Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Georg Miehe
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270995238

Alpine environments are perceived as hostile and lately transformed by humans. RU 2358 challenged this mainstream belief and hypothesized that Middle Stone Age foragers intruded the Bale Mountains of South Ethiopia, Africa’s largest alpine ecosystem, attracted by an endemic rodent. We have now evidence for the world’s earliest known settlements above 3,500 m between 31 and 45,000 years exploiting afroalpine resources and minerals in 4,200 m next to the icefields. The ‘Mountain Exile Hypothesis’ suggested that hostile climate pushed humans out of arid lowlands into humid mountains, yet this oldest human intrusion seems not climate-driven. It remains a major goal of Phase 2 to (1) unravel the enigma where humans escaped to during the most arid climates, (2) to investigate the intensity of human occupation by analysing anthrosols and biomarker. Parts of the area have at least during the past 15.000 years been fire-driven as evidenced by the first continuous high-altitude African fire record, yet it remains (3) uncertain if this is human-made, and (4) if this holds true for the entire Bale highlands, as (5) ecosystem dynamics of Erica thickets, the rodents’ mounds and afroalpine heathlands remain enigmatic. Our transect of climate station provides (6) options to reconstruct the past mountain climates, based on (i) pollen-analysis, (ii) stabile isotopes, (iii) the climate signals of glaciers with 265 sqkm and (iv) paleo-climate evaluations of population shifts of endemic ground beetles. Taking the opportunities provided by the achieved results, we pay now tribute (1) to the importance of Giant Molerats as main pull factor for early human migration and landscape engineers by including a new dedicated project and (2) to cooperate with leading teams investigating ancient and environmental DNA with the prospect to directly confirm human presence, and to unravel their origin. The overarching goal of RU 2358 is to contribute to a new perception of the ‘Alpine Anthropocene’.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2358: Mountain Exile Hypothesis: How humans benefited from and re-shaped African high altitude ecosystems during Quarternary climatic changes
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Thomas Nauss; Professor Dr. Lars Opgenoorth