Climate Change in the Early Holocene

by University of Oxford, Jan 27, 2022 in WUWT

Radiocarbon dating from a prehistoric cemetery in Northern Russia reveals human stress caused by a global cooling event 8,200 years ago Early hunter gatherers developed more complex social systems and, unusually, a large cemetery when faced by climate

Peer-Reviewed Publication

 

16:00 (GMT), Thursday 27 January 2022

Climate change in the Early Holocene

  • Radiocarbon dating from a prehistoric cemetery in Northern Russia reveals human stress caused by a global cooling event 8,200 years ago
  • Early hunter gatherers developed more complex social systems and, unusually, a large cemetery when faced by climate change

New insight into how our early ancestors dealt with major shifts in climate is revealed in research,  published today [27 Jan] in Nature Ecology & Evolution, by an international team, led by Professor Rick Schulting from Oxford University’s School of Archaeology.

It reveals, new radiocarbon dates show the large Early Holocene cemetery of Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov, at Lake Onega, some 500 miles north of Moscow, previously thought to have been in use for many centuries, was, in fact, used for only one to two centuries. Moreover, this seems to be in response to a period of climate stress.