42 – Occupation of circumpolar environments

45,000 years ago

A frozen mammoth carcass discovered within the Siberian Arctic, bearing signs of weapon-inflicted injuries was dated to 45,000 years ago. Paleolithic records of humans in the Eurasian Arctic are scarce, stretching back to 30,000 to 35,000 years ago at most. The remains of a hunted wolf from a widely separate location of similar age indicate that humans may have spread widely across northern Siberia at least 10,000 years earlier than previously thought. Read about early migrations of Homo out of Africa

Image credit Shutterstock.

Epoch

    Pleistocene2.58 million to 11,700 years ago

Environmental and Climate Changes

  • Earth’s climate remains relatively stable with alternating glacial and interglacial periods
  • Glacial/interglacial cycles changed 100,000 to 41,000 years

Changing Species