New study on human responses to climate change at the end of the last Ice Age

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Posted on Friday 4 April 2025

A new study sheds light on how prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations in Europe coped with climate changes over 12,000 years ago.

Chronological framework of this study. The time-bins defined in the upper part of the graph indicate the different typo-chronological resolutions of the assemblages that were taken into account in this study.

Dr Annabell Zander, British Academy Fellow in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, and a team of 25 prehistoric archaeologists from twenty European universities and research institutions revealed significant shifts in population size and density during key periods at the end of the last Ice Age, specifically during the Final Palaeolithic between 14,000 and 11,600 years ago. The study has been published in PLOS One under the title ‘Large scale and regional demographic responses to climatic changes in Europe during the Final Palaeolithic’.

The results reveal that the first establishment of a larger human population in north-eastern central Europe during the Final Palaeolithic was followed by a dramatic population decline during the last cold period (Greenland Stadial 1) of the Ice Age. This decline reduced the total population of Europe by half. However, the study found that some areas in central Europe show stability or even a slight increase in population size against the general trend. The team interprets this finding as evidence of human migration towards the east in response to worsening climate conditions.

Here you can read the new open access article on the PLOS ONE website.