Climate and environmental conditions in the Guadix-Baza Depression during the first hominin dispersal in Western Europe: Comment on Saarinen et al. (2021)

Abstract

Two late Early Pleistocene archaeological sites of the Guadix-Baza Depression (GBD) in SE Spain, Barranco León (BL) and Fuente Nueva 3 (FN3), dated to ∼1.4 Ma (Palmqvist et al., 2016), document the earliest evidence on hominin dispersal in Western Europe. Venta Micena (VM), an older palaeontological site (1.6–1.5 Ma), records the community of large mammals that preceded this dispersal event (Palmqvist et al., 2022a). Based on dental ecometrics and patterns of tooth mesowear of herbivorous mammals, Saarinen et al. (2021) have provided estimates of mean annual temperature (MAT), minimum annual temperature (MINT), mean annual precipitation (MAP) and net primary production (NPP) for these sites. Their estimates for BL/FN3 differ from other studies of their team, derived from the herpetofaunal assemblages of the sites (e.g., Agustí et al., 2009; Blain et al., 2011, 2016; Martínez-Monzón et al., 2022). Moreover, their MAP and NPP values for VM disagree with the inferences from other analyses, which they do not cite (e.g., García-Aguilar et al., 2014, 2015; Rodríguez-Gómez et al., 2016, 2017).