Sustainable human population density in Western Europe between 560.000 and 360.000 years ago

Abstract

The time period between 560 and 360 ka (MIS14 to MIS11) was critical for the evolution of the Neanderthal lineage and the appearance of Levallois technology in Europe. The shifts in the distribution of the human populations, driven by cyclical climate changes, are generally accepted to have played major roles in both processes. We used a dataset of palaeoclimate maps and a species distribution model to reconstruct the changes in the area of Western Europe with suitable environmental conditions for humans during 11 time intervals of the MIS14 to MIS 11 period. Eventually, the maximum sustainable human population within the suitable area during each time interval was estimated by extrapolating the relationship observed between recent hunter-gatherer population density and net primary productivity and applying it to the past. Contrary to common assumptions, our results showed the three Mediterranean Peninsulas were not the only region suitable for humans during the glacial periods. The estimated total sustainable population of Western Europe from MIS14 to MIS11 oscillated between 13,000 and 25,000 individuals. These results offer a new theoretical scenario to develop models and hypotheses to explain cultural and biological evolution during the Middle Pleistocene in Western Europe.

Modelling Neanderthals’ dispersal routes from Caucasus towards east

“…To identify climatically stable regions across the study area, we calculated temperature change velocity from the Last Interglacial (LIG; ~120,000-140,000 years BP) towards the Last Glacial Maximum using the following R packages; raster [59], gdistance [62], SDMTools [63], matrixStats [64]. Climatic data for the LIG and the LGM as the last most important interglacial and glacial stages were downloaded from PaleoClim and CHELSA respectively [65][66][67]. PaleoClim.org is a source of free, high-resolution Paleoclimate data for use in biological modelling and GIS.…”

The Persian plateau served as hub for Homo sapiens after the main out of Africa dispersal

“…12 ). We then combined these results with the estimates of Net Primary Productivity (NPP) for each region and the relation between NPP and hunter gatherer population density 59 . This was used to estimate the maximum sustainable human population (carrying capacity) through time in different geographic regions (Fig.…”

pastclim 1.2: an R package to easily access and use paleoclimatic reconstructions

“…Moreover, past climatic fluctuations heavily influenced the distribution and demography of humans and animals (Leonardi et al 2018, Mondanaro et al 2020, Fordham et al 2022, Rodríguez et al 2022, Timmermann et al 2022). This is why pastclim can be a useful resource for scholars working in the field of (archeo)genomics, as it allows to easily extract climatic data to be integrated with genetic and genomic evidence when reconstructing the past (Lorenzen et al 2011, Leonardi et al 2017, Racimo et al 2020, Theodoridis et al 2020, Maisano Delser et al 2021, Miller et al 2021a).…”