Climate and Environmental Variability during the late Middle Pleistocene at the Paleolithic Sites of Schöningen, Northern Germany

下萨克森东部舍宁根露天褐煤矿中的旧石器时代遗址因其世界上最古老的木制狩猎武器和丰富的动物遗迹而闻名于世。这些发现表明了海德堡人迄今为止未知的有组织的狩猎和复杂而抽象的思维。嵌入前湖岸的沉积物中导致了杰出的多样性植物群和动物群的遗迹的特殊保存。同时，中更新世沉积物的非凡完整序列允许约30万年前的间冰期中期到早冰期的高分辨率气候和环境重建。我们建议研究水生微化石（硅藻、介形虫、轮藻的轮藻）以及花粉和非花粉孢粉沿着以及Reinsdorf间冰期和随后的早期冰期的五个叠置湖相序列的沉积学和地球化学参数，以解决以下三个相互关联的主题：（1）高─间冰期和进入早冰期的气候和环境变化的分辨率重建以及与其他北方陆地和海洋站点的相关性将从而更好地了解终止间冰期的自然气候演变，并有助于澄清考古遗址和沉积物的有争议的地层分类。(2)湖泊水位重建和沉积环境的表征，提出了检测湖泊的发展和评估的根本原因。(3)使用的样品从考古层13 II-4，保存在沉积物块，详细的二维重建的栖息地结构的文学的区的古湖泊将进行评估的环境和狩猎策略的海德堡人，并评估嵌入条件的文物。通过结合地球生物学，地球化学和考古学的结果，我们建议有助于更新世的气候发展和早期人类的栖息地和他们的认知技能，更一致的图片，并澄清这些中更新世存款的地层位置。

The Lower Paleolithic sites in the open-cast lignite mine of Schöningen, eastern Lower Saxony, have become internationally renown because of their worldwide oldest wooden hunting weapons associated with abundant faunal remains. These findings indicate hitherto unknown organized hunting and complex and abstract thinking of Homo heidelbergensis. Embedding in sediments of a former lakeshore led to an exceptional preservation of remains of an outstanding diverse flora and fauna. Concurrently, the extraordinary complete sequence of Middle Pleistocene sediments allows a high-resolution climate and environmental reconstruction of a mid interglacial to early glacial about 300,000 years ago. We propose to investigate aquatic microfossils (diatoms, ostracodes, gyrogonites of charophytes) as well as pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs along with sedimentological and geochemical parameters of five stacked lacustrine sequences of the Reinsdorf Interglacial and subsequent early glacial in order to address the following three interlinked topics: (1) A high-resolution reconstruction of climatic and environmental variability during the interglacial and into the early glacial period and the correlation with other northern hemisphere terrestrial and marine sites will result in a better understanding of the natural climate evolution of a terminating interglacial and contribute to clarify the controversial stratigraphic classification of the archeological sites and deposits. (2) Lake level reconstructions and characterization of the depositional environment are proposed to detect the lakes development and to assess underlying causes. (3) Using samples from the archeological layer 13 II-4, preserved in sediment blocks, a detailed 2D reconstruction of the habitat structure of the litoral zone of the paleo-lake will be performed in order to assess the environment and hunting strategies of Homo heidelbergensis and evaluate the embedding conditions of artifacts. By combining geobiological, geochemical and archeological results we propose to contribute to a more consistent picture of Pleistocene climate development and the habitat of early humans and their cognitive skills, and to clarify the stratigraphical position of these Middle Pleistocene deposits.