气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): The foraging potential of the Holocene Cape south coast of South Africa without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain

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DOI	10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.06.012
	The foraging potential of the Holocene Cape south coast of South Africa without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain
	Wren C.D.; Botha S.; De Vynck J.; Janssen M.A.; Hill K.; Shook E.; Harris J.A.; Wood B.M.; Venter J.; Cowling R.; Franklin J.; Fisher E.C.; Marean C.W.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	0277-3791
卷号	235
英文摘要	The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain formed an important habitat exploited by Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations during periods of lower sea level. This productive, grassy habitat would have supported numerous large-bodied ungulates accessible to a population of skilled hunters with the right hunting technology. It also provided a potentially rich location for plant food collection, and along its shores a coastline that moved with the rise and fall of sea levels. The rich archaeological and paleontological records of Pleistocene sites along the modern Cape south coast of South Africa, which would have overlooked the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain during Pleistocene times of lower sea level, provides a paleoarchive of this extinct ecosystem. In this paper, we present a first order illustration of the “palaeoscape modeling” approach advocated by Marean et al. (2015). We use a resourcescape model created from modern studies of habitat productivity without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. This is equivalent to predominant Holocene conditions before recent landscape modifications for farming. We then run an agent-based model of the human foraging system to investigate several research questions. Our agent-based approach uses the theoretical framework of optimal foraging theory to model human foraging decisions designed to optimize the net caloric gains within a complex landscape of spatially and temporally variable resources. We find that during the high sea-levels of MIS 5e (+5–6 m asl) and the Holocene, the absence of the Plain left a relatively poor food base supporting a much smaller population relying heavily on edible plant resources from the current Cape flora. Despite high species diversity of plants with edible storage organs, and marine invertebrates, encounter rates with highly profitable resources were low. We demonstrate that without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain, human populations must have been small and low-density, and exploited plant, mammal, and marine resources with relatively low caloric returns. The exposure and contraction of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain was likely the single biggest driver of behavioural change during periods of climate change through the Pleistocene and into the transition to the Holocene. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd
英文关键词	Agent-based modeling; Data analysis; Data treatment; Holocene; Paleogeography; Southern Africa
语种	英语
scopus关键词	Autonomous agents; Climate change; Computational methods; Data reduction; Digital storage; Ecosystems; Mammals; Marine biology; Sea level; Simulation platform; Agent-based model; Data treatment; Holocenes; Paleogeography; Southern Africa; Plants (botany); climate change; Holocene; hunter-gatherer; hunting; invertebrate; landscape; paleontology; Pleistocene; sea level change; species diversity; Agulhas Plain; South Africa; Western Cape; Invertebrata; Mammalia; Ungulata
来源期刊	Quaternary Science Reviews
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/151517
作者单位	Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Colorado Springs, 134 Centennial Hall, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway80918, United States; African Centre for Coastal Palaeoscience, Nelson Mandela University, PO Box 77000, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape 6031, South Africa; School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, PO Box 875502, Tempe, AZ 85287-5502, United States; Institute of Human Origins, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University, PO Box 872402, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402, United States; Department of Geography, Environment & Society, 414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States; Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, 375 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States; Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California – Riverside, 900 University Ave, Riverside, CA 92521, United States; School of Natural Resource Management, Nelson Mandela University, George Campus, Madiba Drive, Geo...
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Wren C.D.,Botha S.,De Vynck J.,et al. The foraging potential of the Holocene Cape south coast of South Africa without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain[J],2020,235.
APA	Wren C.D..,Botha S..,De Vynck J..,Janssen M.A..,Hill K..,...&Marean C.W..(2020).The foraging potential of the Holocene Cape south coast of South Africa without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain.Quaternary Science Reviews,235.
MLA	Wren C.D.,et al."The foraging potential of the Holocene Cape south coast of South Africa without the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain".Quaternary Science Reviews 235(2020).