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The Southern Levant During the Last Glacial and Zooarchaeological Evidence for the Effects of Climate-Forcing on Hominin Population Dynamics

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Climate Change and Human Responses

Part of the book series: Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology ((VERT))

Abstract

Climate forcing has been suggested as a possible explanation for dispersal/extinction of hominins in the Southern Levant during the Middle Paleolithic (MP) . Evidence from fauna has produced ambiguous results, suggesting that inter-site variation in Last Glacial faunas reflect spatial differences within the region. This study presents a multivariate approach to test the effect of climate change on mammalian communities during the Last Glacial in the Levant and analyzes the distribution of micro and macromammals from the site in the Levant spanning Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6-2 using non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMMDS). Results indicate that inter-site differences in faunal composition of Middle Paleolithic sites in the Levant do not reflect an abrupt climate change but are consistent with a spatial environmental mosaic within the Levant. This suggests that although hominin taxa show evidence of turnover during the Late Pleistocene in the Levant, we need to be more cautious about the role of climate forcing in the process.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the editor, Gregory Monks, for inviting me to participate in this volume. Generous funding for this work was received from the Wenner Gren and Irene Levy Sala Foundations and from the Harvard University American School of Prehistoric Research (ASPR) and the Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary; I thank them all for their support during research for this publication. I am indebted to Ofer Bar-Yosef, Erella Hovers, Anna Belfer Cohen and John Speth for discussions on the subjects of climate change , Neanderthals and modern humans. I also thank two anonymous reviews for their valuable insights during preparation of this manuscript.

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  1. Department of Anthropology, Henry Kendall College of Arts and Sciences, Harwell Hall, University of Tulsa, 800 S. Tucker Dr., Tulsa, OK, 74104, USA

    Miriam Belmaker

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  1. Miriam Belmaker
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Correspondence to Miriam Belmaker .

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Manitoba Department of Anthropology, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

    Gregory Monks

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Belmaker, M. (2017). The Southern Levant During the Last Glacial and Zooarchaeological Evidence for the Effects of Climate-Forcing on Hominin Population Dynamics. In: Monks, G. (eds) Climate Change and Human Responses. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1106-5_2

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