Paleoecological reconstructions of the Bed I and Bed II lacustrine basins of Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) and insights into early human behavior

The archaeological record of Olduvai Gorge has played a pivotal role in reconstructions of early human behavior. Classical Oldowan sites (from Middle Bed I), and the extensive archaeological record from Bed II (including the earliest Acheulian at 1.7 Ma), enable the reconstruction of early human behavior throughout its evolution from almost 1.9 Ma to 1.3 Ma. How such behavioral evolution was influenced by ecological factors is still an object of debate. This special issue presents a detailed meso-scale reconstruction of the paleoecology and paleogeography of the environments where some of these sites were formed, including extensive reconstructions of the paleobotany of the sites and the areas surrounding them. This provides, for the first time, a contextual ecological information framed in a scale large enough to understand human behavioral variability as determined by the exceptional ecological conditions of the Olduvai paleo-lake basin for almost one-and-a-half million years. This information is crucial to understand site functionality and the behaviors exhibited by hominins at each of the anthropogenic sites from Olduvai Gorge during the earliest stages of the evolution of the genus Homo.