Nowy Targ Basin in the Polish Western Carpathians
Summary
Environmental conditions are frequently considered a key component of the mode of life of Palaeolithic people, including both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. As a result, understanding changes in environments occupied by humans has become a main objective of prehistoric research. This knowledge is essential for reconstructing the subsistence strategies and abilities that allowed hunter-gatherers to adapt to changing environments. Pleistocene climate oscillations are thought to have greatly affected plant and animal communities re-organizing biotopes and whole ecosystems (Jackson and Blois 2015; Maguire et al 2015); these environmental changes, in turn, impacted past human societies. Studies have shown that the climate structure and changes that occurred between cold Greenland Stadials (GS) and warm Greenland Interstadials (GI), as documented in Greenland ice cores, those from the last glacial period, had great millennial variabilities and reproducible patterns at the global scale (Wolff et al 2010). In the Northern Hemisphere, in every cycle, the onset of warming events was very rapid and occurred in only a few decades, and mean annual temperature changes were even as high as between 8 and 15 °C (Huber et al 2006)
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