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

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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.