How Our Ancestors Coped With Abrupt Climate Change (7/24/2007)

Tephra formation, Stromboli, Italy, July 1987

A research consortium, led by Professor John Lowe in the Geography Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, has been awarded funding of £3m to develop a novel approach for assessing how humans may have responded to rapid environmental changes during the recent past.

A five-year project named RESET (Response of Humans to Abrupt Environmental Transitions), funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, brings together scientists from Royal Holloway, University of London, the University of Oxford, the Natural History Museum, London, and the University of Southampton, based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, with expertise in human palaeontology, archaeology, oceanography, volcanic geology and past climate change.

The driving forces behind major shifts in recent human evolution and adaptation have been the subject of intense debate for more than 100 years. The funding emphasises the importance of using records from the past to meet the challenge of climate change today.

Ice-core records from Greenland have suggested that pronounced climatic shifts with severe environmental consequences are possible within as little as 20 years or less. This means that some of our ancestors experienced climatic variability perhaps as rapid as those associated with global warming today.

Our understanding of how humans responded to such abrupt events is limited however, largely because current studies are compromised by an inability to synchronise archaeological and geological records with sufficient precision.

"Being able to establish the precise temporal relationships between archaeological events and sudden changes in the environment has proved an elusive goal for scientists so far. Until this obstacle is overcome, answers to some of the most vital and intriguing questions about our recent past, and understanding fully their implications for the future, will remain tantalisingly beyond our grasp," commented Professor John Lowe, Professor of Geography and Quaternary Science at Royal Holloway and the scientific co-ordinator of RESET.

The RESET project will construct a new chronological framework for testing the hypothesis that major shifts in human development coincided with, or immediately followed, some prominent abrupt environmental transitions in the recent geological past. At the core of this framework are volcanic ash layers (tephra layers) which are widespread throughout Europe, and which represent time-parallel signatures in archaeological and geological records.

According to Professor Chris Stringer, a specialist in human evolution at the Natural History Museum and a member of the RESET team, "This project could take us into a new phase in the interdisciplinary study of prehistoric human development. Establishing the precise order of events is the key to resolving some of the long-standing debates about climate history and its impacts on the human dimension, and long-standing research questions such as the fate of the Neanderthals."

Dr Simon Blockley, from Oxford University's Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, said "Research like this is fundamental in understanding the role of climate change to the development and adaptation of our species."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by NERC

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