Holocene climatic trends and chronology

In the mid-latitudes and the tropics, the end of the last glacial period was marked by a tremendous increase in rainfall. The increased precipitation toward the end of the Pleistocene was marked by a vast proliferation of pluvial lakes in the Great Basin of western North America, notably Lake Bonneville and Lake Lahontan (enormous ancestors of present-day Great Salt Lake and Pyramid Lake). Two peaks of lake levels were reached at about 12,000 ± 500 bp (the beginning of the Allerød Warm stage) and approximately 9000 ± 500 bp (the early Boreal Warm stage). At Lake Balaton (in Hungary) high terrace levels also mark the Allerød and early Boreal Warm stages. Lake Victoria (in East Africa) exhibits the identical twin oscillation in its terrace levels.

In equatorial regions the same evidence of high solar radiation and high rainfall at the end of the Pleistocene and during the early Holocene is apparent in the record of the Nile sediments. The Nile, like the other great rivers of Africa (notably, the Congo, Niger, and Sénégal), became very reduced, if not totally blocked, by silt and desert sand during the low-precipitation, arid phases of the Pleistocene. An erroneous correlation between glacial phases and pluvial phases in the tropics has been widely accepted in the past, although cold ocean water means less precipitation, not more. The pluvial phases correspond to the high solar radiation states, the last maximum being about 10,000 years ago. Thus tremendous increases of Nile discharge are determined, by radiocarbon dating, to have occurred about 12,000 and 9,000 years ago, separated and followed by alluviation, indicating reduced runoff in the headwaters.

The expansion of monsoonal rains during the early Holocene in the tropical latitudes permitted an extensive spread of moist savanna-type vegetation over the Sahara in North Africa and the Kalahari in South Africa and in broad areas of Brazil, India, and Australia. Most of these areas had been dry savanna or arid during the last glacial period. Signs of late Paleolithic and Neolithic people can be seen throughout the Sahara today, and art is representative of the life and hunting scenes of the time. Lake deposits have been dated as young as 5000–6000 bp. Lake Chad covered a vast area in the very late Pleistocene and up to 5000 bp. The Dead Sea throughout the early Holocene shows a record of sedimentation from humid headwaters; there was a Neolithic settlement at Jericho about 9000–10,000 bp.

In the high to mid-latitudes after the early Holocene, with its remnants of ice-age conditions (tundra passing to birch forests), there was a transition to the mid-Holocene, marked by a progressive change to pine forest and then oak, beech, or mixed forest. The mean annual temperature reached 2.5° C above that of today. Neolithic humans pressed forward across Europe and Asia. In the Canadian Arctic and in Manitoba the mean temperature passed 4° C above present averages. It was a “milk-and-honey” period for early humans over much of the world, and in Europe it paved the way for the cultured races of the Bronze Age. Navigators started using the seaways to trade between the eastern Mediterranean, the British Isles, and the Baltic.

In the mid-latitude continental interiors there was still evidence of hot summers, but the winters were becoming colder and partly drier. There was an expansion of steppe or prairie conditions and their associated fauna and flora. Many lake levels showed a fall.

In Europe there was also the beginning of widespread deforestation as Bronze Age human communities started to use charcoal for smelting and extended agriculture to tilling and planting. As a consequence, soil erosion began almost immediately, hillsides developed lynchets (terracettes), and “anthropogenic sediments” began to accumulate on the lower floodplains.

At the corresponding latitudes in the Southern Hemisphere (approximately 30° to 35° S), pollen analysis indicates increasing desiccation during the Subboreal stage, with a maximum dryness about 3200 bp.

In the subtropical regions of Mesopotamia and the Nile valley, people had learned to harness water. The stationary settlements, advanced agriculture, and mild climates favoured a great flowering of human culture. It is surmised that, when the normal floods began to fail, human ingenuity rose to the occasion, as attested to by the development of irrigation canals and machinery.

The Sub-Atlantic stage (2200–0 bp) is the last major physical division of the geologic record. Historically its beginning coincides with the rise of the Roman Empire in Europe, the flowering of the classical dynasties of China, the Ptolemies in Egypt, the Olmec of central Mexico and Guatemala, and the pre-Incan Chavín cultures of Peru.

The record of solar activity is disclosed by documentation of auroras in ancient Chinese court records and later by sunspot numbers. Both phenomena reflect solar activity in general, but correlation with weather records in the higher latitudes is complicated. Other indicators of climate, such as tree-ring analysis and palynology, were previously mentioned, but many documentary indications are also useful: the time of the cherry blossom festival in Kyōto, Japan, the freezing of lakes, the incidence of floods, blizzards, or droughts, the economics of harvests, salt evaporation production, some disease statistics, and so on. The water levels of closed basins such as the Caspian Sea and particularly the evaporite basin of the Kara-Bogaz-Gol Gulf reflect runoff to the Volga. The Dead Sea bears witness to eastern Mediterranean precipitation.

The main trends of the Sub-Atlantic are identifiable as follows: