Wet Weather Helped Human Africa Exodus

[Klingan]

The view through a new window into the climatic changes in northeastern Africa suggests that it was a wetter climate that encouraged humans to migrate out of Africa between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago.

 

The key to the discovery comes from a cutting-edge technique which uses dating of cave formations, called speleothems, to glean information about past wet and dry periods.

 

The speleothems in this study were 11 stalactites, stalagmites and flowstones collected from five caves found along the central and southern Negev Desert.

 

Read more here.

[Faustus]

The view through a new window into the climatic changes in northeastern Africa suggests that it was a wetter climate that encouraged humans to migrate out of Africa between 130,000 and 100,000 years ago.

 

The key to the discovery comes from a cutting-edge technique which uses dating of cave formations, called speleothems, to glean information about past wet and dry periods.

 

The speleothems in this study were 11 stalactites, stalagmites and flowstones collected from five caves found along the central and southern Negev Desert.

 

Read more here.

 

Salve Klingan et omnes,

 

A hundred and forty thousand years ago, the northern hemisphere was deep into an Ice Age. There were cool temperatures that limited the existence of vegetation at least very near to the Ice front, and cool climates south of the ice front probably extended hundreds of miles. This would make northern Africa a lot like some southern parts of Canada today.

 

There is no way that an ice sheet like the Laurentide, would not occupy all of the northern hemisphere north of about 38 degrees latitude (where the Ohio River valley was encountered in the U.S.A.) and not cause drastic climate changes. This was true until about perhaps 20,000 years ago when the ice sheet withdrew over time. In southern Indiana there are "weathered limestone, hogbacks", that had to be bereft of vegetation for that erosion to have occurred, then vegetation was allowed to cover the area when warmer tempetature prevailed, and the weathered limestone was again covered by vegetation and it's detritus.

 

This all makes global climate warming seem a little ironic. The interglacial periods are known to be very brief (less than 20,000 years) seen in that light, a warmer climate caused by human activities, might be seen as a blessing, posed against the alternative. . .

 

Also the huge caves in this area of Kentucky and Indiana like Mammoth, and Wyandotte Caves were most likely greatly enlarged during this very wet period and previous similar wet periods, as far more drainage passed through their cavities than at present. At present there are no massive channels being cut by those kinds very wet climates, and we can explore them to their limits which are relatively dry now.

 

Valete!