A continuous climatic impact on Holocene human population in the Rocky Mountains

作者：Kelly Robert L^*; Surovell Todd A; Shuman Bryan N; Smith Geoffrey M

来源：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013, 110(2): 443-447.

DOI：10.1073/pnas.1201341110

• climate change
• demography
• hunter-gatherers
• paleoecology

Ancient cultural changes have often been linked to abrupt climatic events, but the potential that climate can exert a persistent influence on human populations has been debated. Here, independent population, temperature, and moisture history reconstructions from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming (United States) show a clear quantitative relationship spanning 13 ka, which explains five major periods of population growth/decline and similar to 45% of the population variance. A persistent similar to 300-y lag in the human demographic response conforms with either slow (similar to 0.3%) intrinsic annual population growth rates or a lag in the environmental carrying capacity, but in either case, the population continuously adjusted to changing environmental conditions.

• 出版日期2013-1-8