Speleothem Climate Capture of the Neanderthal Demise
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Speleothem climate capture of the Neanderthal demise Laura Melanie Charlotte Deeprose BSc (Hons), MSc June 2018 This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. i Abstract The Iberian Peninsula is a region of climatic and archaeological interest as it lies upon the boundary between the North Atlantic and Mediterranean climatic zones and was the last refuge of the Neanderthals. The influence of climate changes on Neanderthal populations remains a mystery due to the lack of independently-dated high-resolution terrestrial records of past climate and environmental change from the Iberian Peninsula. The primary aim of this project was to construct a palaeoclimate record using speleothems from Matienzo, northern Iberia, across the period encapsulating the Neanderthal demise. Contemporary cave monitoring of Cueva de las Perlas has demonstrated the potential for speleothems to be used as indicators of past climate and environmental conditions. Assessment of cave dynamics through a comprehensive monitoring programme has classified the karst hydrology, cave ventilation, processes influencing speleothem growth and proxies preserved within speleothem calcite. Three speleothems were used to develop records of past climate and environmental variability between 90,000 and 30,000 years ago. A long-term aridity trend was evident throughout the record which is interpreted as a response to orbital-forcing. Sub-orbital climate instability was superimposed onto this long-term trend as evidenced through wet-dry proxies (δ18O, δ13C, Mg and Sr). Millennial-scale events coincident with the timing of North Atlantic Heinrich Events have been identified and the sub-orbital climate variability resembles that of North Atlantic Dansgaard- Oeschger cycles. Therefore, evidence from the speleothems demonstrates a tight coupling of the North Atlantic Ocean-Atmosphere system throughout MIS3. The Cueva de las Perlas speleothems have established that the period of the Neanderthal demise was characterised by climate instability involving abrupt shifts and millennial-scale events, thereby adding climatic pressures at a time of anatomically modern human appearance. ii Declaration I hereby declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own, except where acknowledged, and has not been submitted for the award of a higher degree or other qualification at this or any other institution. Signed: Date: Name: Laura Melanie Charlotte Deeprose iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to say a massive thank you to my supervisor Peter Wynn for his endless support and advice about cave monitoring and speleothem science. I am also grateful to Phil Barker for his supervisory support and positivity. Thank you both for your continued enthusiasm throughout the project. This project would not have been possible without the financial input from the NERC Envision Doctoral Training Partnership, BGS University Funding Initiative (BUFI) and NERC Isotope Geoscience Facilities Steering Committee (NIGFSC). Thank you to the NERC Isotope Geosciences Laboratory (NIGL) team for your analytical support and advice. I would like to extend a special thank you to Melanie Leng, Andi Smith, Stephen Noble and Diana Sahy for sharing their knowledge and encouragement during my visits to Keyworth. I would like to show my appreciation to those who have provided analytical support at Lancaster University. To Montse Auladell-Mestre for your support and encouragement in the earliest stages of laboratory work. To Debbie Hurst and Catherine Wearing for their technical laboratory assistance. To Dave Hughes for his extensive commitment to isotope analysis and continuous analytical support. To Andy Stott and the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) for their analytical support throughout the project. I would like to extend my thanks to Wlodek Tych for his timeseries expertise and MatLab knowledge and to Gemma Davies for her GIS support. Additionally, I would like extend my gratitude to Christina Manning for her analytical support during the trace element analysis and help with the data processing. A big thank you to the Matienzo caving community who have supported the project at all stages. A special thanks to Andy Quin for field support and logistics and to Pete Smith for his continued commitment by visiting the cave monthly throughout the course of the project. Cave monitoring and speleothem sampling in Cueva de las Perlas was undertaken with the kind permission from Gobierno de Cantabria, Consejería de Educación Cultura y Deporte. iv To my fantastic field assistants Joanna Houska for her infectious enthusiasm, Charlotte Clarke for our hilarious fieldwork shenanigans and to Alex Chapman for his willingness to come on fieldwork at such short notice! Throughout my PhD I have met some amazing people and have really grown with them as we have ventured along this PhD journey together. I would like to say a special thank you to Ceri Davies and Emma Gray for the endless coffees and chats. To Kirsty Forber and Rachel Efrat for their emotional support and friendship, frequently over a burrito or two. To Alistair MacDonald for his sense of humour and encouragement through our first year at Lancaster. To Rob Larson for his culinary expertise and willingness to sample the majority Lancaster’s restaurants. Also, a huge thank you to all those who have been a member of the B46 office during my time there, particularly Ann Kretzschmar, Tamsin Blayney and Runmei Wang along with many others who have come and gone during the years. To all those at St. Thomas’ Church Lancaster, Christ Church Alsager and St. Matthew’s Yiewsley who have given me more strength than I could have ever imagined. To my amazing Heysham life group for your encouragement and for all the discussions we have shared together. Without the support of my family and friends this would not have been possible. Thank you all for your love, support, inspiration and prayers over the past few years. Your enthusiasm for speleothems has never ceased to amaze me! And finally, I would like to thank my husband Jonty Warren for his care and passion for knowledge which has inspired me over the past three and a half years. I will be forever grateful! v Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 2. Literature review .................................................................................................................... 4 2.1 The Neanderthal demise .................................................................................................. 4 2.1.1 Overview ................................................................................................................... 4 2.1.2 Climate ...................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.3 Competition with AMH ........................................................................................... 10 2.1.4 Genetic evidence ..................................................................................................... 11 2.1.5 Summary ................................................................................................................. 12 2.2 Climate change 90-25ka ................................................................................................. 12 2.2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 12 2.2.2 Orbitally-driven climate change .............................................................................. 12 2.2.3 Sub-orbital climate variability ................................................................................. 14 2.2.4 Driving mechanisms for sub-orbital variability ....................................................... 23 2.2.5 Summary ................................................................................................................. 25 2.3 Speleothems as recorders of climate and environmental processes ............................ 25 2.4 Understanding the dynamics of cave systems ............................................................... 27 2.4.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 27 2.4.2 Processes acting to modify speleothem signals...................................................... 28 2.4.3 Understanding karst hydrology and cave ventilation through cave monitoring parameters ....................................................................................................................... 31 2.4.4 Summary ................................................................................................................. 37 2.5 Speleothem growth rates .............................................................................................. 37 2.6 Speleothem geochemistry ............................................................................................. 38 2.6.1 Uranium-series dating ............................................................................................. 38 2.6.2 Assessing palaeoclimate and palaeoenvironment using stable isotope analyses of speleothems ..................................................................................................................... 42 2.6.3 The application of trace elements to speleothem studies ..................................... 57