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Eastern Africa has been a prime target for scientific drilling because it is rich in key paleoanthropological sites as well as in paleolakes, containing valuable paleoclimatic information on evolutionary time scales. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) explores these paleolakes with the aim of reconstructing environmental conditions around critical episodes of hominin evolution. Identification of biological taxa based on their sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) traces can contribute to understand past ecological and climatological conditions of the living environment of our ancestors. However, sedaDNA recovery from tropical environments is challenging because high temperatures, UV irradiation, and desiccation result in highly degraded DNA. Consequently, most of the DNA fragments in tropical sediments are too short for PCR amplification. We analyzed sedaDNA in the upper 70 m of the composite sediment core of the HSPDP drill site at Chew Bahir for eukaryotic remnants. We first tested shotgun high throughput sequencing which leads to metagenomes dominated by bacterial DNA of the deep biosphere, while only a small fraction was derived from eukaryotic, and thus probably ancient, DNA. Subsequently, we performed cross-species hybridization capture of sedaDNA to enrich ancient DNA (aDNA) from eukaryotic remnants for paleoenvironmental analysis, using established barcoding genes (cox1 and rbcL for animals and plants, respectively) from 199 species that may have had relatives in the past biosphere at Chew Bahir. Metagenomes yielded after hybridization capture are richer in reads with similarity to cox1 and rbcL in comparison to metagenomes without prior hybridization capture. Taxonomic assignments of the reads from these hybridization capture metagenomes also yielded larger fractions of the eukaryotic domain. For reads assigned to cox1, inferred wet periods were associated with high inferred relative abundances of putative limnic organisms (gastropods, green algae), while inferred dry periods showed increased relative abundances for insects. These findings indicate that cross-species hybridization capture can be an effective approach to enhance the information content of sedaDNA in order to explore biosphere changes associated with past environmental conditions, enabling such analyses even under tropical conditions., Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe; 1244

The Ethiopian rift is known for its diverse landscape, ranging from arid and semi-arid savannahs to high and humid mountainous regions. Lacustrine sediments and paleo-shorelines indicate water availability fluctuated dramatically from deep fresh water lakes, to shallow highly alkaline lakes, to completely desiccated lakes. To investigate the role lakes have played through time as readily available water sources to humans, an enhanced knowledge of the pace, character and magnitude of these changes is essential. Hydro-balance models are used to calculate paleo-precipitation rates and the potential pace of lake level changes. However, previous models did not consider changes in hydrological connectivity during humid periods in the rift system, which may have led to an overestimation of paleo-precipitation rates. Here we present a comprehensive hydro-balance modeling approach that simulates multiple rift lakes from the southern Ethiopian Rift (lakes Abaya, Chamo, and paleo-lake Chew Bahir) simultaneously, considering their temporal hydrological connectivity during high stands of the African Humid Period (AHP, ~15–5 ka). We further used the Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land (SEBAL) to calculate the evaporation of paleo-lake Chew Bahir's catchment. We also considered the possibility of an additional rainy season during the AHP as previously suggested by numerous studies. The results suggest that an increase in precipitation of 20–30% throughout the southern Ethiopian Rift is necessary to fill paleo-lake Chew Bahir to its overflow level. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that paleo-lake Chew Bahir was highly dependent on the water supply from the upper lakes Abaya and Chamo and dries out within ~40 years if the hydrological connection is cut off and the precipitation amount decreases to present day conditions. Several of such rapid lake level fluctuations, from a freshwater to a saline lake, might have occurred during the termination of the AHP, when humid conditions were less stable. Fast changes in fresh water availability requires high adaptability for humans living in the area and might have exerted severe environmental stress on humans in a sub-generational timescale.

