Geology

Homo gautengensis is, as of May 2010, the earliest recognized species in the genus Homo.

While earlier fossils belong to the genus Homo, none have yet been classified in any species.

Analysis announced in May 2010 of a partial skull found decades earlier in South Africa's Sterkfontein Caves near Johannesburg identified the species, named Homo gautengensis by anthropologist Dr Darren Curnoe of the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

While earlier fossils belong to the genus Homo, none have yet been classified in any species.

The species' first remains were originally discovered in 1977 but had been left largely ignored.

They had been catalogued Stw 53 and were noted as being anomalous.

Identification of H. gautengensis was based on partial skulls, several jaws, teeth and other bones found at various times at the Caves.

It emerged over two million years ago and died out approximately six hundred thousand years years ago, and is believed to have arisen earlier than Homo habilis.

According to Curnoe, who led the research project, Homo gautengensis had big teeth suitable for chewing plant material.

It was "small-brained" and "large-toothed," and was "probably an ecological specialist, consuming more vegetable matter than Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, and probably even Homo habilis."

It apparently produced and used stone tools and may even have made fire, as there is evidence for burnt animal bones associated with H. gautengensis' remains.

Curnoe and South African paleoanthropologist colleague Phillip Tobias believe H. gautengensis stood just over three feet tall and weighed about one hundred and ten pounds.

It walked on two feet when on the ground, "but probably spent considerable time in trees, perhaps feeding, sleeping and escaping predators," Curnoe said.

The researchers believe it lacked speech and language skills.

Due to its anatomy and geological age, researchers think that it was a close relative of Homo sapiens but not necessarily a direct ancestor.

The Middle Pleistocene, which began approximately seven hundred and eighty-one thousand thousand years ago, to the Late Pleistocene around one hundred and twenty-six thousand years ago.

The change to a cooler, dry, seasonal climate has considerable impacts on Pliocene vegetation, reducing tropical species worldwide.

Deciduous forests proliferate, coniferous forests and tundra cover much of the north, and grasslands spread on all continents (except Antarctica).

Tropical forests are limited to a tight band around the equator, and in addition to dry savannas, deserts appear in Asia and Africa.

The Transition into the Holocene: Climate Change, Human Migration, and Environmental Transformations

During this epoch, the Northern Hemisphere experienced significant warming, accelerating the deglaciation processand causing rising sea levels as ice sheets continued to melt. This climatic shift marked the transition into the Holocene epoch, a period of relative climate stability following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).

Glacial Retreat and Human Recolonization

• Land ice receded from Denmark and southern Sweden, opening up new habitable territories.
• Human populations, previously confined to refuge areas, began repopulating Eurasia as ice sheets withdrew.
• For the first time, humans crossed Beringia into North America, initiating the peopling of the Americas.

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The Atlantis Narrative and Speculative Cataclysmic Events

According to Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias (circa 360 BCE), the legendary island of Atlantis—described as lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” (modern Straits of Gibraltar)—was said to have sunk around 10,000 years earlier along with its advanced civilization.

Some researchers speculate that a cataclysmic event of global significance may have occurred around 9577 BCE, potentially involving:

• Crustal shifts and a possible axial tilt of the Earth
• Mass extinctions of animal species
• The formation of new mountain ranges
• Significant alterations in landmasses
• Massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes

While no definitive evidence supports a single catastrophic event, glacial retreat after the 11th millennium BCEreshaped landscapes and ecosystems worldwide.

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Climate Shifts and Desertification

As the climate stabilized, new regional climate patterns emerged:

• Permanent Mediterranean climates developed in regions such as:

  • The Mediterranean Basin
  • California
  • Southwestern Australia
  • Chile
  • Southwestern Africa

• Desertification gradually encroached upon subtropical regions, fundamentally transforming ecosystems and influencing early human settlements.

This period marked a turning point in human history, as warmer, stable climates allowed for agricultural developments, leading to the eventual rise of Neolithic societies and early civilizations.

The Eruption of Puy de Dôme (c. 8690 BCE)

The Puy de Dôme, a prominent lava dome volcano in the Chaîne des Puys region of the Massif Central in south-central France, erupted around 8690 BCE, marking a significant event in the postglacial volcanic activity of the region.

