Hydroclimate changes in eastern Africa over the past 200,000 years may have influenced early human dispersal

Abstract Reconstructions of climatic and environmental conditions can contribute to current debates about the factors that influenced early human dispersal within beyond Africa. Here we analyse a 200,000-year multi-proxy paleoclimate record from Chew Bahir, tectonic lake basin in southern Ethiopian rift. Our reveals two modes climate change, both associated temporally regionally with specific type behavior. The first is long-term trend towards greater aridity between 200,000 60,000 years ago, modulated by precession-driven wet-dry cycles. Here, more favorable wetter may have facilitated long-range expansion into new territory, while less dry periods led spatial constriction isolation local populations. second mode change observed since ago mimics millennial centennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles Heinrich events. We hypothesize populations responded these shorter fluctuations montane lowland habitats.