A stable environmental niche for humans in the southern Levant 70–40 ka

Abstract

Environmental drivers were likely key to human dispersals from Africa into and throughout Eurasia, but the effect of such drivers on human biogeography has yet to be resolved at high-resolution on a regional scale. Here, we probe the Levantine-Arabian region for environments favourable to human forager groups around 50 ka when a demographic wave surged across Eurasia imprinting the ancestry of all non-Africans living today. We present a set of 33 optically stimulated luminescence dates demonstrating more than 50,000-years of persistent riverine wetlands on the eastern margin of the Jordan Rift Valley at Hamra Faddan and Wadi al-Hasa—the latter hosting stratified Middle Palaeolithic artefacts indicative of frequent human presence. By reviewing and combining multiple climate proxy records, our analysis reveals permanent surplus moisture existed across much (~70,000 km2) of the southern Levant during the interval 70–40 ka, in contrast to surrounding regions such as interior Arabia where intensified aridity and a paucity of archaeological sites primarily suggest landscape abandonment. We propose that the southern Levant offered a relatively stable, favourable environment for foraging human populations extending to the Upper Palaeolithic, during which time the region was a crucible for fostering human admixture, knowledge sharing and technological evolution. The southern Levant likely functioned as one of several population and cultural hubs in Southwest Asia during the Late Pleistocene.

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