Section 2

Pleistocene Environment Change and Human Evolution in Europe and South Asia

**13**

**Chapter 2**

**Abstract**

Neanderthals

**1. Introduction**

Central Europe

Pleistocene Climate Change in

Loess is terrestrial, clastic sediment formed by the accumulation of wind-blown

paleotemperature changes during the Upper Pleistocene (130 ky - 20 ky) in Baranja region. Average growing season (AGS) temperature varied 13.2 °C or 9.5 °C during that time period, depending on which formula is applied for calculations. Magnetic susceptibility (MS) measurements show strong peaks in the paleosol horizons pointing to more humid climate. The overall climate was much cooler then present. Stable carbon isotope values point to dominance of C3 vegetation type during the Late Pleistocene in southern part of Central Europe. Climate change in the Late Pleistocene is very likely a significant but not the only factor that influenced the extinction of Neanderthal population which paved the way for the dominance of

**Keywords:** Pleistocene, climate change, loess, stable isotopes, Central Europe,

silt-sized particles and formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. It covers up to 10% of the world's surface area and is usually inter-bedded with paleosol horizons forming loess-paleosol sequences, or LPS [1]. Such successions provide very detailed insight into Pleistocene climatic fluctuations [2–4]. Due to this characteristic, LPS's provide very good records of palaeoclimate and environmental changes in the Pannonian Basin for at least 1 Ma [5]. The region of Baranja situated in the north-eastern part of Croatia is located in the southern edge of Pannonian Basin which is a part of Central Europe (**Figure 1**). It was selected for this research because some of the thickest loess successions in Croatia are exposed along the Danube River in Baranja. The total thickness of these loess deposits (above and under the surface) probably exceeds 50 m [6]. The Zmajevac locality was selected because it is accessible, contains four paleosols in loess and has a total thickness of almost 20 m.

Definition of loess: It is s a terrestrial, clastic sediment, composed dominantly of

dust. It is usually inter–bedded with paleosol horizons, forming loess-paleosol successions (LPS). Due to their characteristics LPS's represent valuable records of climate changes during Pleistocene. The thickest LPS sections in Croatia are in the Baranja region. Stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotope analysis were made on loess malacofauna in order to quantify paleo-temperature changes and describe paleo-vegetation in this part of Central Europe. δ18O values show significant

*Adriano Banak, Oleg Mandic, Davor Pavelić,* 

anatomically modern humans (AMH) in Central Europe.

*Marijan Kovačić and Fabrizio Lirer*
