To find out what had happened, the researchers ran computer simulations to determine what the climate must have been like in Europe at that time. The characteristics of these residues suggested unusual temperature and vegetation variations had been experienced in the region 1.1 million years ago, ones that left its mark on all the creatures that occupied continental Europe and its adjacent oceans at that time. A Gap in the Fossil Records Finally Explainedįor the purposes of this study, the team of researchers analyzed deep-sea sediment core samples taken off the coast of Portugal that contained organic residues in the form of ancient algae and pollen. Now it seems they never had the chance to leave, but were instead the victim of an unexpected environmental calamity. Up to now it had been assumed that Homo erectus had disappeared gradually from Europe, perhaps because they chose to migrate to the east and south in search of warmer conditions or more abundant resources. Based on such discoveries, and on the absence of Homo erectus fossils in Europe from later periods, it would seem they disappeared completely following the onset of the Early Pleistocene climate catastrophe. Previous fossil finds have shown that Homo erectus had settled in many different parts of Eurasia between 1.8 and 1.2 million years ago. It is already known that Homo erectus was the first archaic human species to migrate out of Africa, and also the first to make stone tools like those that were later used by modern humans. Scientists Warn That What Killed Past Human Species Could End Us Too.Why do Ice Ages occur? A New Paradigm Shift on a Prehistoric Problem.(Mauricio Ant ón / CC BY 2.5 ) Signs of an Archaic Human Extinctionīased on the study of ancient fossils recovered in Spain, the researchers involved in this new study believe the doomed species was Homo erectus, one of the better-known members of the evolutionary line that eventually produced Homo sapiens. An interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, anthropologists and earth scientists have found evidence that a severe cooling event in the North Atlantic region approximately 1.1 million years ago wiped out all the archaic humans that populated Europe at that time.Īs has just been reported in the journal Science, this massive and sudden freeze in the Early Pleistocene epoch rendered huge sections of Europe virtually uninhabitable for a period of approximately 4,000 years, and it would be another 200,000 years before archaic human hunter-gatherers were once again roaming across the continent.Ī late Pleistocene landscape in northern Spain.
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