Full Description
What role did Ice Age climate play in the demise of the Neanderthals, and why was it that modern humans alone survived? For the past seven years a team of international experts from a wide range of disciplines have worked together to provide a detailed study of the world occupied by the European Neanderthals between 60,000 and 25,000 years ago: the period known as Oxygen Isotope Stage 3. This collection of papers documents the extensive environmental research conducted by the Stage 3 Project. The new chronological and archaeological database constructed by the Project sets the Neanderthal and modern human sites in a continent-wide framework of space and time. A mammalian data base maps the ecology and fauna of the period, providing fresh insights into the availability of plant and animal foods in different parts of the European landscape as Ice Age climate changed and fluctuated. New high-resolution computer simulations give detailed estimates of temperature and rainfall, and above all of the wind-chill and snow cover that would have such an impact on both humans and on the resources they needed for survival. The results provide revolutionary insights into the glacial climate of Stage 3 and the landscapes and resources that influenced late Palaeolithic life-styles.
Contents
The Stage 3 Project (Tjeerd H van Andel); Glacial environments IWeichselian climate in Europe between the end of the OIS-5 interglacial and the last glacial maximum (Tjeerd H van Andel); Archaeological dates as proxies for the spatial and temporal human presence in Europe: a discourse on the method (Tjeerd H van Andel, William Davies, Bernard Weninger and Olaf Juris); The human presence in Europe during the last glacial period I: changing climates and human migrations (Tjeerd H van Andel, William Davies and Bernard Weninger); Glacial environments II: reconstructing the climate of Europe during the last glaciation (Eric Barron, Tjeerd van Andel and D Pollard); Glacial Environments III: Palaeo-Vegetation Patterns in Late Glacial Europe (Brian Huntley and Judy R M Allen); The Mammalian Faunas of Europe during Oxygen Isotope Stage Three (John R Stewart, Thijs van Kolfschoten, Anastasia Markova and Rudolf Musil); The Human Presence in Europe during the Last Glacial Period II: Climate Tolerance and Climate Preferences of Mid- and Late Glacial Hominids (William Davies and Piers Gollop); Hominid Physiology and the Glacial Climate (Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler) The Middle and Upper Palaeolithic Game Suite in Central and Southeastern Europe (Rudolf Musil); The Human Presence in Europe during the Last Glacial Period III: Climate, Culture and Resource Attractions (William Davies, Paul Valdes, Cheryl Ross and Tjeerd H van Andel); Neanderthals as Part of the Broader Late Pleistocene Megafaunal Extinctions (John R Stewart, Thijs van Kolfschoten, Anastasia Markova and Rudolf Musil); Climatic Stress and the Extinction of the Neanderthals (Chris Stringer, Heiko Palike, Tjeerd H van Andel, Brian Huntley, Paul Valdes and Judy Allen) The Stage 3 Project and Human Evolutionary Genetics (Marta Mirazon Lahr and Robert A Foley); Epilogue Humans in an Ice Age: The Stage 3 Project (Tjeerd H van Andel).