ArticleScientific reports2019
Widespread population decline in South America correlates with mid-Holocene climate change.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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29 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- How climate, Indigenous people, and fire shaped Brazil's Araucaria Forests through the Late Holocene.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Continuity and discontinuity in Native American populations: Insights from ancient and modern mitochondrial DNA.Genetics and molecular biology · 2026Article
- Quantifying past forest cover and biomass changes in the Ecuadorian Amazon.The New phytologist · 2025Article
- Human-environment interaction during the Holocene in Eastern South America: Rapid climate changes and population dynamics.PloS one · 2025Article
- Multicentennial cycles in continental demography synchronous with solar activity and climate stability.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The Evolution of Agrarian Landscapes in the Tropical Andes.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Earliest directly dated rock art from Patagonia reveals socioecological resilience to mid-Holocene climate.Science advances · 2024Article
- Towards understanding human-environment feedback loops: the Atacama Desert case.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The vulnerability of aging states: A survival analysis across premodern societies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Population genomics reveals how 5 ka of human occupancy led the Lima leaf-toed gecko (Phyllodactylus sentosus) to the brink of extinction.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- 1000 years of population, warfare, and climate change in pre-Columbian societies of the Central Andes.PloS one · 2023Article
- Article
- Legacies of Indigenous land use and cultural burning in the Bolivian Amazon rainforest ecotone.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Early to mid-Holocene human activity exerted gradual influences on Amazonian forest vegetation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Climate and demography drive 7000 years of dietary change in the Central Andes.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- p3k14c, a synthetic global database of archaeological radiocarbon dates.Scientific data · 2022Article
- A genomic perspective on South American human history.Genetics and molecular biology · 2022Article
- Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Approximate Bayesian Computation of radiocarbon and paleoenvironmental record shows population resilience on Rapa Nui (Easter Island).Nature communications · 2021Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Quantifying the impacts of climate change on prehistoric demography is crucial for understanding the adaptive pathways taken by human populations. Archaeologists across South America have pointed to patterns of regional abandonment during the Middle Holocene (8200 to 4200 cal BP) as evidence of sensitivity to shifts in hydroclimate over this period. We develop a unified approach to investigate demography and climate in South America and aim to clarify the extent to which evidence of local anthropic responses can be generalised to large-scale trends. We achieve this by integrating archaeological radiocarbon data and palaeoclimatic time series to show that population decline occurred coeval with the transition to the initial mid-Holocene across South America. Through the analysis of radiocarbon dates with Monte Carlo methods, we find multiple, sustained phases of downturn associated to periods of high climatic variability. A likely driver of the duration and severity of demographic turnover is the frequency of exceptional climatic events, rather than the absolute magnitude of change. Unpredictable levels of tropical precipitation had sustained negative impacts on pre-Columbian populations lasting until at least 6000 cal BP, after which recovery is evident. Our results support the inference that a demographic regime shift in the second half of the Middle Holocene were coeval with cultural practices surrounding Neotropical plant management and early cultivation, possibly acting as buffers when the wild resource base was in flux.
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