FOR 2358:  Mountain Exile Hypothesis: How humans benefited from and re-shaped African high altitude ecosystems during Quarternary climatic changes

• Subject Area: Geosciences ; Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine ; Biology ; Humanities
• Term: from 2016 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270995238

High altitude ecosystems are still widely perceived as natural and anthropogenic transformation is generally considered to be concentrated on lower elevations and late. However, recent studies challenge this view and for quaternary environmental science and prehistory, the question where humans retreated to during the driest intervals of the last 20 ka when lowlands may have become uninhabitable is still demanding. Based on previous own and third-party research and a total of four reconnaissances to the study area as part of the preparation of this research unit, we challenge the initially stated long-held belief. Given the higher humidity of the African mountains archipelago, the afro-alpine environments are a potential glacial refuge not only for plants and animals, but also for humans. Among others, this idea is backed up by the facts that - highland people of Ethiopia are genetically adapted to high altitude hypoxia which indicates their presence at least in parts of the higher areas over evolutionary time scales. - surface scatters of stone artefacts showing heavy abrasion have been found during the most recent reconnaissance trip between 3,700 and 4,100 m which for the first time likely indicates the presence of stone working people on the Sanetti Plateau. - the mosaic of isolated groves of Erica trimera across the plateau cannot be explained by climatic gradients but indicates a human induced and fire-based shaping of the afro-alpine heathlands. As a consequence, we postulate not a late but early afro-alpine occupation expressed as the “Mountain Exile Hypothesis”. Hence, the research unit will focus on reconstructing the natural and the anthropogenic history of this afro-alpine environment in space and time and the identification and quantification of the natural and anthropogenic drivers and processes that shaped the ecology evolution of the research area. To tackle the research questions arising from the Mountain Exile Hypothesis and to test the hypothesis itself, a multi-disciplinary and multi-proxy approach which combines established as well as newly developed and complementing methods has been designed which focuses on both the - human side of environmental change (P1 – Archeology and Archeozoology, P2 – Anthrosols and Intensity of Human Occupation) and the - natural side of environmental change (P5 – Paleoclimatology, P6 – Glacial Chronology and P7 – Ground Beetles as a Human-Independent Paleoproxy). The respective investigations are bridged by paleoecological investigations (P4 – Paleoecology) which focus on pollen, spores and macrofossil analyses and discriminate the human and natural signals. To complete the scientific inventory required to address the overall objectives, relevant baseline environmental and ecological information is provided (P3 – Environmental Baseline Assessment) and all datasets are combined as part of a central scientific analysis and synthesis platform, the BalePaleoGIS (C2 – Central Scientific Services).

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• International Connection: Switzerland, United Kingdom

Projects

• Anthrosols of the Bale Mountains: Archives for the reconstruction of the chronology and intensity of human occupation and possible interactions with fire history and the destruction of Erica stands at the Sanetti Plateau (Applicants Glaser, Bruno ;  Zech, Wolfgang )
• Archaeology: When did humans conquer high mountains? The making of a tropical alpine human environment (Applicant Vogelsang, Ralf )
• Central Scientific Services and Synthesis (Applicants Nauss, Thomas ;  Opgenoorth, Lars )
• Coordination Funds (Applicant Miehe, Georg )
• Ground Beetles as human-independent landscape proxy (Applicants Opgenoorth, Lars ;  Schmidt, Joachim )
• P3 Ecology, Paleoecology, and Evolutionary Ecology (Applicant Opgenoorth, Lars )
• P5 Paleoclimatology - Stable oxygen (18O/16O) and hydrogen (2H/1H) isotopic composition of plants, soils and rainfall along altitudinal transects, and in paleoclimate archives of the Bale Mountains (Applicant Zech, Michael )
• Palaeoecology: pollen analysis and ecological history of the Bale Mountains (Applicant Lamb, Ph.D., Henry Francis )
• Paleo Glacier Dynamics (Applicant Veit, Heinz )
• The endemic Giant Molerat as synanthropic landscape engineer: past and present population dynamics and their link to vegetation patterns and human land-use on the Bale Mountains (Applicants Farwig, Nina ;  Schabo, Dana )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Georg Miehe