期刊
PLOS ONE
卷 9, 期 7, 页码 -出版社
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0101938
关键词
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资金
- MINECO project [CGL2012-38434-C03-02, CGL2012-38434-C03-03, CGL2012-38358, CGL-BOS-2012-34717]
- FPI Grant from the Spanish MICINN
- Junta de Castilla y Leon
- Generalitat de Catalunya - European Union through Marie Curie Actions, FP7
Increasing evidence suggests that the European human settlement is older than 1.2 Ma. However, there is a fierce debate about the continuity or discontinuity of the early human settlement of Europe. In particular, evidence of human presence in the interval 0.7-0.5 Ma is scarce in comparison with evidence for the previous and later periods. Here, we present a case study in which the environmental conditions at Sierra de Atapuerca in the early Middle Pleistocene, a period without evidence of human presence, are compared with the conditions in the previous period, for which a relatively intense human occupation is documented. With this objective in mind, the available resources for a human population and the intensity of competition between secondary consumers during the two periods are compared using a mathematical model. The Gran Dolina site TD8 level, dated to 0.7-0.6 Ma, is taken as representative of the period during which Atapuerca was apparently not occupied by humans. Conditions at TD8 are compared with those of the previous period, represented by the TD6-2 level, which has yielded abundant evidence of intense human occupation. The results show that survival opportunities for a hypothetical human population were lower at TD8 than they were at TD6-2. Increased resource competition between secondary consumers arises as a possible explanation for the absence of human occupation at Atapuerca in the early Middle Pleistocene.
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