SFB 806:  Our Way to Europe: Culture-Environment Interaction and Human Mobility in the Late Quaternary

Final Report Abstract

The CRC 806 research programm followed possible transects of Homo sapiens migration from East Africa to Western Eurasia, and focused, during the first half of the funding period, on fieldwork in Eastern and Northern Africa, the Middle East and Iberia, central and southeastern Europe, later on intensifying integration and modelling approaches, during the second half of the funding period. In East Africa the CRC fieldwork focused on drilling of freshwater lakes and archaeological excavations. The drillings (e.g. Chew Bahir Basin) resulted in severe draughts identified particularly during cold phases, and the excavations demonstrated the importance of high-mountain habitats since 300 ka (Mt. Dendi, 3000 m.a.s.l.) and of innovations occuring as early as 55,000 years ago, in these mountain areas (possible bow-and-arrow technology at Mochena Borago (2300 m a.s.l.). By contrast, the Egyptian record does not display any indication of rapid cultural change at this time. CRC excavation of Sodmein Cave yielded the only long record in Egypt (MIS 5 to MIS 3), Egyptian MIS 3 stone tool assemblages comparing better to near Eastern examples then to East African ones. In the Middle East, long lake records from the Dead Sea and elsewhere illustrate the last 130 ka, e.g. by pollen data: forest expansion at 130 to 70 ka (MIS 5) may have hampered northwards human migration to the Northern Levant. The regional settlement record of the Wadi Sabra/Jordan (particularly between 50 and 15 ka BP) compares, in its earlier part, well to the Egyptian record, but at around 45,000 years ago possible contacts had broken up. For southeastern Europe, research carried out on speleothemes attested for dramatic cooling during the MIS 3. Sites cluster around hilly landscapes and mountain escarpments excavated by the CRC at the Timis valley (Carpathic mountains). By contrast to our findings in southeastern Europe, early modern humans did not cross the Strait of Gibraltar, CRC research illustrating the reasons of its barrier role on both sides of the strait. In Central Europe, CRC research contributed mainly to the knowledge of the late Middle Palaeolithic, with a new Neanderthal province added to the record, fairly known previously: southeastern Bavaria and lower Austria. Central European CRC research extended our focus to later periods: the resettlement of Central Europe after the LGM and population dynamics connected with the Neolithic, with a special focus onto human mobility within sedentary societies. Finally, the CRC teams followed modelling approaches at different scales, such as, at the uppermost scale, building the “Our-Way-Model” (OWM) simulating climatic impact on dispersal and retreat of human populations. The OWM corroborated findings of Homo sapiens dispersal having accelerated during harsh mid-MIS 3 climatic conditions then undergoing a major extension phase during the subsequent interstadial.

Publications

• (2012): Lithostratigraphic and geochronological framework for the paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the last ~36 ka cal BP from a sediment record from Lake Iznik (NW Turkey). Quaternary International, Vol. 274, 73–87
  Roeser, P., Franz, S., Litt, T., Ülgen, U., Hilgers, A., Wulf, S., Wennrich, V., Ön, S., Viehberg, F., Çağatay, M., Melles, M.
  
• (2014): Genesis of loess-like sediments and soils at the foothills of the Banat Mountains, Romania – Examples from the Paleolithic sites Romanesti and Cosava. Quaternary International, Vol. 351, 213–230
  Kels, H., Protze, J., Sitlivy, V., Hilgers, A., Zander, A., Anghelinu, M., Bertrams, M., Lehmkuhl, F.
  
• (2015): 15,000 years of black carbon deposition – a post-glacial fire record from maar lake sediments (Germany). Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 110
  Lehndorff, E., Wolf, M., Litt, T., Brauer, A., Amelung, W.
  
• (2016): Demographic estimates of hunter-gatherers during the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe against the background of palaeoenvironmental data. Quaternary International, Vol. 425
  Maier, A., Lehmkuhl, F., Ludwig, P., Melles, M., Schmidt, I., Shao, Y., Zeeden, C., Zimmermann, A.
  
