The Transition into the Holocene: Climate Change, Human Migration, and Environmental Transformations

During this epoch, the Northern Hemisphere experienced significant warming, accelerating the deglaciation processand causing rising sea levels as ice sheets continued to melt. This climatic shift marked the transition into the Holocene epoch, a period of relative climate stability following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).

Glacial Retreat and Human Recolonization

• Land ice receded from Denmark and southern Sweden, opening up new habitable territories.
• Human populations, previously confined to refuge areas, began repopulating Eurasia as ice sheets withdrew.
• For the first time, humans crossed Beringia into North America, initiating the peopling of the Americas.

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The Atlantis Narrative and Speculative Cataclysmic Events

According to Plato's dialogues Timaeus and Critias (circa 360 BCE), the legendary island of Atlantis—described as lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” (modern Straits of Gibraltar)—was said to have sunk around 10,000 years earlier along with its advanced civilization.

Some researchers speculate that a cataclysmic event of global significance may have occurred around 9577 BCE, potentially involving:

• Crustal shifts and a possible axial tilt of the Earth
• Mass extinctions of animal species
• The formation of new mountain ranges
• Significant alterations in landmasses
• Massive volcanic eruptions and earthquakes

While no definitive evidence supports a single catastrophic event, glacial retreat after the 11th millennium BCEreshaped landscapes and ecosystems worldwide.

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Climate Shifts and Desertification

As the climate stabilized, new regional climate patterns emerged:

• Permanent Mediterranean climates developed in regions such as:

  • The Mediterranean Basin
  • California
  • Southwestern Australia
  • Chile
  • Southwestern Africa

• Desertification gradually encroached upon subtropical regions, fundamentally transforming ecosystems and influencing early human settlements.

This period marked a turning point in human history, as warmer, stable climates allowed for agricultural developments, leading to the eventual rise of Neolithic societies and early civilizations.

The human population at 10,000 BCE is an estimated three million.

The Late Pleistocene-Holocene Megafaunal Extinction Event

The extinction of the cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) around 27,000 years BP was an early indicator of a major wave of megafaunal extinctions that would unfold from the Late Pleistocene into the Holocene. This event saw the disappearance of numerous large mammals, alongside the extinction of our Neanderthal and Denisovan relatives, fundamentally reshaping global ecosystems.

Notable Megafaunal Losses

Among the most iconic species lost during this period were:

• Mammoths and mastodons (Mammuthus and Mammut spp.) – Once dominant herbivores of Ice Age landscapes.
• Saber-toothed cats (Smilodon spp.) – Apex predators that thrived in North and South America.
• Glyptodons (Glyptodon spp.) – Giant armored relatives of modern armadillos.
• Ground sloths (Megatherium and others) – Massive, slow-moving herbivores of the Americas.
• Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus) – A giant deer with spectacular antlers, found across Eurasia.
• Short-faced bears (Arctodus simus) – One of the largest terrestrial mammalian predators of the Ice Age.

Causes and Consequences

• Climate Change – The warming trend at the end of the Pleistocene altered habitats, leading to vegetation shifts and resource depletion.
• Human Expansion – Advanced hunting strategies and increased predation pressure by expanding human populations likely contributed to megafaunal declines.
• Cascading Ecological Effects – The loss of large herbivores and predators disrupted ecosystems, influencing plant distributions, predator-prey dynamics, and even climate regulation.

This widespread extinction event marked a biological turning point, transitioning Earth from the Ice Age megafauna-dominated ecosystems to those of the Holocene, where smaller, more adaptable species thrived. The impact of this loss continues to influence modern biodiversity and conservation efforts.

 

Evolution as a Branching Process: The Case of Mammoths, Mastodons, and Early Human Hunting

The evolution of species does not follow a simple linear progression but rather a complex branching pattern, with different lineages adapting uniquely to their respective environments. For example:

• Mammoths (Mammuthus spp.) and mastodons (Mammut spp.) were not less evolved than their modern relatives, the elephants.
• Instead, each species evolved distinct adaptations—mammoths for cold, open steppe environments, mastodons for forested regions, and elephants for tropical and subtropical habitats.

Early Human Predation on Megafauna

• Fossil evidence suggests that Homo erectus was consuming mammoth meat as early as 1.8 million years ago.
• This indicates an early reliance on large mammals for sustenance, showcasing the hunting or scavenging skills of early hominins.
• The ability to process and consume large prey likely contributed to:
  • Nutritional advancements, supporting brain expansion in early humans.
  • Social cooperation, as large-game hunting required group coordination.
  • Tool advancements, with stone tools used to butcher megafauna efficiently.

The hunting and interaction with megafauna by early humans played a crucial role in human evolution, shaping the development of hunting strategies, tool use, and social behaviors that would define later hominin species.

Post-Ice Age Faunal Shifts and the Extinction of Megafauna

As the last Ice Age ended, climatic warming and ecological changes led to a gradual replacement of Ice Age megafauna by smaller, more adaptable species. This transition was marked by the northward migration of cold-blooded animals, smaller mammals, migratory birds, and fast-moving species such as the white-tailed deer.

