Volcanoes Wiped out Neanderthals, New Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (Oct. 7, 2010) — New research suggests that climate change following massive volcanic eruptions drove Neanderthals to extinction and cleared the way for modern humans to thrive in Europe and Asia.
The Semeru volcano in Indonesia. New research suggests that climate change following massive volcanic eruptions drove Neanderthals to extinction and cleared the way for modern humans to thrive in Europe and Asia. (Credit: iStockphoto)
The research, led by Liubov Vitaliena Golovanova and Vladimir Borisovich Doronichev of the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory in St. Petersburg, Russia, is reported in the October issue ofCurrent Anthropology.
"[W]e offer the hypothesis that the Neanderthal demise occurred abruptly (on a geological time-scale) … after the most powerful volcanic activity in western Eurasia during the period of Neanderthal evolutionary history," the researchers write. "[T]his catastrophe not only drastically destroyed the ecological niches of Neanderthal populations but also caused their mass physical depopulation."
Evidence for the catastrophe comes from Mezmaiskaya cave in the Caucasus Mountains of southern Russia, a site rich in Neanderthal bones and artifacts. Recent excavations of the cave revealed two distinct layers of volcanic ash that coincide with large-scale volcanic events that occurred around 40,000 years ago, the researchers say.
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Current Anthropology, 51:655–691, October 2010
© 2010 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved.
0011-3204/2010/5105-0005$10.00
DOI: 10.1086/656185
Significance of Ecological Factors in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition
Liubov Vitaliena Golovanova, Vladimir Borisovich Doronichev, Naomi Elansia Cleghorn, Marianna Alekseevna Koulkova, Tatiana Valentinovna Sapelko, and M. Steven Shackley
Liubov Vitaliena Golovanova is a researcher and Vladimir Borisovich Doronichev is Director at the ANO Laboratory of Prehistory (14 Linia 3-11, St. Petersburg, 1990 34, Russia [labprehistory@yandex.ru]).Naomi Elansia Cleghorn is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Texas (Arlington, Texas 76019, U.S.A.). Marianna Alekseevna Koulkova is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Geoecology at Herzen State Pedagogical University (nab. Moyki 48, St. Petersburg, 191186, Russia). Tatiana Valentinovna Sapelko is a researcher at the Institute of Limnology RAS (Sevastyanova 9, St. Petersburg, 196105, Russia). M. Steven Shackley is a Professor at the Geoarchaeological XRF Laboratory in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California (232 Kroeber Hall, Berkeley, California 94720-3710, U.S.A.).
For the first time, we have identified evidence that the disappearance of Neanderthals in the Caucasus coincides with a volcanic eruption at about 40,000 BP. Our data support the hypothesis that the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition in western Eurasia correlates with a global volcanogenic catastrophe. The coeval volcanic eruptions (from a large Campanian Ignimbrite eruption to a smaller eruption in the Central Caucasus) had an unusually sudden and devastating effect on the ecology and forced the fast and extreme climate deterioration (“volcanic winter”) of the Northern Hemisphere in the beginning of Heinrich Event 4. Given the data from Mezmaiskaya Cave and supporting evidence from other sites across the Europe, we guess that the Neanderthal lineage truncated abruptly after this catastrophe in most of its range. We also propose that the most significant advantage of early modern humans over contemporary Neanderthals was geographic localization in the more southern parts of western Eurasia and Africa. Thus, modern humans avoided much of the direct impact of the European volcanic crisis. They may have further benefited from the Neanderthal population vacuum in Europe and major technological and social innovations, whose revolutionary appearance shortly after 40,000 BP documents the beginning of Upper Paleolithic.
This paper was submitted 30 V 07 and accepted 14 V 09.
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