Paleo-ENSO influence on African environments and early modern humans

In this study, we synthesize terrestrial and marine proxy records, spanning the past 620 ky, to decipher pan-African climate variability and its drivers and potential linkages to hominin evolution. We find a tight correlation between moisture availability across Africa to El Niño Southern Ocean osci...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Main Authors: Kaboth-Bahr, S., Gosling, W.D., Vogelsang, R., Bahr, A., Scerri, E.M.L., Asrat, A., Cohen, A.S., Düsing, W., Foerster, V., Lamb, H.F., Maslin, M.A., Roberts, H.M., Schäbitz, F., Trauth, M.H.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Southern Ocean
Online Access:https://dare.uva.nl/personal/pure/en/publications/paleoenso-influence-on-african-environments-and-early-modern-humans(b8a50bed-933c-4814-81d7-c9cc0dad5b73).html
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2018277118
https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/b8a50bed-933c-4814-81d7-c9cc0dad5b73
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107336711&partnerID=8YFLogxK
Description
Summary:In this study, we synthesize terrestrial and marine proxy records, spanning the past 620 ky, to decipher pan-African climate variability and its drivers and potential linkages to hominin evolution. We find a tight correlation between moisture availability across Africa to El Niño Southern Ocean oscillation (ENSO) variability, a manifestation of the Walker Circulation, that was most likely driven by changes in Earth's eccentricity. Our results demonstrate that low-latitude insolation was a prominent driver of pan-African climate change during the Middle to Late Pleistocene. We argue that these low-latitude climate processes governed the dispersion and evolution of vegetation as well as mammals in eastern and western Africa by increasing resource-rich and stable ecotonal settings thought to have been important to early modern humans.

Similar Items