Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Impacts of Climate Change on Homo Sapiens Diet and Technology in Coastal Morocco

在柯蒂斯·马里恩博士的指导下，艾米丽·哈雷特将分析来自考古遗址孔特雷班纳洞穴的哺乳动物化石。Contrebanquet洞穴位于摩洛哥大西洋海岸的Témara镇附近。该遗址的沉积物可追溯到13万至2万年前，是早期现代人类起源及其散居非洲的关键时期北非人类居住的最长序列之一。 科学界认为非洲是人类物种进化的大陆，但我们在非洲进化的原因仍在探索中。非洲丰富的生物多样性的古老能力很可能在我们发现为什么非洲是人类进化所有主要阶段的地点方面发挥作用。此外，我们物种的进化主要发生在地球处于冰川期的时候。在大陆一级，已经证明非洲在冰川期变得干旱。最近的研究发现，在这些干旱的冰川阶段，非洲有潮湿的避难所。其中一个避难所是马格里布，那里的更新世哺乳动物化石和植被记录很少。这项研究的目标是提供第一个北非陆地古代环境和人类饮食的年表，这将（1）回答早期人类和陆地哺乳动物如何应对冰川周期中撒哈拉沙漠化的问题，（2）提供早期先进石器的环境背景。（称为“Aterian”），这可能代表了第一个射弹技术，（3）描述了气候变化，人口规模和动物开发在摩洛哥如何促进当地哺乳动物和鸟类的保护。 从Contrebanquet洞穴获得的化石哺乳动物遗骸将被用来检验关于冰川循环对人类饮食、人口规模、技术和扩散的影响的假设。对大约20，000块骨骼的物种级别鉴定将允许对摩洛哥的古代环境和植被进行首次详细重建，同时最终为更完整地了解东非和南非的过去环境增加比较样本。这项研究对人类起源的研究有意义，它也解决了我们的物种和陆地哺乳动物在过去如何应对气候变化。研究非洲和地中海盆地植物和动物分布的生命科学科学家将对此感兴趣。最近关于非洲最早期人类的证据已经开始积累，关于人类现代性的争论也在升级，北非已经被公认为一个基本上未被探索的地区，那里有大量的晚更新世人类文物和遗骸。该项目将促进美国学者和机构与摩洛哥、法国、德国、葡萄牙、西班牙、加拿大和澳大利亚同事之间的交流和合作，因为共同主要研究者Hallett女士是研究摩洛哥考古遗址的更大科学家团队的一员。这项研究将通过学术文章和会议报告以及面向普通观众的公开讲座传播给国际观众。这项研究的结果将继续在英文和法文期刊上发表，以便北非法语国家的科学家了解。这项研究最深远的影响将是扩大我们对马格里布丰富生物多样性的古老能力的理解，因为它代表了今天世界上最大的沙漠-撒哈拉的沿海避难所。

Under the guidance of Dr. Curtis Marean, Emily Hallett will analyze fossil mammal remains from the archaeological site Contrebandiers Cave. Contrebandiers Cave is located near the town of Témara, in the Atlantic Coast of Morocco. With deposits dated to between 130,000 and 20,000 years ago, the site provides one of the longest sequences of human occupation in North Africa during a critical time period for early modern human origins and their diaspora out of Africa. Africa is recognized within the scientific community as the continent where the evolution of our species took place, yet the reasons for why we evolved in Africa are still being explored. The ancient capacity for rich biodiversity in Africa is likely to play a role in our discovery of why Africa was the location for all major phases in human evolution. In addition, the evolution of our species primarily took place when the earth was in a glacial phase. At the continent scale, it has been demonstrated that Africa became arid during glacial phases. Recent research has identified humid refugia in Africa during these arid glacial phases. One of these refugia is the Maghreb, which has a poorly documented Pleistocene fossil mammal and vegetation record. The goal of this research is to provide the first chronology of terrestrial ancient environments and human diet in North Africa, which will (1) answer questions of how early humans and terrestrial mammals responded to the predicted desertification of the Sahara during glacial cycles, (2) provide the environmental context for early advanced stone tools (called "Aterian"), which possibly represent the first projectile technology, and (3) describe how changes in climate, human population size, and animal exploitation in Morocco contributed to local mammalian and avian extinctions. Fossil mammal remains from Contrebandiers Cave will be used to test hypotheses on the impact of glacial cycles on human diet, population size, technology, and dispersal. Species level identification of roughly 20,000 bones will allow for the first detailed reconstructions of ancient environment and vegetation in Morocco, while ultimately adding a comparative sample to the more completely understood past environments of East Africa and South Africa. This research has implications for human origins studies, and it also addresses how our species and terrestrial mammals have responded to climate change in the past. It will be of interest to scientists in the life sciences researching the distribution of plants and animals in Africa and the Mediterranean basin. Recent evidence for the earliest humans in Africa has begun to accumulate, debates about human modernity have also escalated, and North Africa has gained recognition as a largely unexplored area dense with Late Pleistocene human artifacts and remains. This project will advance communication and collaborations between scholars and institutions in the USA with colleagues in Morocco, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Canada, and Australia as the Co-PI, Ms. Hallett, is part of a larger team of scientists researching archaeological sites in Morocco. This research will be disseminated to an international audience through scholarly articles and conference presentations as well as public lectures to a general audience. Results from this research will continue to be published in English and French journals in order to reach scientists in French-speaking North African countries. The most far-reaching impact of this study will be to broaden our understanding of the Maghreb's ancient capacity for rich biodiversity, as it represents a coastal refugium from what is today the largest desert in the world - the Sahara.