Human interactions with tropical environments over the last 14,000 years at Iho Eleru, Nigeria

The Ihò Eléérú (or Iho Eleru) rock shelter, located in Southwest Nigeria, is the only site from which Pleistocene-age hominin fossils have been recovered in western Africa. Excavations at Iho Eleru revealed regular human occupations ranging from the Later Stone Age (LSA) to the present day. Here, we present chronometric, archaeobotanical, and paleoenvironmental findings, which include the taxonomic, taphonomic, and isotopic analyses of what is the only Pleistocene faunal assemblage documented in western Africa. Our results indicate that the local landscape surrounding Iho Eleru, although situated within a regional open-canopy biome, was forested throughout the past human occupation of the site. At a regional scale, a shift from forest- to savanna-dominated ecotonal environment occurred during a mid-Holocene warm event 6,000 years ago, with a subsequent modern reforestation of the landscape. Locally, no environmental shift was observable, placing Iho Eleru in a persistent forested "island" during the period of occupation.

Human behaviour and climate-linked fluctuations in the rainforests of West-Central Africa

Africa, the cradle of human evolution, has one of the largest and most diverse rainforests in the world. The African rainforests contain evidence of human occupation as well as fluctuating climate during the Pleistocene; such evidence offers archaeologists and palaeoecologists the opportunity to understand how climatic fluctuations have influenced human behaviour. However, compared to the rainforests environments in Asia and South America, the human ecological history of those in West-Central Africa is poorly understood. This is because of comparatively fewer scientific programmes which synergize palaeoecological and archaeological data and thus could enhance the knowledge and allow for an evaluation of the impact of climatic fluctuations on human behaviour in the rainforests of West-Central Africa during the Pleistocene and Holocene periods. The goals of this paper are twofold, namely: (i) to provide a synthesis of the past climatic variability in the rainforests of West-Central Africa, and (ii) to demonstrate the influence of such variability on human behaviour during the Pleistocene to Holocene periods. It is hoped that this paper will stimulate Africanists to adopt an inclusive scientific anthropological and palaeoecological approach in understanding human-climate interactions in the West-Central African rainforests. This article is part of the theme issue 'Tropical forests in the deep human past'.