Journal
GEOLOGY
Volume 45, Issue 11, Pages 1023-1026Publisher
GEOLOGICAL SOC AMER, INC
DOI: 10.1130/G39457.1
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Funding
- National Science Foundation grant [OCE-1203892]
- David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering
- Columbia University Center for Climate and Life
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Around 200,000 yr ago, Homo sapiens emerged in Africa. By 40 ka, Homo sapiens had spread throughout Eurasia, and a major competing species, the Neanderthals, became extinct. The factors that drove our species out of Africa remain a topic of vigorous debate. Existing research invokes climate change as either providing opportunities or imposing limits on human migration. Yet the paleoclimate history of northeast Africa, the gateway to migration, is unknown. Here, we reconstruct temperature and aridity in the Horn of Africa region spanning the past 200,000 yr. Our data suggest that warm and wet conditions from 120,000 to 90,000 yr ago could have facilitated early waves of human migration toward the Levant and Arabia, as supported by fossil and lithic evidence. However, the primary out-of-Africa event, as constrained by genetic studies (ca. 65-55 ka), occurred during a cold and dry time. This complicates the climate-migration relationship, suggesting that both push and pull factors may have prompted Homo sapiens to colonize Eurasia.
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