Abstract:
Today’s ice caps and glaciers in Africa are restricted to the highest peaks, but during the Pleistocene, several
mountains on the continent were extensively glaciated. However, little is known about regional differences in the
timing and extent of past glaciations and the impact of paleoclimatic changes on the afro-alpine environment and
settlement history. Here, we present a glacial chronology for the Ethiopian Highlands in comparison with other
East African Mountains. In the Ethiopian Highlands, glaciers reached their maximum 42 to 28 ka thousand years
ago before the global Last Glacial Maximum. The local maximum was accompanied by a temperature depression
of 4.4° to 6.0°C and a ~700-m downward shift of the afro-alpine vegetation belt, reshaping the human and natural
habitats. The chronological comparison reveals that glaciers in Eastern Africa responded in a nonuniform way to
past climatic changes, indicating a regionally varying influence of precipitation, temperature, and orography on
paleoglacier dynamics.
