Abstract:
The migration of Homo sapiens into southwest Asia during the Late Pleistocene marks a critical point in prehistory¹ ². There is an imperative need for paleoclimate records that are sufficiently long and well resolved from along this Africa–Eurasia dispersal corridor: to ascertain the environmental factors that contributed to the rise of modern humans, but also the concurrent disappearance and/or interbreeding of the Neanderthals³. The Zagros Mountains may have played a critical role in this process by acting as “refugia” during times of heightened socio-environmental stress⁴ ⁵. However, the responsivity of this region’s climate to both internal and external forcing could also have imposed complex (and potentially detrimental) changes on resource availability and habitability⁶. Despite the need to better understand these interactions, paleoclimate records from southwest Asia are almost all (a) located considerable distances away from key Upper-Paleolithic archaeological sites, (b) limited to the Holocene (<10 ka), and/or (c) too coarse to assess sub-millennial-scale climate shifts. Kuna Ba Cave (KBC; 35°09′N, 45°38′E) is located in the central Zagros Mountains, and Holocene-age stalagmites extracted from KBC have already highlighted its sensitivity to annual-to-centennial-scale variations in climate⁶. Here, I will present initial results from our ongoing work to produce a composite paleoclimate record that combines stable isotope, trace element, and fluid inclusion analyses to explore the timing and expression of major climate change events in Iraq during the Pleistocene. I will also outline how the close proximity of KBC to several key Upper-Paleolithic archaeological sites⁷ could allow for our reconstruction to provide critical context for evaluation of if, how, and when the mountains of southwest Asia became more or less favourable to hominins as they dispersed into Eurasia.
References
¹ Bergstrom et al. (2021). Nature 590: 229–237
² Beyer et al. (2021). Nature Communications 12: 4889
³ Guran et al. (2024). Scientific Reports 14: 20475
⁴ Zeller & Timmerman (2024). Science Advances 10: eadq3613
⁵ Coelho et al. (2023). Nature 622: 537–544
⁶ Sinha et al. (2019). Science Advances 5(11)
⁷ Shoaee et al. (2024). Frontiers in Earth Science 12: 1352099
What is the Joint Oslo Seminar (JOS):
- Atmospheric and climate sciences have a stronghold in Oslo among the four institutions University of Oslo, the Meteorological Institute, CICERO and NILU.
- This joint seminar invites renowned international experts to contribute to an informal series of lectures, meant to create interaction with the Oslo atmospheric and climate science community on recent highlights and analysis in the field.
- Normally seminars will be held on Thursdays (12:15 pm -1pm).