In this paper new palaeogeographic and archaeological data from the prehistoric cave
Vela Spila on the island of Korčula in Croatia are combined with new realizations of two
glacial isostatic adjustment models in order to present relative sea-level change
scenarios confronting the inhabitants of the cave at different time slices and to show
how they experienced and adapted to sea-level and climate change from the Late
Pleistocene through the Holocene. Our results show that from the Late Upper
Palaeolithic until the Mesolithic, humans in the study area would have experienced
tens of metres of sea-level rise, at rates in some cases up to 12 mm per year, and,
owing to the relatively flat morphology of the now submerged plains, hundreds of
meters of horizontal coastline change in the plains to the north and south of the island.
This evidence supports the hypothesis that the rapid loss of these plains likely
contributed to the human abandonment of the cave after the Palaeolithic for about five
thousand years, followed by significant changes in lifestyle and diet in the Mesolithic.
Our results have important implications for the study of how past human groups,
especially in vulnerable coastal areas, were affected by sea level, climate, and other
environmental changes. Vela Spila represents a case study of how changing
environment and rising seas can force significant alterations inH2020 - British Academ