• (2017). Menschwerdung, Verkörperung und Empathie. Perspektiven im Schnittfeld von Anthropologie und Paläolitharchäologie. In: G. Etzelmüller, T. Fuchs & C. Tewes (Eds.), Verkörperung: Eine neue interdisziplinäre Anthropologie. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 208–244
  Hussain, S. T. & Breyer, T.
  
• (2017): Shift of large-scale atmospheric systems over Europe during late MIS 3 and implications for Modern Human dispersal. Scientific Reports, Vol. 7(5848)
  Obreht, I., Hambach, U., Veres, D., Zeeden, C., Bösken, J., Stevens, T., Marković, S.B., Klasen N., Brill, D., Burow, C., Lehmkuhl, F.
  
• (2018). The Situationality of Human-Animal Relations: Perspectives from Anthropology and Philosophy. Bielefeld: Transcript
  Breyer, T. & Widlok, T. (Eds.)
  
• (2018): Abrigo de la Quebrada Level IV (Valencia, Spain): Interpreting a Middle Palaeolithic Palimpsest from a Zooarchaeological and Lithic Perspective. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, Vol. 3, 187–224
  Real, C., Eixea, A., Sanchis, A., Morales, J., Klasen, N., Zilhao, J., Villaverde, V.
  
• (2018): Dead Sea pollen provides new insights into the paleoenvironment of the southern Levant during MIS 6-5. Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 188, 15–27
  Schiebel, C., Litt, T.
  
• (2018): Environmental change during MIS4 and MIS 3 opened corridors in the Horn of Africa for Homo sapiens expansion. Quaternary Science Reviews
  Viehberg, F., Just, J., Dean, J., Wagner, B., Franz, S., Klasen, N., Kleinen, T., Ludwig, P., Asrat, A., Lamb, H., Leng, M., Rethemeyer, J., Milodowski, M., Claussen, M., Schäbitz, F.
  
• (2018): Impact of climate change on the transition of Neanderthals to modern humans in Europe. PNAS, Vol. 115(37), 9116–9121
  Staubwasser, M., Drăgușin, V., Onac, B., Assonov, S., Ersek, V., Hoffmann, D., Veres, D.
  
• (2018): Inside – Outside: Integrating Cave and Open-Air Archives. Quaternary International, Vol. 485, 1–3
  Kindermann, K., Kehl, M., Hauck, T., Klasen, N.
  
• (2018): Lake Kinneret (Israel): New insights into Holocene regional palaeoclimate variability based on high-resolution multi-proxy analysis. The Holocene, Vol. 28(9), 1–16
  Vossel, H., Roeser, P., Litt, T., Reed, J.
  
• (2018): Reconstruction of LGM faunal patterns using Species Distribution Modelling. The archaeological record of the Solutrean in Iberia. Quaternary International, Vol. 485, 199–208
  Andres-Herrero, M., Becker, D., Weniger, G.
  
• (2018): Successful combination of electron spin resonance, luminescence and palaeomagnetic dating methods allows reconstruction of the Pleistocene evolution of the lower Moulouya river (NE Morocco). Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 185, 153–171
  Bartz, M., Rixhon, R., Duval, M., King, G., Álvarez Posada, C., Parés, J., Brückner, H.
  
• (2018): The Aurignacian way of life: Contextualizing early modern human adaptation in the Carpathian Basin. Quaternary International, Vol. 485
  Hauck, T., Lehmkuhl, F., Zeeden, C., Bösken, J., Thiemann, A., Richter, J.
  
• (2018): The MIS 3/2 transition in a new loess profile at Krems-Wachtberg East – A multi-methodological approach. Quaternary International, Vol. 464, 370–385
  Meyer-Heintze, S., Sprafke, T., Schulte, P., Terhorst, B., Lomax, J., Fuchs, M., Lehmkuhl, F., Neugebauer-Maresch, C., Einwögerer, T., Händel, M., Simon, U., Solís Castillo, B.
  