Geological Context of Puy de Dôme

• Puy de Dôme is one of the youngest volcanoes in the Chaîne des Puys, a volcanic field consisting of over 80 cinder cones, lava domes, and maars.
• It is classified as a trachytic lava dome, meaning its eruptions primarily involve viscous lava, leading to explosive activity and dome growth.

The 8690 BCE Eruption and Its Impact

• The eruption likely produced pyroclastic flows, ash fallout, and lava extrusion, shaping the distinctive dome structure visible today.
• This period of volcanic activity occurred during the Early Holocene, a time of climatic warming following the Last Glacial Maximum, which may have influenced magma dynamics beneath the Massif Central.
• The eruption altered local landscapes, potentially affecting prehistoric human populations in the region, who were beginning to adapt to the Mesolithic environment.

Legacy and Current Status

• Today, Puy de Dôme stands at 1,465 meters (4,806 feet) and remains dormant, though the Chaîne des Puys volcanic field is still considered potentially active.
• The region, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, provides crucial geological insights into continental intraplate volcanism.

The 8690 BCE eruption of Puy de Dôme is an important event in the volcanic history of France, demonstrating the dynamic geological processes that have shaped the Massif Central over thousands of years.

 

The approximate geography of Denmark as we know it today has been shaped by around 6000 BCE.

Denmark has some unique natural conditions for preservation of artifacts, providing a rich and diverse archeological record from which to understand the prehistoric cultures of this area.

The first inhabitants of this early post-glacial landscape in the so-called Boreal period were very small and scattered populations living from hunting of reindeer and other land mammals and gathering whatever fruits the climate was able to offer.

Around 8,300 BCE the temperature had risen drastically, now with summer temperatures around 15 degrees Celsius, and the landscape changed into dense forests of aspen, birch and pine and the reindeer moved north, while aurochs and elk arrived from the south.

The Koelbjerg Man is the oldest known bog body in the world and also the oldest set of human bones found in Denmark, dated to the time of the Maglemosian culture around 8,000 BCE.

With a continuing rise in temperature the oak, elm and hazel arrived in Denmark around 7000 BCE.

Now boar, red deer, and roe deer also begin to abound.

A burial from Bøgebakken at Vedbæk dates to about 6,000 BCE and contains twenty-two persons—including four newborns and one toddler.

Eight of the twenty-two had died before reaching twenty years of age—testifying to the hardness of hunter-gatherer life in the cold north.

Based on estimates of the amount of game animals, scholars estimate the population of Denmark to have been between thirty-three hundred to eight thousand persons in the time around seven thousand BCE.

It is believed that the early hunter-gatherers lived nomadically, exploiting different environments at different times of the year, gradually shifting to the use of semi permanent base camps.

India's Sarasvati River, mentioned in all books of the Rigveda except the fourth, and celebrated as the central watercourse of Vedic culture, may end its oceangoing flow as early as 8000 BCE.

The Nadistuti hymn in the Rigveda (10.75) mentions the Sarasvati between the Yamuna in the east and the Sutlej in the west, and later Vedic texts like Tandya and Jaiminiya Brahmanas as well as the post-Vedic Mahabharata mention that the Sarasvati dried up in a desert.

The goddess Sarasvati was originally a personification of this river, but later developed an independent identity and meaning.

The Ghaggar is an intermittent river in India, flowing during the monsoon rains; the Hakra is the dried-out channel of a river in Pakistan that is the continuation of the Ghaggar River in India.

Evidence from survey fieldwork and recent satellite imagery have been adduced to suggest that the Ghaggar-Hakra system in the undetermined past had the Sutlej and the Yamuna as tributaries, with the Rann of Kutch as the likely remains of its delta.

In this scenario, geological changes diverted the Sutlej towards the Indus and the Yamuna towards the Ganges, following which the river did not have enough water to reach the sea any more and dried up in the Thar desert.

It has been proposed that the Sarasvati of the early Rigveda corresponds to the Ghaggar-Hakra before these changes took place (the "Old Ghaggar"), and the late Vedic end Epic Sarasvati disappearing in the desert to the Ghaggar-Hakra following the diversion of Sutlej and Yamuna.

