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In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. By establishing a luminescence-based chronology for fluvial deposits preserved between the Elsterian- and Saalian tills in central Germany, we obtained information on the timing of both the Middle Pleistocene glacial cycles and early human appearance in central Europe. The luminescence ages illustrate different climatic driven fluvial aggradation periods during the Saalian glacial cycle spanning from β ka.
The ages of sediments directly overlying the Elsterian till are approximately ka and prove that the first extensive Fennoscandian ice sheet extension during the Quaternary correlates with MIS 12 and not with MIS Furthermore, the ka old fluvial units contain Lower Paleolithic stone artefacts that document the first human appearance in the region.
In addition, we demonstrate that early MIS 8 is a potential date for the onset of the Middle Paleolithic in central Germany, as Middle Paleolithic stone artefacts are correlated with fluvial units deposited between ka and ka. The fluvial units preserved directly under the till of the southernmost Saalian ice yield an age of about ka, and enable a correlation of the Drenthe stage to late MIS 6. The timing of the Middle Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles and the feedback mechanisms between climatic shifts and earth-surface processes are still poorly understood.
This is largely due to a lack of dating results of sediments representing the advance and retreat of Middle Pleistocene ice sheets, as well as periglacial, interglacial or interstadial environments. One key issue is the onset of the Elsterian glaciation, which was the first and southern-most ice advance of Fennoscandian ice sheets into the European continent 1 , and its relationship with the Middle Pleistocene Revolution hereafter MPR. That significant change in climate cyclicity occurred without any change in external isolation forcing 3 , and huge ice sheets might have played a key role in this 4 , 5 , as they balanced insolation maxima 3.
