As Homo erectus groups left Africa via the Levant and a.

• Main Authors: S. A. G. Leroy A, K. Arpe A, U. Mikolajewicz B
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Vegetation; climatic modelling; Early Pleistocene; hominin dispersal; Europe; pollen; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.425.5161; http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/4298/1/Early Pleistocene hominid ms.pdf

The vegetation and the climatic context in which the first hominins entered and dispersed in Europe during the Early Pleistocene are reconstructed, using literature review and a new climatic simulation. Both in situ fauna and in situ pollen at the twelve early hominin sites under consideration indicate the occurrence of open landscapes: grasslands or forested steppes. The presence of ancient hominins (Homo of the erectus group) is only possible at the transition from glacial to interglacial periods, the full glacial being too cold for them and the transition interglacial to glacial too forested. Glacial-interglacial cycles forced by obliquity showed paralleled vegetation successions, which repeated c. 42 times during the course of the Early Pleistocene (2.58-0.78 Ma), providing 42 narrow windows of opportunity for hominins to disperse into Europe. The climatic conditions of this Early Pleistocene protocratic vegetation are compared with a climatic simulation for 9 ka ago without ice sheet, as this time period is so far the best analogue available. The climate at the beginning of the