ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Early anthropogenic impact on Western Central African rainforests 2,600 y ago.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 126 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Congo Basin Carbon Cycle Responses to Global Change.Global change biology · 2026Review
- Orbital modulation of subtropical versus subantarctic moisture sources in the southeast Pacific mid-latitudes.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Deep history of cultural and linguistic evolution among Central African hunter-gatherers.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Article
- Whole genomes from Angola and Mozambique inform about the origins and dispersals of major African migrations.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Phylogeographic analysis of the Bantu language expansion supports a rainforest route.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Population interconnectivity over the past 120,000 years explains distribution and diversity of Central African hunter-gatherers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Human behaviour and climate-linked fluctuations in the rainforests of West-Central Africa.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Changes of lake organic carbon sinks from closed basins since the Last Glacial Maximum and quantitative evaluation of human impacts.Carbon balance and management · 2021Article
- Recent genetic connectivity and clinal variation in chimpanzees.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Population collapse in Congo rainforest from 400 CE urges reassessment of the Bantu Expansion.Science advances · 2021Article
- Isotopic and microbotanical insights into Iron Age agricultural reliance in the Central African rainforest.Communications biology · 2020Article
- Article
- Vegetation state changes in the course of shrub encroachment in an African savanna since about 1850 CE and their potential drivers.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Palaeo-trajectories of forest savannization in the southern Congo.Biology letters · 2019Article
- ZooArchNet: Connecting zooarchaeological specimens to the biodiversity and archaeology data networks.PloS one · 2019Article
- Reply to Giresse et al.: No evidence for climate variability during the late Holocene rainforest crisis in Western Central Africa.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Paleoclimatic changes are the most probable causes of the rainforest crises 2,600 y ago in Central Africa.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
- Did human activity really trigger the late Holocene rainforest crisis in Central Africa?Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors at 10 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A potential human footprint on Western Central African rainforests before the Common Era has become the focus of an ongoing controversy. Between 3,000 y ago and 2,000 y ago, regional pollen sequences indicate a replacement of mature rainforests by a forest-savannah mosaic including pioneer trees. Although some studies suggested an anthropogenic influence on this forest fragmentation, current interpretations based on pollen data attribute the ''rainforest crisis'' to climate change toward a drier, more seasonal climate. A rigorous test of this hypothesis, however, requires climate proxies independent of vegetation changes. Here we resolve this controversy through a continuous 10,500-y record of both vegetation and hydrological changes from Lake Barombi in Southwest Cameroon based on changes in carbon and hydrogen isotope compositions of plant waxes. [Formula: see text]
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