Investigating Pleistocene population dynamics in the Southern Caucasus

ongoing

Over the past 25 years, knowledge of the origins, evolution and diversity of our species has increased dramatically. Yet, the behavioural mechanisms enabling their global expansion and ability to cope with ever-increasing ecological diversity are still not fully explored. Armenia, a little studied biodiversity hotspot of Eurasia, is an ideal natural laboratory for testing models of climatic impact on hominin settlement patterns and population dynamics due to its location at the crossroads of the Pleistocene hominin world. TransCause aims to expand the framework of population dynamics by building an intra-regional comparative database of Paleolithic occupations incorporating biological evolution of macro-and micro mammals using ancient DNA, as well as establishing refined environmental frameworks. The TransCause project focuses on two main research questions, what are the impacts of long-term climatic and environmental changes on hominin behavioural repertoire and population dynamics? And what are the adaptations of Pleistocene hominins to changing seasonal resource availability in the landscapes of Armenia? Past hunter-gatherer’s social networks would be studied as a possible solution for populations coping with such terrains. The results of the project will test the presence or absence of population resilience over time; moreover, it will evaluate hypotheses on hominin behavioural responses to variation in resource availability using multi-scalar models; ultimately, those results will examine and compare the population dynamics of humans, large mammals and small mammals against the backdrop of paleoenvironmental oscillations. Examining the ecological tipping point of survival in both hominids and mammals will change the way in which we grasp hominin population dynamics. This project will be of pivotal importance for understanding the economic, demographic and social mechanisms behind the behavioural elasticity which enabled our species to expand globally.