• (2018): When Hominins Conquered Highlands – An Acheulean Site at 3000 m a.s.l. on Mount Dendi/Ethiopia. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology, Vol. 1, 302–313
  Vogelsang, R., Bubenzer, O., Kehl, M., Meyer, S., Richter, J., Zinaye, B.
  
• (2019): A new Dead Sea pollen record reveals the last glacial paleoenvironment of the southern Levant. Quaternary Science Reviews, Vol. 214, 98–116
  Miebach, A., Stolzenberger, S., Wacker, L., Hense, A., Litt, T.
  
• (2019): Landscape instability at the end of MIS 3 in western Central Europe: evidence from a multi proxy study on a Loess-Palaeosol-Sequence from the eastern Lower Rhine Embayment, Germany. Quarternary International, Vol. 502, 119–136
  Fischer, P., Hambach, U., Klasen, N., Schulte, P., Zeeden, C., Steininger, F., Lehmkuhl, F., Gerlach, R., Radtke, U.
  
• (2019): The Chronostratigraphy of the Aurignacian in the Northern Carpathian Basin Based on New Chronometric/Archeological Data from Seňa I (Eastern Slovakia). Journal of Palaeolithic Archaeology, Vol.3, 77–96
  Chu, W., Klasen, N.
  
• (2019): Unravelling the Holocene environmental history of south-western Iberia through a palynological study of Lake Medina sediments. The Holocene
  Schröder, T., López-Sáez, J., Hoff, J., Reicherter, K.
  
• (2020): Al-Ansab and the Dead Sea: mid-MIS 3 Archaeology and Environment of the Early Ahmarian Population of the Levantine Corridor. PLSONE, Vol. 15(10), e0239968
  Richter, J., Litt, T., Lehmkuhl, F., Hense, A., Hauck, T.C., Leder, D.F., Miebach, A., Parow-Souchon, H., Sauer, F., Schoenenberg, J., Hussain, S.T.
  
• (2020): Geomorphological evolution of the Petrovaradin Fortress Palaeolithic site (Novi Sad, Serbia). Quaternary Research, Vol. 103
  Markovic, S., Vandenberghe, J., Stevens, T., Mihailovic, D., Gavrilov, M., Radakovic, M., Zeeden, C., Obreht, I., Peric, Z., Nett, J., Lehmkuhl, F.
  
• (2020): Last Neanderthal occupations at Central Iberia: the lithic industry of Jarama VI rock shelter (Valdesotos, Guadalajara, Spain). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 12(45)
  Navazo Ruiz, M., Jordá Pardo, J., Burow, C., Kehl, M., Pastoors, A., Weniger, G., Wood, R.
  
• (2020): Loess landscapes of Europe – Mapping, geomorphology, and zonal differentiation. Earth-Science Reviews, Vol. 215
  Lehmkuhl, F., Nett, J., Pötter, S., Schulte, P., Sprafke, T., Jary, Z., Antoine, P., Wacha, L., Wolf, D., Zerboni, A., Hosek, J., Markovic, S., Obreht, I., Sümegi, P., Veres, D., Zeeden, C., Boemke, B., Schaubert, V., Viehweger, J., Hambach, U.
  
• (2020): The objectives and uses of comparisons in geography textbooks: results of an international comparative analysis. – In: Heliyon, Vol. 6(8), p: E04420
  Simon, M., Budke, A., Schäbitz, F.
  
• (2021) Paleo-ENSO influence on African environments and early modern humans. PNAS June 8, 2021 118 (23) e2018277118
  Kaboth-Bahr, St., Gosling, W.D., Vogelsang, R., Bahr, A., Scerri, E.M.L., Asrat, A. Cohen, A.S., Düsing, W., Foerster, V., Lamb, H.F., Maslin, M.A., Roberts, H.M., Schäbitz, F. and Trauth, M.H.
  
• (2021): Antler Headdresses. Implications from a many-faceted study of an earliest Mesolithic phenomenon Hirschgeweihkappen. Eine vielschichtige Studie eines Phänomens des ältesten Mesolithikums und ihre Auswirkungen. Quartär, Vol. 67, 1–19
  Wild, M., Gehlen, B., Street, M.
  
