Center for Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing World, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Nat Commun. 2022 Sep 6;13(1):5140. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32750-x.
Population dynamics set the framework for human genetic and cultural evolution. For foragers, demographic and environmental changes correlate strongly, although the causal relations between different environmental variables and human responses through time and space likely varied. Building on the notion of limiting factors, namely that at any one time, the scarcest resource caps population size, we present a statistical approach to identify the dominant climatic constraints for hunter-gatherer population densities and then hindcast their changing dynamics in Europe for the period between 21,000 to 8000 years ago. Limiting factors shifted from temperature-related variables (effective temperature) during the Pleistocene to a regional mosaic of limiting factors in the Holocene dominated by temperature seasonality and annual precipitation. This spatiotemporal variation suggests that hunter-gatherers needed to overcome very different adaptive challenges in different parts of Europe and that these challenges varied over time. The signatures of these changing adaptations may be visible archaeologically. In addition, the spatial disaggregation of limiting factors from the Pleistocene to the Holocene coincided with and may partly explain the diversification of the cultural geography at this time.
人口动态为人类遗传和文化进化设定了框架。对于采集狩猎者来说，人口统计和环境变化密切相关，尽管不同环境变量与人类在时间和空间上的反应之间的因果关系可能有所不同。基于限制因素的概念，即任何时候，最稀缺的资源都会限制人口规模，我们提出了一种统计方法来确定狩猎采集者人口密度的主要气候限制因素，然后回溯他们在 21000 至 8000 年前的欧洲的动态变化。限制因素从更新世的与温度相关的变量（有效温度）转变为全新世以温度季节性和年降水量为主导的限制因素的区域镶嵌体。这种时空变化表明，狩猎采集者在欧洲不同地区需要克服非常不同的适应性挑战，而且这些挑战随着时间的推移而变化。这些不断变化的适应的特征在考古学上可能是可见的。此外，从更新世到全新世，限制因素的空间离散与此时文化地理的多样化同时发生，并可能在一定程度上解释了这种多样化。