The wide paleo-channel of the Ghaggar river suggest that the river once flowed full of water during the great meltdown of the Himalayan Ice Age glaciers, some ten thousand years ago, and that it then continued through the entire region, in the presently dry channel of the Hakra River, possibly emptying into the Rann of Kutch.

It supposedly dried up due to the capture of its tributaries by the Indus system and the Yamuna river, and later on, additionally, the loss of water in much of its catchment area due to deforestation and overgrazing.

Members of the Homo genus have intermittently inhabited Britain for hundreds of thousands of years; Homo sapiens have done so for tens of thousands.

DNA analysis has shown that modern humans arrived in Britain before the last ice age but retreated to Southern Europe when much of Britain was ice covered, with the remainder being tundra.

At this time, the sea level was about one hundred and twenty-seven meters (four hundred and seventeen feet) lower than it is today, joining Britain to Ireland and the area known as Doggerland to the continent of Europe.

Britain had been reoccupied by 12,000 BCE as shown by archaeology.

The climate from twelve thousand seven hundred to eleven thousand five hundred years ago, in what is known as the Younger Dryas period, became cooler and dryer.

Food animal populations seem to have declined although woodland coverage has expanded.

Tool manufacture in the Final Upper Paleolithic revolved around smaller flints but bone and antler work became less common.

Typically, there are parallel-sided flint blades known as "Cheddar Points.” However, the number of known sites is much larger than before and more widely spread.

Many more open-air sites are known such as that at Hengistbury Head.

The ice age finally ends around 8000 BCE and the Holocene era begins.

Temperatures rise, probably to levels similar to those today, and forests further expand.

The Mediterranean Sea swells and seawater surges northward, slicing through the natural dam at the Bosporus in what is now Turkey sometime around seven thousand five hundred years ago, according to a theory proposed in the late 1990s by Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman.

According to this theory, around 5500 BCE, a wall of seawater, funneled through the narrow Bosporus, hit the low-lying freshwater lake with two hundred times the force of Niagara Falls.

Fueled by the infinite waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, the seawaters rushed in for the next year or so, maybe longer.

Under this scenario, each day the lake level would have risen about six inches, flooding coastal farms, inundating whatever communities might have existed and forming what will be called the Black Sea, ultimately increasing the lake's area by a third.

Surviving marine life was driven into the newly abbreviated estuaries of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, Don, and Bug Rivers.

In flatter coastal areas, the shoreline may have advanced as much as a mile a day.

This hypothesis has been the subject of considerable discussion, and a news article from National Geographic News in February 2009 reported that the flooding might have been "quite mild.” While it is agreed by all that the sequence of events described did occur, there is debate over their suddenness and magnitude.

In particular, if the water level of the Black Sea were initially higher, the effect of the spillover would have been much less dramatic.

According to a study by Giosan et al., the level in the Black Sea before the marine reconnection was thirty meters below present sea level, rather than the eighty meters or lower of the catastrophe theories.

If the flood occurred at all, the sea level increase and the flooded area during the reconnection were significantly smaller than previously proposed.

It also occurred earlier than initially surmised, around 7400 BCE rather than the originally proposed 5600 BCE.

The area west of Makassar Strait, sometimes called Sundaland, encompasses the areas of the Asian continental shelf that was exposed during the last ice age.

It includes the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, and their surrounding islands.

It consists of a web of watered plains, because the seas have been some one hundred and fifty feet, or fifty meters, lower than they are now.

The stone tools used by hunting and gathering societies across Southeast Asia during this period of lowered sea levels show a remarkable degree of similarity in design and development.

Some scholars (e.g., Oppenheimer) locate the origin of the Austronesian languages in Sundaland and its upper regions.

Genetic research reported in 2008 indicates that the islands, which are the remnants of Sundaland, were likely populated as early as fifty thousand years ago.

The sea levels rise in about 7000 BCE to form the islands of Sundaland, home to many Asian mammals including elephants, monkeys, apes, tigers, tapirs, and rhinoceros.

A volcano on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, today one of the most various and active volcanic areas in the world, had a VEI 7 eruption around 6440±25 BCE, one of the largest of the Holocene epoch.

It forms a crater known today as Kurile Lake, which is today the largest spawning ground for sockeye salmon in Eurasia (if not in the world).