Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, SY23 3DB, UK.
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Irvine Building, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL, UK.
Sci Rep. 2018 Jan 18;8(1):1077. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-19601-w.
Climatic change is widely acknowledged to have played a role in the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, but the timing is contentious. Genetic evidence links dispersal to climatic change ~60,000 years ago, despite increasing evidence for earlier modern human presence in Asia. We report a deep seismic and near-continuous core record of the last 150,000 years from Lake Tana, Ethiopia, close to early modern human fossil sites and to postulated dispersal routes. The record shows varied climate towards the end of the penultimate glacial, followed by an abrupt change to relatively stable moist climate during the last interglacial. These conditions could have favoured selection for behavioural versatility, population growth and range expansion, supporting models of early, multiple dispersals of modern humans from Africa.
气候变化被广泛认为在现代人离开非洲的扩散中发挥了作用，但时间存在争议。遗传证据将扩散与约 6 万年前的气候变化联系起来，尽管越来越多的证据表明亚洲存在更早的现代人类。我们报告了来自埃塞俄比亚塔纳湖的过去 15 万年的深部地震和近乎连续的核心记录，该湖靠近早期现代人类化石遗址和推测的扩散路线。该记录显示了末次冰期结束时的各种气候条件，随后在末次间冰期出现了相对稳定的湿润气候的突然变化。这些条件可能有利于行为多样性、人口增长和范围扩大的选择，支持了现代人类早期从非洲多次扩散的模型。
