Umweltbedingungen und Umweltwandel während der letzten Kaltzeit in Mitteleuropa

Under the conditions of the ultimate glacial, i.e. the Weichselian respectively Vistulian in the northern part of Central Europe and the Würmian of the Alpine area in the southern part the range of territory that was accessible and utilizable to man has been narrowly confined. The narrowing was on either side - by inland glaciation in the lowlands adjoining the Baltic Sea and by Alpine glaciers in the southern belt. On the other hand the glacial sea lowering has provided expansion of land, especially in the present North Sea, enabling a land connection to the British Islands.

Above all the environmental record within the interposing belt between the glaciated areas can be based on palaeontological observations. Suitable findings are available due to the preservation of skeletal remains evidencing fossil mammals and of mollusc shells in calcareous sediments. Frequently they occur as in the basin areas in the northern foreland of the Central European highlands. They permit, moreover, correlations to the manifold and differentiated evidences of regional loess stratigraphy.

The deposition of Central European loess covers took place under the conditions of glacial cold steppes, and the report circulates that actually no equivalent ecosystem can be found. However, detailed investigations prove a suitable actualistic model of the glacial environmental conditions in the non‑glaciated belt of Central Europe, deduced from present Central Asia. Such comparison may be enabled by the well‑known and intensively studied ecology of recent animals comparable with species recorded by Central European loess sequences.

The actualistic model of glacial environmental conditions in Central Europe may be connected with a chronological resolution by means of mollusc shells reflecting changing of faunal assemblages due to the variations of environment in the course of glacial periods as recorded by loess stratigraphy. There, alternating loess covers and buried soils record climatic oscillations analogous to those during the Holocene. However, a superordinated trend of increasing continentality as a rule has effected and increasing inclemency of mean climatic conditions in a comparison of consecutive stadial phases or interstadial ones. The most extreme continentality took place immediately before the transition from the ultimate glacial to the Holocene warming.