Ungulate biomass fluctuations endured by Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic societies (SW France, MIS 5-3): The contributions of modern analogs and cave hyena paleodemography

摘要

From MIS 5 to 3, Western Europe has seen important climate changes that shaped the environments inhabited by past human societies. As a consequence, climate is often considered as a key factor in explaining the cultural and biological events of the Middle and Early Upper Paleolithic (e.g. changes in lithic technology and mobility strategies during the Mousterian, Neanderthal extinction, emergence of "modern" behavior, onset of the Upper Paleolithic). However, the exact impact of Upper Pleistocene global climatic changes on terrestrial ecosystems is still poorly documented. Remarkably, large predators can be affected by changes in herbivore communities because they result in fluctuations of the ecosystem's carrying capacity. Paleoenvironmental reconstructions that include data on faunal dynamics are still rare, so that questions concerning human-environment interactions cannot be properly discussed.