UC San Diego

The African Humid Period (AHP) was a period of unusually warm and wet climatic conditions from 6-11 kilo-annum (ka; 1000 years before present), that affected North Africa and the Mediterranean. The termination of the AHP was rather abrupt, lasting from 500-800 years and led to the modern Mediterranean climate. This transition was not linear and included fluctuations between extreme dry and wet conditions. These variations in climatic conditions are reflected in vegetation communities and water availability within the region. Here I report a multi-proxy analysis of sediment core Tel Mevorakh-5 (TM5) from just north of Tel Mevorakh, NW Israel to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental conditions of the late Holocene at ~ decadal resolution between 5.5-4.5 ka. My study builds on previous work in the area within the Kebara Marsh and Tel Dor. I identified seven distinct facies in TM5 that reflect changes of wetness of the climatic conditions during the mid Holocene. Core TM5 records an overall drying pattern associated with the termination of the AHP beginning with the appearance of brackish water facies at 5.4 ka and the first seasonally arid terrestrial soils at 4.75 ka. Aridity in the core begins to increase ~5.0 ka with seasonally dry conditions. During the late Holocene, the first settled societies began to develop in the Levant reaching a peak in radiocarbon dates and inferred settlement density during the drying phase from the AHP, potentially caused by seasonal climates advantageous to agriculture.