The Lower Paleolithic of Zarqa Valley, Jordan, in the framework of the Pleistocene environmental and climatic changes

• Grant number: 23/05601-4
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: August 01, 2023
• End date: September 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Archeology - Prehistoric Archaeology
• Principal Investigator: Giancarlo Scardia
• Grantee: Giancarlo Scardia
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências e Ciências Exatas (IGCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Rio Claro. Rio Claro , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Alessandro Batezelli ; Daniel Paul Miggins ; Fabio Parenti ; Faure Martine ; Francisco Sergio Bernardes Ladeira ; Frank José Affonso ; Maysoon Abdul Ghany Mousa Alnahar ; Naomi Porat ; Nicholas Michael William Roberts ; Prud'homme Charlotte ; Sevket Sen ; Walter Alves Neves

Abstract

The period from 2.5 to 1 million years ago (Ma) is critical, as it corresponds to a major shift in hominin evolution in East Africa, when Australopithecus was replaced by the taxa Paranthropus and Homo and when, since the beginning of the Pleistocene, the Earth's average surface temperature has become colder and the global climate more unstable, resulting in more open ecosystems and the first glaciations at mid-latitudes.In the context of these changes, there was the first exit of hominins from Africa, which spread throughout Asia, reaching China. The Middle East must have played a crucial role in this expansion from Africa to East Asia as it was the only migration corridor available during the Early and Middle Pleistocene. If we consider the current semi-arid climate, it is evident that the Middle East could have constituted a biogeographical obstacle for any adaptation of this early hominins, but Pleistocene was a period of great climatic changes and the environmental conditions of the past could have been different from the current ones. As a matter of fact, this is an unknown aspect in the Middle East due to lack of scientific studies and sedimentary record.The objective of this research proposal is 1) to improve the knowledge about the paleoenvironmental evolution of the Zarqa Valley during the Pleistocene in relation to the Early Paleolithic sites, 2) to understand the factors that provided the expansion of hominins to the Zarqa Valley with a multidisciplinary approach, which includes archeology, sedimentology, pedology, geochemistry and geochronology, 3) to continue Brazilian research in the Middle East, which has already proved to be fertile and fruitful. (AU)