Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization in southern-central Africa

Thompson, Jessica C.; Wright, David K.; Ivory, Sarah J.; Choi, Jeong-Heon; Nightingale, Sheila; Mackay, Alex; Schilt, Flora; Otárola-Castillo, Erik; Mercader, Julio; Forman, Steven L.; Pietsch, Timothy; Cohen, Andrew S.; Arrowsmith, J. Ramón; Welling, Menno; Davis, Jacob; Schiery, Benjamin; Kaliba, Potiphar; Malijani, Oris; Blome, Margaret W.; O’Driscoll, Corey A.; Mentzer, Susan M.; Miller, Christopher; Heo, Seoyoung; Choi, Jungyu; Tembo, Joseph; Mapemba, Fredrick; Simengwa, Davie; Gomani-Chindebvu, Elizabeth

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abf9776

Datensatz

DATENSATZ AKTIONENEXPORT

Zur Ablage hinzufügen

Lokale TagsFreigabegeschichteDetailsÜbersicht

Freigegeben

Zeitschriftenartikel

Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization in southern-central Africa

MPG-Autoren

/persons/resource/persons247338

Mercader, Julio
Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;

Externe Ressourcen

Supplement; Table S1-S3, S5, S7; Data Supplement
(Ergänzendes Material)

Volltexte (beschränkter Zugriff)

Für Ihren IP-Bereich sind aktuell keine Volltexte freigegeben.

Volltexte (frei zugänglich)

shh2941.pdf
(Verlagsversion), 832KB

Ergänzendes Material (frei zugänglich)

Es sind keine frei zugänglichen Ergänzenden Materialien verfügbar

Zitation

Thompson, J. C., Wright, D. K., Ivory, S. J., Choi, J.-H., Nightingale, S., Mackay, A., et al. (2021). Early human impacts and ecosystem reorganization in southern-central Africa. Science Advances, 7(19): eabf9776. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abf9776.

Zitierlink: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0008-A5C7-D

Zusammenfassung

Modern Homo sapiens engage in substantial ecosystem modification, but it is difficult to detect the origins or early consequences of these behaviors. Archaeological, geochronological, geomorphological, and paleoenvironmental data from northern Malawi document a changing relationship between forager presence, ecosystem organization, and alluvial fan formation in the Late Pleistocene. Dense concentrations of Middle Stone Age artifacts and alluvial fan systems formed after ca. 92 thousand years ago, within a paleoecological context with no analog in the preceding half-million-year record. Archaeological data and principal coordinates analysis indicate that early anthropogenic fire relaxed seasonal constraints on ignitions, influencing vegetation composition and erosion. This operated in tandem with climate-driven changes in precipitation to culminate in an ecological transition to an early, pre-agricultural anthropogenic landscape.