Glacial cooling would have exterminated humans in Europe – 08/13/2023 – Science

A glacial cooling that would have occurred in southern Europe more than 1 million years ago likely caused the “extinction of early humans” on the continent, according to new research.

The hitherto unknown ice age even pushed Europe’s climate “beyond tolerable for archaic humans” and likely temporarily extinguished human life on the continent, according to an academic article published in the journal Science.

The findings by 11 researchers from institutions including University College London and the University of Cambridge challenge the long-held idea that humans have continuously occupied Europe since they first arrived there.

The newly discovered cooling event was “comparable to some of the most severe events in recent ice ages,” said the paper’s lead author Vasili Margari of UCL. “We suggest that these extreme conditions led to the depopulation of Europe,” the researchers concluded.

Glacial-interglacial cycles, or warmer and colder periods lasting thousands of years each, have alternated over the last 2.6 million years, with large ice caps forming during the coldest phases and melting during the coldest periods. hot.

According to the academic article, a previously unknown glacial period that would have occurred 1.1 million years ago led to a sudden cooling that lasted around 4,000 years. This happened as conditions began to warm and large ice caps melted in the Atlantic Ocean, pushing down sea and land temperatures across Europe.

The researchers identified the glacial period using an analysis of marine microorganisms and muddy sediments collected from the deep ocean near the coast of Portugal. They then used computer models to assess how conducive the cooler environment would have been for early human occupation.

For Chronis Tzedakis, a co-author of the UCL paper, it would have been very unlikely that early humans, who may not have known how to build fires or create clothes or shelters against the cold, would have survived the extreme cold.

He added that the much colder and drier conditions on land would have threatened the survival of many animals and plants and that winter temperatures would have remained freezing for long periods of time.

The paper concluded that the sea surface temperature in the region would have dropped to below 6°C. The average daily surface temperature of the North Atlantic between 1979 and 2023 was 21°C, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service.

The article also highlighted that archaeological evidence of the presence of early humans in Europe between 900,000 and 1.1 million years ago is lacking, which could indicate that there were no human inhabitants in the region for thousands of years after the cooling event. . The oldest known human remains in Europe date back to around 1.4 million years ago.

Although the planet’s climate has changed over time, human-caused warming and the resulting climate extremes are occurring much more rapidly.

Glacial-interglacial cycles have historically occurred on longer time scales and “were very different from the changes that are taking place today,” Tzedakis said. “We can’t draw lessons from the past because it’s not directly comparable.”

_{Translated by Clara Allain}