Mapping Ancient Africa: Background and goals
Three strands of information were compiled and synthesised during the Mapping Ancient Africa project to provide new insights into past climate change in Africa and the possible relationship of this with hominid evolution, development and dispersal.
1. Palaeoclimate data
Terrestrial and marine palaeoclimate data from across the African continent was synthesized to enhance our understanding of past environmental change. This included using palaeovegetation (palynological) data from the African Pollen Database (Lézine et al., 2021) and convert it into palaeoclimate reconstructions using state-of-the-art Bayesian transfer functions (Chevalier et al., 2021).
2. Climate simulation models
Extracted information on past climate change across the African continent from an intermediate complexity climate simulation model. The outputs will be used to create continuous maps of past climate across the African continent. We will use the PASTCLIM R package to interface with various palaeoclimate datasets (Leonardi et al., 2023)
3. Archaeological data
Archaeological sites and information from across the African continent were investigated and linked to the palaeoclimate datasets.
Research outputs
A complete list of Mapping Ancient Africa research outputs can be found here.
Ecology of the past 