• (2021): Approaching prehistoric demography: proxies, scales and scope of the Cologne Protocol in European contexts. Phil. Trans. R. Soc.
  Schmidt, I., Hilpert, J., Kretschmer, I., Peters, R., Broich, M., Schiesberg, S., Vogels, O., Wendt, K. P., Zimmermann, A., Maier, A.
  
• (2021): Chronological assessment of the Balta Alba Kurgan loess-paleosol section (Romania) – a comparative study on different dating methods for a robust and precise age model. – In: Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol. 8(598448), p: 1-23
  Scheidt, S., Berg, S., Hambach, U., Klasen, N., Pötter, S., Stolz, A., Veres, D., Zeeden, C., Brill, D., Brückner, H., Kusch, S., Laag, C., Lehmkuhl, F., Melles, M., Monnens, F., Oppermann, L., Rethemeyer, J., Nett, J.
  
• (2021): Gazelle Hunting Strategies in the Early Ahmarian: Close-Range Visuospatial Characteristics of Site Locations Indicate Spatially Focused Hunting Strategies on Gazella sp. during the Early Ahmarian. Journal of Paleolithic Archeology, Vol. 4(3)
  Sauer, F., Schoenberg, J.
  
• (2021): Human Existence Potential in Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum. Quartenary International, Vol. 581/582, 7–27
  Klein, K., Wegener, C., Rostami, M., Schmidt, I., Ludwig, P., Richter, J., Weniger, G., Shao, Y.
  
• (2021): Middle to Late Pleistocene environments based on stable organic carbon and nitrogen isotopes of loess-palaeosol sequences from the Carpathian Basin. Boreas, Vol. 50(1), 184–204
  Pötter, S., Schmitz, A., Lücke, A., Schulte, P., Obreht, I., Zech, M., Wissel, H., Markovic, S., Lehmkuhl, F.
  
• (2021): Potential raw material sources for the production of lithic artefacts in western Central Europe – GIS-data for the Rhineland, Westphalia, and the Benelux countries. Quaternary International
  Gehlen, B., Zickel, M., Affolter, J., Vogl, K., Willmes, C.
  
• (2021): Sedimentology of a Late Quaternary lacustrine record from the south-eastern Carpathian Basin. Journal of Quaternary Science, 1–12
  Zeeden, C., Hambach, U., Klasen, N., Fischer, P., Schulte, P., Nett, J., Veres, D., Obreht, I., Chu, W., Papadopoulou, M., Viehberg, F., Schäbitz, F., Gavrilov, M., Markovic, S., Vött, A., Lehmkuhl, F.
  
• (2021): Shivering in the Pleistocene. Human adaptations to cold exposure in Western Europe from MIS 14 to MIS 11. Journal of Human Evolution, Vol. 153
  Mateos, A., Willmes, C., Rodriguez, J.
  
• (2021): Speleothem growth phases in the central Eastern Desert of Egypt reveal enhanced humidity throughout MIS 5. Quaternary International
  Henselowsky, F., Eichstädter, R., Schröder-Ritzrau, A., Herwartz, D., Almoazamy, A., Frank, N., Kindermann, K., Bubenzer, O.
  
• (2021): Stratigraphy and Chronology of Sodicho Rockshelter – A New Sedimentological Record of Past Environmental Changes and Human Settlement Phases in Southwestern Ethiopia. Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol. 8(640)
  Hensel, E., Vogelsang, R., Noack, T., Bubenzer, O.
  
• (2021): The early Upper Paleolithic site Crvenka-At, Serbia – the first Aurignacian lowland occupation site in the southern Carpathian Basin. Frontiers in Earth Science, Vol. 9(599986), 1–17
  Nett, J., Chu, W., Fischer, P., Hambach, U., Klasen, N., Zeeden, C., Obreht, I., Obrocki, L., Pötter, S., Gavrilov, M., Vött, A., Mihailovic, D., Markovic, S., Lehmkuhl, F.
  

Completed projects