Project Database

Abstract:

Studies of early human settlement in alpine environments provide insights into human physiological, genetic, and cultural adaptation potentials. Although Late and even Middle Pleistocene human presence has been recently documented on the Tibetan Plateau, little is known regarding the nature and context of early persistent human settlement in high elevations. Here, we report the earliest evidence of a prehistoric high-altitude residential site. Located in Africa’s largest alpine ecosystem, the repeated occupation of Fincha Habera rock shelter is dated to 47 to 31 thousand years ago.The available resources in cold and glaciated environments included the exploitation of an endemic rodent as a key food source, and this played a pivotal role in facilitating the occupation of this site by Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers.

Abstract:

The Bale Mountains were one of the three extensively glaciated higher elevation areas in Ethiopia during last glacial maximum (Osmaston et al, 2005). After deglaciation, several small depressions on the Sanetti Plateau turned into shallow lakes. Today, some of these lakes dry out seasonally due to the alternation between monsoonal precipitation in summer and dry north-easterlies in winter. Drastically decreasing of Erica vegetation at higher altitude was recorded on the study area (Umer, 2007; Miehe and Miehe 1994). But the driving causes of this vegetation change is still unclear. Therefore, with this study we aim at contributing to the reconstruction of the Late Glacial and Holocene environmental evolution of the Bale Mountains, particularly sedimentation, fire and vegetation evolution by studying depression sediments based on the hypothesis that any process in the catchment of the depression, initiated by climate fluctuations, human impact and natural fires disturbing the vegetation cover, soil stability, run off and erosion should be documented in the physical, chemical and biological properties of depression sediments.

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.