Spätpleistozäne und frühholozäne Hominidenmorphologie und Klima

It has been known since Herodot (484–425 B.C.) that the differentiation of human populations depends to a high degree on climatic factors. Furthermore it is well understood that, as a result of the interrelationships between heat loss, body volume and surface area, cold environments favour large-bodied individuals with reduced limb proportions. Several authors have pointed out that the Neandertals show very short distal limb segments relative to body size. The relative shortness of the forearm and the lower leg and the limbs in general may have been an adaptation to the cold climate that many Neandertals faced (Allen’s Rule). Cranial features on the other hand, e.g. the relatively high cranial capacity and the size and shape of the nasal skeleton, are not commonly regarded as cold adaptation. This is also true for modern populations.

Due to the unsolved controversies concerning a recent African origin of anatomically modern man or a gradualistic multi‑regional evolution, a comparison of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene populations of anatomically modern man from Europe (Upper Paleolithics, Early and Late Mesolithics) and Northern Africa (Iberomaurusians, Columnatians, Capsians) has been done by uni‑ and multivariate statistics, based on a sample of n = 546 skulls (and a smaller sample of postcrania).

It has been tested, whether the observable uni‑ and bivariate differences and the main discriminators in the discriminant function analyses for diachronical and regional comparisons are in agreement with those patterns that have been described in the literature as related to specific environmental factors. The Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene Europeans differ markedly in their cranial features from the NW‑African sample, but their special pattern cannot concisely be explained in terms of climatic adaptations. There are good arguments to submit the conclusion, that the so‑called ‘cromagnoid’ populations of NW‑Africa are autochthone. It seems plausible that the ‘Mechtoids’ developed their unique morphological pattern in isolation from European populations, but the role of their climatic adaptations in their morphology remains still unclear and ‘troublesome’, except the nasal index whose overall distribution is explicable in terms of (plausible) climatic adaptations.

The findings demonstrate that the differences in the cranial features seem to be the result of a regionalization process in which climatic adaptations may have played a minor part besides socioecological influences (e.g. technological innovations, subsistence strategies).