Central Mongolian lake sediments reveal new insights on climate change and equestrian empires in the Eastern Steppes.

ABSTRACT: The repeated expansion of East Asian steppe cultures was a key driver of Eurasian history, forging new social, economic, and biological links across the continent. Climate has been suggested as important driver of these poorly understood cultural expansions, but paleoclimate records from the Mongolian Plateau often suffer from poor age control or ambiguous proxy interpretation. Here, we use a combination of geochemical analyses and comprehensive radiocarbon dating to establish the first robust and detailed record of paleohydrological conditions for Lake Telmen, Mongolia, covering the past ~ 4000 years. Our record shows that humid conditions coincided with solar minima, and hydrological modeling confirms the high sensitivity of the lake to paleoclimate changes. Careful comparisons with arch

SUBMITTER: Struck J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8857271 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature