Presentation
FOOD REsources, climate and large herbivores long term interactions within a Mediterranean ecosystem
- Coordination: V. Andrieu (CEREGE), coordination LSCE: J. Jacob
- Partners: CEREGE, LSCE, ISEM, Aarhus University
- Participants LSCE: J. Jacob
- Financing : 480 k€
- Project duration: 2022-2025
The objective of FOOD-RE is: 1) to reconstruct the environmental (ecosystem, geosystem), climatic and economic (potential food resources) conditions of the first hominins since their “out of Africa” and 2) to distinguish the environmental factors of the migratory dynamics of hominin and large herbivore populations during the last 3 Ma: climatic variability, herbivory, geodynamics (volcanism), fires and erosive processes. FOOD-RE is based on the exceptional discovery of proto-cereal pollen since 2.3 Ma, in the 600 m long lake series of Acigöl, (SW Turkey), which allows us to question the beginning of cereal cultivation in the Neolithic. The methodology is interdisciplinary (environmental, life and human sciences) and retrospective. It is based on multiproxy data acquisition and modelling. We will work on long and continuous natural archives, covering almost the entire Quaternary in the eastern and western Mediterranean, in particular the travertine of Marseille.