Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe

Abstract

Two speleothem stable isotope records from East-Central Europe demonstrate that Greenland Stadial 12 (GS12) and GS10-at 44.3-43.3 and 40.8-40.2 ka-were prominent intervals of cold and arid conditions. GS12, GS11, and GS10 are coeval with a regional pattern of culturally (near-)sterile layers within Europe's diachronous archeologic transition from Neanderthals to modern human Aurignacian. Sterile layers coeval with GS12 precede the Aurignacian throughout the middle and upper Danube region. In some records from the northern Iberian Peninsula, such layers are coeval with GS11 and separate the Châtelperronian from the Aurignacian. Sterile layers preceding the Aurignacian in the remaining Châtelperronian domain are coeval with GS10 and the previously reported 40.0- to 40.8-ka cal BP [calendar years before present (1950)] time range of Neanderthals' disappearance from most of Europe. This suggests that ecologic stress during stadial expansion of steppe landscape caused a diachronous pattern of depopulation of Neanderthals, which facilitated repopulation by modern humans who appear to have been better adapted to this environment. Consecutive depopulation-repopulation cycles during severe stadials of the middle pleniglacial may principally explain the repeated replacement of Europe's population and its genetic composition.

Keywords: Central Europe; Middle—Upper Paleolithic transition; millennial-scale climate cycles; speleothems; stable isotopes.

Fig. 1.

(A) Greenland: North Greenland Ice Core Project (NGRIP) temperature (8). (B) South Carpathians: δ¹³C of stalagmite POM1 from AC. (C) Southern Black Sea: coastal IRD abundance in core M72-5 (11). (D) East Carpathians: δ¹⁸O of stalagmite 1152, TC. (E) Northern Black Sea: TEX₈₆ summer sea surface temperatures (33). The gray bars indicate Heinrich stadials. A map with locations of records is available in SI Appendix, Fig. S1.

Fig. 2.

(A) Greenland: NGRIP temperature (8). (B) Southern Black Sea: TEX₈₆ sea temperature core M72-5 (10). (C) South Carpathians: AC stalagmite POM1 δ¹³C. (D) Upper Danube: Willendorf loess/paleosol profile, paleosol ages, age probability density functions (age-pdf), and stratigraphically constrained loess and gley horizons C7-2, C7-3, and C9 (22). (E) East Carpathians: TC stalagmite 1152 δ¹⁸O. (F) Eifel maar lakes, ELSA dust stack. (G) Western Massive Central: Villars Cave stalagmites δ¹³C (25). (H) Iberian Atlantic margin: TEX₈₆ sea surface temperature core MD95-2042 (17). Numbers indicate Greenland stadials at the end of the respective DO cycle. A map with locations of records is available in SI Appendix, Fig. S1.

Fig. 3.

The temporal pattern of Greenland stadials (red), prominent events in the Central European speleothem record (blue), and culturally (near-)sterile layers in archeologic records of Western and Central Europe (black). For stadials and speleothems, the bar shows the duration. For archeologic layers, the bar shows the 68% age interval (ka, cal BP) defined by the youngest date of the preceding layer and the oldest date of the succeeding layer. For details on archeologic radiocarbon chronologies, see SI Appendix, Table S2. A map with the locations of records is available in SI Appendix, Fig. S1.