Abstract
Attempts to place Palaeolithic finds within a precise climatic framework are complicated by both uncertainty over the radiocarbon calibration beyond about 21,500 14C years bp1 and the absence of a master calendar chronology for climate events from reference archives such as Greenland ice cores or speleothems2. Here we present an alternative approach, in which 14C dates of interest are mapped directly onto the palaeoclimate record of the Cariaco Basin by means of its 14C series3, circumventing calendar age model and correlation uncertainties, and placing dated events in the millennial-scale climate context of the last glacial period. This is applied to different sets of dates from levels with Mousterian artefacts, presumably produced by late Neanderthals, from Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar: first, generally accepted estimates of about 32,000 14C years bp for the uppermost Mousterian levels4,5; second, a possible extended Middle Palaeolithic occupation until about 28,000 14C years bp6; and third, more contentious evidence for persistence until about 24,000 14C years bp6. This study shows that the three sets translate to different scenarios on the role of climate in Neanderthal extinction. The first two correspond to intervals of general climatic instability between stadials and interstadials that characterized most of the Middle Pleniglacial and are not coeval with Heinrich Events. In contrast, if accepted, the youngest date indicates that late Neanderthals may have persisted up to the onset of a major environmental shift, which included an expansion in global ice volume and an increased latitudinal temperature gradient. More generally, our radiocarbon climatostratigraphic approach can be applied to any ‘snapshot’ date from discontinuous records in a variety of deposits and can become a powerful tool in evaluating the climatic signature of critical intervals in Late Pleistocene human evolution.
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Acknowledgements
We thank N. Galanidou and R. Preece for discussions, and E. Bard and E. Rohling for providing published data. We acknowledge a Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust during 2006–2007 (P.C.T.) and support from the US NSF and S. M. Tudor (K.A.H.), the Comer Science and Education Foundation (USA) and the Ramón y Cajal programme of the Spanish MEC (I.C.), and the Max Planck Gesellschaft and the ‘EVAN’ Marie Curie Research Training Network (K.H.).
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Supplementary Information
This file contains Supplementary Figure S1 with legend and references and Supplementary Table S1. Figure S1 shows palaeoenvironmental changes during the interval 20-40 kyr BP. Table S1 provides the Cariaco Basin radiocarbon series and reflectance record, and calculation of uncertainties for each date. The table legend contains a step-by-step explanation of how to map 14C dates directly onto the climate record using the Cariaco 14C series and reflectance data. (PDF 1333 kb)
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Tzedakis, P., Hughen, K., Cacho, I. et al. Placing late Neanderthals in a climatic context. Nature 449, 206–208 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06117
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06117
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