Tarantian Stage
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The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial
age Age or AGE may refer to: Time and its effects * Age, the amount of time someone or something has been alive or has existed ** East Asian age reckoning, an Asian system of marking age starting at 1 * Ageing or aging, the process of becoming older ...
in the international
geologic timescale The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochronol ...
in chronostratigraphy, also known as Upper Pleistocene from a stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing
Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...
Period. It is currently defined as the time between c. 129,000 and c. 11,700 years ago. The Late Pleistocene equates to the proposed Tarantian Age of the
geologic time scale The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochrono ...
, preceded by the officially ratified Chibanian (formerly known as Middle Pleistocene) and succeeded by the officially ratified Greenlandian. The estimated beginning of the Tarantian is the start of the
Eemian The Eemian (also called the last interglacial, Sangamonian, Sangamonian Stage, Ipswichian, Mikulin, Kaydaky, penultimate,NOAA - Penultimate Interglacial Period http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/penultimate-interglacial-period Valdivia or Ri ...
interglacial period ( Marine Isotope Stage 5). It is held to end with the termination of the Younger Dryas, some 11,700 years ago when the Holocene Epoch began. The term Upper Pleistocene is currently in use as a provisional or "quasi-formal" designation by the
International Union of Geological Sciences The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) is an international non-governmental organization devoted to international cooperation in the field of geology. About The IUGS was founded in 1961 and is a Scientific Union member of the Inte ...
(IUGS). Although the three oldest ages of the Pleistocene (the Gelasian, the Calabrian and the Chibanian) have been officially defined, the Late Pleistocene has yet to be formally defined, along with consideration of a proposed Anthropocene sub-division of the Holocene. The main feature of the Late Pleistocene was glaciation, for example the Würm glaciation in the Alps of Europe, to 14 ka, and the subsequent Younger Dryas. Many
megafauna In terrestrial zoology, the megafauna (from Greek μέγας ''megas'' "large" and New Latin ''fauna'' "animal life") comprises the large or giant animals of an area, habitat, or geological period, extinct and/or extant. The most common threshold ...
became
extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
during this age, a trend that continued into the Holocene. In palaeoanthropology, the Late Pleistocene contains the Upper Palaeolithic stage of human development, including many of the early human migrations and the extinction of the last remaining archaic human species.


Last Ice Age

The proposed beginning of the Late Pleistocene is the end of the
Penultimate Glacial Period The Penultimate Glacial Period (PGP) is the glacial age that occurred before the Last Glacial Period. The penultimate glacial period is officially unnamed just like the Last Glacial Period. The word ''penultimate'' simply means second to last. ...
(PGP) 126 ka when the
Riß glaciation The Riss glaciation, Riss Glaciation, Riss ice age, Riss Ice Age, Riss glacial or Riss Glacial (german: Riß-Kaltzeit, ', ' or (obsolete) ') is the second youngest glaciation of the Pleistocene epoch in the traditional, quadripartite glacial classi ...
(Alpine) was being succeeded by the
Eemian The Eemian (also called the last interglacial, Sangamonian, Sangamonian Stage, Ipswichian, Mikulin, Kaydaky, penultimate,NOAA - Penultimate Interglacial Period http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/penultimate-interglacial-period Valdivia or Ri ...
(Riß-Würm) interglacial period. The Riß-Würm ended 115 ka with the onset of the Last Glacial Period (LGP) which is known in Europe as the Würm (Alpine) or Devensian (Great Britain) or Weichselian glaciation (northern Europe); these are broadly equated with the Wisconsin glaciation (North America), though technically that began much later. The
Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...
was reached during the later millennia of the Würm/Weichselian, estimated between 26 ka and 19 ka when deglaciation began in the Northern Hemisphere. The Würm/Weichselian endured until 16 ka with Northern Europe, including most of Great Britain, covered by an ice sheet. The glaciers reached the Great Lakes in North America. Sea levels fell and two land bridges were temporarily in existence that had significance for human migration: Doggerland, which connected Great Britain to mainland Europe; and the Bering land bridge which joined Alaska to Siberia. The Last Ice Age was followed by the Late Glacial Interstadial, a period of global warming to 12.9 ka, and the Younger Dryas, a return to glacial conditions until 11.7 ka. Palaeoclimatology holds that there was a sequence of stadials and interstadials from about 16 ka until the end of the Pleistocene. These were the
Oldest Dryas The Oldest Dryas is a biostratigraphic subdivision layer corresponding to a relatively abrupt climatic cooling event, or stadial, which occurred during the last glacial retreat. The time period to which the layer corresponds is poorly defined an ...
(stadial), the Bølling oscillation (interstadial), the Older Dryas (stadial), the Allerød oscillation (interstadial) and finally the Younger Dryas. The end of the Younger Dryas marks the boundary between the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs. Man in all parts of the world was still culturally and technologically in the Palaeolithic (Old Stone) Age. Tools and weapons were basic stone or wooden implements.
Nomadic tribes A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...
followed moving herds. Non-nomadics acquired their food by gathering and hunting.


Africa

In Egypt, the Late (or Upper) Palaeolithic began sometime after 30,000 BC. People in North Africa had relocated to the
Nile Valley The Nile, , Bohairic , lg, Kiira , Nobiin: Áman Dawū is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa and has historically been considered the longest rive ...
as the
Sahara , photo = Sahara real color.jpg , photo_caption = The Sahara taken by Apollo 17 astronauts, 1972 , map = , map_image = , location = , country = , country1 = , ...
was transformed from grassland to desert. The
Nazlet Khater Nazlet Khater is an archeological site located in Upper Egypt that has yielded evidence of early human culture and anatomically modern specimens dating to approximately thirty to fifty thousand years ago. Excavations at the Nazlet Khater 2 site ( ...
skeleton was found in 1980 and has been radiocarbon dated to between 30,360 and 35,100 years ago.


Eurasia

Neanderthal hominins (''Homo neanderthalensis'') inhabited Eurasia until becoming extinct between 40 and 30 ka. Towards the end of the Pleistocene and possibly into the early Holocene, several large mammalian species including the woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, mastodon and Irish elk became extinct.
Cave painting In archaeology, Cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric origin, and the oldest known are more than 40,000 ye ...
s have been found at Lascaux in the Dordogne which may be more than 17,000 years old. These are mainly of buffalo, deer and other animals hunted by man. Later paintings occur in caves throughout the world with further examples at Altamira (Spain) and in India, Australia and the Sahara.
Magdalenian The Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; French: ''Magdalénien'') are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years ago. It is named after the type site of La Madele ...
hunter-gatherers were widespread in western Europe about 18,000 years ago until the end of the Pleistocene. They invented the earliest known harpoons using reindeer horn. The only domesticated animal in the Pleistocene was the dog, which evolved from the grey wolf into its many modern breeds. It is believed that the grey wolf became associated with hunter-gatherer tribes around 15 ka. The earliest remains of a true domestic dog have been dated to 14,200 years ago. Domestication first happened in Eurasia but could have been anywhere from Western Europe to East Asia. Domestication of other animals such as cattle, goats, pigs and sheep did not begin until the Holocene when settled farming communities became established in the Near East. The cat was probably not domesticated before c. 7500 BC at the earliest, again in the
Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...
. A butchered brown bear patella found in
Alice and Gwendoline Cave The Alice and Gwendoline Cave is a limestone cave in County Clare, Ireland. It is known as the site of brown bear bones bearing the mark of butchery, which have pushed back the first known human habitation of Ireland by over two thousand years. ...
in County Clare and dated to 10,860 to 10,641 BC indicates the first known human activity in Ireland.


Far East

The very first human habitation in the Japanese archipelago has been traced to
prehistoric times Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...
between 40,000 BC and 30,000 BC. The earliest fossils are radiocarbon dated to c. 35,000 BC. Japan was once linked to the Asian mainland by land bridges via Hokkaido and Sakhalin Island to the north, but was unconnected at this time when the main islands of Hokkaido, Honshu,
Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...
and Shikoku were all separate entities.


North America

From about 28 ka, there were migrations across the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. The people became the Native Americans. It is believed that the original tribes subsequently moved down to Central and South America under pressure from later migrations. In the North American land mammal age scale, the Rancholabrean spans the time from c. 240,000 years ago to c. 11,000 years ago. It is named after the Rancho La Brea fossil site in California, characterised by extinct forms of
bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North Ame ...
in association with other Pleistocene species such as the mammoth. '' Bison occidentalis'' and '' Bison antiquus'', an extinct subspecies of the smaller present-day bison, survived the Late Pleistocene period, between about 12 and 11 ka ago.
Clovis Clovis may refer to: People * Clovis (given name), the early medieval (Frankish) form of the name Louis ** Clovis I (c. 466 – 511), the first king of the Franks to unite all the Frankish tribes under one ruler ** Clovis II (c. 634 – c. 657), ...
peoples depended on these bison as their major food source. Earlier kills of camels, horses, and muskoxen found at
Wally's beach St. Mary Reservoir is a reservoir in southwestern Alberta, Canada. It was created for irrigation purposes by the damming of the St. Mary River, which was completed in 1951. The Kainai Nation's Blood 148 Indian reserve borders its northwest side. ...
were dated to 13.1–13.3 ka B.P.


South America

The South American land mammal age Lujanian corresponds with the Late Pleistocene.


Oceania

There is evidence of human habitation in mainland
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, Indonesia, New Guinea and Tasmania from c. 45,000 BC. The finds include rock engravings, stone tools and evidence of cave habitation.


References


Bibliography

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Further reading

* Ehlers, J., and P.L. Gibbard, 2004a, ''Quaternary Glaciations: Extent and Chronology 2: Part II North America.'' Elsevier, Amsterdam. * Ehlers, J., and P L. Gibbard, 2004b, ''Quaternary Glaciations: Extent and Chronology 3: Part III: South America, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica. '' * Frison, George C., ''Prehistoric Human and Bison Relationships on the Plains of North America'', August 2000, International Bison Conference, Edmonton, Alberta. * Gillespie, A. R., S. C. Porter, and B. F. Atwater, 2004, ''The Quaternary Period in the United States. '' Developments in Quaternary Science no. 1. Elsevier, Amsterdam. * Mangerud, J., J. Ehlers, and P. Gibbard, 2004, ''Quaternary Glaciations : Extent and Chronology 1: Part I Europe.'' Elsevier, Amsterdam. * Sibrava, V., Bowen, D. Q., and Richmond, G. M., 1986, ''Quaternary Glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere, Quaternary Science Reviews.'' vol. 5, pp. 1–514. {{Geological history, p, c *03 Pleistocene geochronology Quaternary geochronology Geological ages