MINERVA · Mid-Pleistocene environments of the lower Vaal River
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2019-05-01 → 2021-04-30
- EU contribution
- €162,806
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-RI
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Mid-Pleistocene environments of the lower Vaal River
The evolution of our human species has been intimately tied to environmental dynamics and landscape change that impacted the distribution and accessibility of food resources. The adaptability of hominins to shifts in biomes and, in turn, changing resource availability is key to the evolutionary success of our species. While previous research has largely focused on pointing out coincidences of major evolutionary events with global climate shifts, the interdisciplinary project ‘MinErVa: Mid-Pleistocene Environments of the lower Vaal River’ used innovative archaeological science methods to pinpoint precisely if, when, and how biome changes and attendant shifts in resource distribution at regional scales influenced the evolution of Homo sapiens 300 000 to 100 000 years ago in South Africa. The project objective was to establish the nature of long-term climate change at regional scales by investigating vegetation changes; shifts in aridity levels and rainfall seasonality. In doing so, the MinErVa project reconstructed the distribution of plant and animal resources accessed by early hominids and explored human adaptation to changes in these resources. The MinErVa project showed that early humans at Pniel 6 were inhabiting an area dominated by tropical grasses and a mixture of modern and wetland adapted animal species in the interior of South Africa. They used a large variety of stone materials to prepare flakes and blades to exploit this environment. Arid and humid phases can be detected from palaeoenvironmental records in the archaeological sites of the region, showing the impact of the rapid climatic changes of the Mid- to Late Pleistocene.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The project ‘MinErVa: Mid-Pleistocene Environments of the lower Vaal River’ seeks a multidisciplinary perspective on the effects of environmental change on human evolution by examining the palaeoenvironmental context of the first anatomically modern humans in the arid interior of southern Africa (c. 300-100ka). The MinErVa project is focused around the archaeological site of Pniel, an Early Middle Stone Age open-air site on the Vaal River that I have been excavating for two seasons since 2017. The site is located in an area with fossil evidence for early human evolution, however, there is a lack of terrestrial proxy records to reconstruct climate and environment during this time period. Specifically, the project will test the hypothesis that the local environment included phases of persistent wetness and significant biome shifts, caused by increased winter rainfall, though carbon and oxygen stable isotope analysis on herbivore teeth. Furthermore, MinErVa will apply innovative carbon and hydrogen stable isotope analysis on leaf wax n-alkanes in sediment to reconstruct vegetation and palaeohydrology. In a synthesis with isotopic, zooarchaeological, geomorphological, phytolith and lithic data sets recovered from my ongoing excavations, this project will explore how the first Homo sapiens were adapting to their environment. The project offers scope for testing the application of stable isotope analysis of leaf wax isotopes in sediment for the first time in a terrestrial context of this antiquity on South Africa and will therefore offer unique training to the applicant in a novel method which can has the scope to establish new proxy records in a region where there is a distinct lack of them.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- CHRISTIAN-ALBRECHTS-UNIVERSITAET ZU KIEL · KielCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union