Placing late Neanderthals in a climatic context.

Area of Science:

• Paleoclimatology
• Archaeology
• Quaternary Science

Background:

• Precise climatic dating of Palaeolithic finds is challenging due to radiocarbon calibration uncertainties and lack of master climate chronologies.
• Existing methods struggle to correlate archaeological finds with specific climate events, complicating interpretations of human evolution.
• The role of climate in Neanderthal extinction remains debated, partly due to difficulties in precisely dating their final occupations.

Observation:

• A new method maps radiocarbon dates directly onto the Cariaco Basin 14C series, bypassing calendar age uncertainties.
• This radiocarbon climatostratigraphy is applied to Mousterian artefacts from Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, dated to approximately 32,000, 28,000, and 24,000 14C years BP.
• These dates are placed within the millennial-scale climate context of the last glacial period.

Findings:

• The earliest two date sets (32,000 and 28,000 14C years BP) correlate with intervals of general climatic instability, not Heinrich Events.
• The youngest date (24,000 14C years BP), if accepted, suggests Neanderthals persisted until a major environmental shift including increased ice volume.
• Different dating scenarios reveal distinct possibilities for climate's role in Neanderthal extinction.

Implications:

• The radiocarbon climatostratigraphic approach offers a powerful tool for dating and contextualizing archaeological finds within palaeoclimate records.
• This method can refine our understanding of the climatic factors influencing Neanderthal survival and extinction.
• It provides a framework for evaluating the climatic signature of critical intervals in Late Pleistocene human evolution.