Hunted gazelles evidence cooling, but not drying, during the Younger Dryas in the southern Levant

Abstract

The climatic downturn known globally as the Younger Dryas (YD; ∼12,900-11,500 BP) has frequently been cited as a prime mover of agricultural origins and has thus inspired enthusiastic debate over its local impact. This study presents seasonal climatic data from the southern Levant obtained from the sequential sampling of gazelle tooth carbonates from the Early and Late Natufian archaeological sites of Hayonim and Hilazon Tachtit Caves (western Galilee, Israel). Our results challenge the entrenched model that assumes that warm temperatures and high precipitation are synonymous with climatic amelioration and cold and wet conditions are combined in climatic downturns. Enamel carbon isotope values from teeth of human-hunted gazelle dating before and during the YD provide a proxy measure for water availability during plant growth. They reveal that although the YD was cooler, it was not drier than the preceding Bølling-Allerød. In addition, the magnitude of the seasonal curve constructed from oxygen isotopes is significantly dampened during the YD, indicating that cooling was most pronounced in the growing season. Cool temperatures likely affected the productivity of staple wild cereal resources. We hypothesize that human groups responded by shifting settlement strategies-increasing population mobility and perhaps moving to the warmer Jordan Valley where wild cereals were more productive and stable.paleoclimate | stable isotopes | δ 13 C | δ 18 O | Natufian

Increased climate seasonality during the late glacial in the Gebel Akhdar, Libya

“…The general pattern of increasing seasonality from OIS 4 to 2 that is observed for the Gebel Akhdar is also reflected in vegetation, lake level, and marine mollusc archives from western and northern Mediterranean regions, which show increased temperature and precipitation seasonality (Ferguson et al, 2011;Peyron et al, 1998). These are in contrast to the reduced seasonality reported from the eastern Mediterranean Levantine coast (Cheddadi and Khater, 2016;Hartman et al, 2016;Orland et al, 2012). From the late glacial to the Holocene the magnitude of seasonal variation decreases in the Gebel…”

“…In the eastern Mediterranean reduced seasonal variation in precipitation is reported from the Levantine coast during OIS 4-3 (c. 70 -53 ka), Heinrich Event 1 (c. 16 ka), and Younger Dryas (c. 12 ka) (Cheddadi and Khater, 2016;Hallin et al, 2012;Orland et al, 2012). During the Younger Dryas reduced seasonal temperature variation may also have occurred in this region (Hartman et al, 2016). Early Holocene (before c. 7.8 ka) terrestrial records from the central Mediterranean indicate that precipitation seasonality was stronger than it is today, while records from Turkey for the same time period show reduced seasonality, which increased in the mid-Holocene (after c. 6.5 ka) (Dean et al, 2018;Lewis et al, 2017;Peyron et al, 2011).…”

High Resolution AMS Dates from Shubayqa 1, northeast Jordan Reveal Complex Origins of Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian in the Levant

“…In the Natufian core zone, however, populations retained a more sedentary settlement pattern. Recent work suggests, however, that the impact of the Younger Dryas on the environment of the Levant is now thought to have been less severe than previously thought 4,51,52 . Furthermore, the correlation between the Late Natufian and the onset of the Younger Dryas is now questionable 4,5,19,53–55 .…”

Finding of trout (Salmo cf. trutta) in the Northern Jordan Valley (Israel) at the end of the Pleistocene: Preliminary results

“…The situation in the area during the Final Natufian can be reconstructed through archaeofaunal and palaeobotanical analyses. Some studies have pointed out the relative stability of environment (Ashkenazi, 2013;Biton et al, 2016), while other support a somewhat cooler climate in comparison to nowadays (Bar-Matthews et al, 1997, 1999, Hartman et al, 2016, Mienis in Valla et al, 2007. Generally speaking, as Tchernov (1997: 221) emphasised: "no real dry periods existed during the Late Pleistocene in the Southern Levant but [...] during this period the Southern Asian arid belt was always much wetter supporting a rich diversity of Palearctic species [...]".…”