This paper reports on the application of advanced hyperspectral analysis to support the nondestructive study of samples from long sediment cores (up to 280 m coring depth) collected under the Hominin Sites and Paleolake Drilling Program (HSPDP) in the Chew Bahir region of southern Ethiopia. For this purpose, the bidirectional reflectance of 35 core samples from different core depths in the wavelength range from 0.25 to 17 µm was measured. It can be directly compared with spectral remote sensing data of the corresponding land surface areas. We examined the relationship between the derived mineralogical and geochemical properties of the core samples to test for linkage to the hydroclimate history of the region. Using XRD and µXRD methods, it has been shown that an illitization of the smectites and an octahedral Al-to-Mg substitution occurs in the phyllosilicate materials present during phases that have been associated with increased salinity and alkalinity due to enhanced evaporation (Foerster et al., 2018). These processes are found to be accompanied by potassium fixation and they are associated with the increase of the layer charge due to the authigenic changes of the octahedral composition. Reflection spectroscopy is a suitable method for studying such mineralogical properties. We investigated the spectral properties over a wide spectral range from UV to MIR. This enables detection of absorption bands of crystal field transitions of transition metal ions in the UV/VIS range and to detect the characteristic bands of OH, H2O, M-OH lattice vibrations in the NIR. It also allows the study of the fundamental vibration bands as well as other typical MIR features like the Christiansen band or transparency features of silicates and thus helps to reconstruct weathering paths. The results show that the main mineralogical components are clays of the smectite group. The samples are rich in montmorillonite and show variable concentrations of calcite. The clays are composed of tetrahedral coordinated, corner-connected SiO4 for which Si is partially substituted by Al and of edge-linked Al (OH)6 octahedrons in which part of the Al is substituted by Mg and which are layered by OH and H2O groups. Thus all reflectance spectra show the characteristic absorption bands at 1.4 µm (OH), 1.9 µm (H2O), 2.2 µm (Al-OH), and 2.3 µm (Mg-OH). Their band depth ratios derived from continuum removed spectra have been used to characterize the clay structure within different climate periods. The results support the model of illitization and potassium fixation during dry climate intervals. In addition, the spectral indicators determined in the MIR can be used to specify the mineralogical properties of silicates and other materials in terms of their geochemical composition. In summary, the method is suitable for examining the main mineralogical components of Chew Bahir core samples and enables confirmation of climate driven wet and dry weathering processes in the formation of phyllosilicates.

The role that climate and environmental history may have played in influencing human evolution has been the focus of considerable interest and controversy among paleoanthropologists for decades. Prior attempts to understand the environmental history side of this equation have centered around the study of outcrop sediments and fossils adjacent to where fossil hominins (ancestors or close relatives of modern humans) are found, or from the study of deep sea drill cores. However, outcrop sediments are often highly weathered and thus are unsuitable for some types of paleoclimatic records, and deep sea core records come from long distances away from the actual fossil and stone tool remains. The Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP) was developed to address these issues. The project has focused its efforts on the eastern African Rift Valley, where much of the evidence for early hominins has been recovered. We have collected about 2 km of sediment drill core from six basins in Kenya and Ethiopia, in lake deposits immediately adjacent to important fossil hominin and archaeological sites. Collectively these cores cover in time many of the key transitions and critical intervals in human evolutionary history over the last 4 Ma, such as the earliest stone tools, the origin of our own genus Homo, and the earliest anatomically modern Homo sapiens. Here we document the initial field, physical property, and core description results of the 2012-2014 HSPDP coring campaign.

Reconstructions of climatic and environmental conditions can contribute to current debates about the factors that influenced early human dispersal within and beyond Africa. Here we analyse a 200,000-year multi-proxy paleoclimate record from Chew Bahir, a tectonic lake basin in the southern Ethiopian rift. Our record reveals two modes of climate change, both associated temporally and regionally with a specific type of human behavior. The first is a long-term trend towards greater aridity between 200,000 and 60,000 years ago, modulated by precession-driven wet-dry cycles. Here, more favorable wetter environmental conditions may have facilitated long-range human expansion into new territory, while less favorable dry periods may have led to spatial constriction and isolation of local human populations. The second mode of climate change observed since 60,000 years ago mimics millennial to centennial-scale Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles and Heinrich events. We hypothesize that human populations may have responded to these shorter climate fluctuations with local dispersal between montane and lowland habitats.