Severe Extinctions in North America

The megafaunal extinctions were particularly severe in North America, where several iconic species were completely eliminated, including:

• Native horses (Equus spp.), which later had to be reintroduced by Europeans.
• Camelids, which had evolved in North America but survived only in South America (as llamas and guanacos) and in Asia (as Bactrian and dromedary camels).

The Role of Climate and Human Hunting

Although similar warming episodes had occurred throughout the last several million years without causing mass megafaunal extinctions, the expansion of advanced human hunters across northern Eurasia and the Americas during this period introduced an unprecedented ecological pressure.

• Overhunting Hypothesis – Highly efficient Upper Paleolithic human hunters, armed with advanced projectile weapons and coordinated hunting strategies, likely accelerated the decline of large mammal populations.
• Climate Stress – The rapid shift from a glacial to interglacial environment led to changes in vegetation, water sources, and habitat availability, further stressing megafaunal species.

A Unique Extinction Event in Prehistory

The interaction between climatic shifts and human expansion distinguishes this extinction event from previous ones. While climate change alone had triggered megafaunal turnovers in earlier epochs, the arrival of human populations introduced a novel, sustained predation pressure, compounding the challenges faced by Ice Age megafauna.

This period marked a transformative shift in global ecosystems, leading to the dominance of smaller, more adaptable species and paving the way for the Holocene’s modern faunal distributions.

Human populations become well-established across North America as the Last Glacial Maximum ends and ice sheets retreat. The Clovis culture emerges around 11,000 BCE, characterized by distinctive fluted spear points and sophisticated hunting techniques targeting megafauna including mammoths, mastodons, and giant bison. These highly mobile hunter-gatherers spread rapidly from Alaska through ice-free corridors and along deglaciated coastlines, reaching as far south as Chile by 10,500 BCE.

Archaeological sites from this period show evidence of organized hunting camps, specialized stone tool technologies, and the exploitation of diverse environments from tundra to temperate forests. The retreat of continental ice sheets opens new territories and migration routes, enabling rapid population expansion across the continent. Some megafaunal species begin showing signs of decline, possibly due to climate change, hunting pressure, or both.

While this period sees the clearest widespread evidence of human occupation, earlier sites like White Sands suggest human presence in North America may extend back over 20,000 years.

Paleo-Indians expand across the American continent around 13,000 years ago, with their hunting potentially contributing to megafaunal extinctions alongside climate change. The traditional 'Clovis First' theory placed initial human arrival at this time via the Beringia land bridge. However, mounting evidence suggests humans reached North America much earlier, possibly 15,000-23,000 years ago.

Two primary migration routes are proposed: an inland ice-free corridor between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets, and a Pacific coastal route using watercraft. Coastal archaeological evidence would be submerged under post-glacial sea level rise of up to 100 meters.

The timing remains hotly debated, but scholars agree on Central Asian origins and widespread continental habitation during the late glacial period (16,000-13,000 years ago), when warming climates following the Last Glacial Maximum (26,500-19,000 years ago) enabled accelerated deglaciation and population expansion.

Climatic changes help to bring about a Mesolithic stage in early Japanese culture, during which the expanding human population of the archipelago largely depletes the previously abundant fauna.

The introduction of the bow and arrow is regarded as a local response to a decrease in game available for food.

The Jomon hunting and gathering culture, named for its cord-pattern ceramic wares, emerges in Japan in about the tenth millennium and begins to produce distinctive pottery in conical and cylindrical forms.

Jomon pottery first appears around 10,000 BCE in northern Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main Japanese islands, in an era that is sometimes called the “incipient” Jomon period.

While continental influence is suspected, the fact that Kyushu pottery remains predate any Chinese findings strongly suggests that the impetus to develop pottery is original.

The culture, whatever its origins, will eventually grow to encompass a great number of small communities throughout Japan.

The Scandinavian region has a rich prehistory, having been populated by several prehistoric cultures and people for about twelve thousand years, since the end of the last ice age.

During the ice age, all of Scandinavia was covered by glaciers most of the time, except for the southwestern parts of what we now know as Denmark.

When the ice begins retreating, the barren tundras are soon inhabited by reindeer and elk, and Ahrenburg and Swiderian hunters from the south follow them here to hunt occasionally.

The geography is very different from what we know today.

Sea levels are much lower; the island of Great Britain is connected by a land bridge to mainland Europe and the large area between Great Britain and the Jutlandic peninsula—now beneath the North Sea and known as Doggerland—is inhabited by tribes of hunter-gatherers.

The first inhabitants of present Norway are the Ahrensburg culture (eleventh to tenth millennia BCE), which is a late Upper Paleolithic culture during the Younger Dryas, the last period of cold at the end of the Weichsel glaciation.

The culture is named after the village of Ahrensburg, twenty-five kilometers (15.53 miles) northeast of Hamburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where wooden arrow shafts and clubs have been excavated.