EGU24-2668, updated on 08 Mar 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-2668
EGU General Assembly 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Hominin response to oscillations in climate and local environments during the Mid-Pleistocene Climate Transition in northern China

Zhe Wang1, Bin Zhou1, Xiangchun Xu1, Yang Pang1, Michael Bird2, Bin Wang3, Michael Meadows4,5, and David Taylor6
Zhe Wang et al.
  • 1Key Laboratory of Surficial Geochemistry (Ministry of Education), School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China (zhoubinok@nju.edu.cn)
  • 2College of Science and Engineering and ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, James Cook University, Cairns, Australia (michael.bird@jcu.edu.au)
  • 3National Demonstration Center for Experimental Geography Education, School of Geography and Tourism, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China (bin.wang@snnu.edu.cn)
  • 4School of Geography and Ocean Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
  • 5Department of Environmental & Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, South Africa (michael.meadows@uct.ac.za)
  • 6Department of Geography, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore, Singapore (david.taylor@nus.edu.sg)

Long-term climate trends superimposed on climate variability changes are recognized to manipulate the living environments, and ultimately ecological resources for hominins, which in turn affect hominin activities. Archaeological evidence from loess sediments from Shangchen on the southeastern Chinese Loess Plateau indicates a suspension of hominin occupation around the time of the early mid-Pleistocene climate transition (MPT), prompting a re-assessment of climate-vegetation-hominin interactions. Our research generated magnetic susceptibility, total organic carbon cotent and its carbon isotope compositions, black carbon content and brGDGTs-derived mean annual temperatue and precipitation records in loess deposits with in situ lithic records covering the period of hominin occupation (~2.1–0.6 Ma). The results reveal four distinct climate-vegetation periods (2.1–1.8 Ma, 1.8–1.26 Ma, 1.26–0.9 Ma and 0.9–0.6 Ma). During the early MPT (1.26–0.9 Ma), unprecendently high variability in climate-environment and a long-term aridification with C4 vegetation expansion trend may have driven early humans to move to more hospitable locations in the region. Comparison with the record at Nihewan indicates that large-scale climate oscillations induced disparate hominin responses due to distinctive local environmental conditions.

How to cite: Wang, Z., Zhou, B., Xu, X., Pang, Y., Bird, M., Wang, B., Meadows, M., and Taylor, D.: Hominin response to oscillations in climate and local environments during the Mid-Pleistocene Climate Transition in northern China, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-2668, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-2668, 2024.

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