Climatic and geomorphological changes can accelerate mobility, resource crises and the reorganization of settlement areas. The presentation ‘Archaeology and Climate’ therefore combines the Holocene flooding of the Persian Gulf, the emergence of the Naqada culture in Egypt and maritime contacts as far as the Atlantic into a large-scale working hypothesis. The present contribution examines which parts of this hypothesis are already empirically connectable. Palaeogeographic reconstructions demonstrate a multiphase transgression in the Persian Gulf; archaeological finds also show highly developed seafaring in the Gulf already in the 6th and 5th millennia BC.
For a direct migration from the Gulf to Upper Egypt and onward to the Canary Islands, a continuous chain of finds had until now been lacking. This gap in the finds is increasingly being closed by the research work of the archaeologist Dr. Peter Tomkins on Crete, Sardinia and in southern Spain. At the same time, the diffusion theory receives a new chronological and cultural-historical context through the redating of the rock image of Laja Alta near Gibraltar (Morgado-Rodríguez et al. 2025; Tomkins P., report passim). As a new test case, preliminary surface-luminescence data from a step pyramid in the San Marcos complex on Tenerife are discussed. The OSL measurement gives a value of 4360 ± 330 BP. This first finding cannot yet be read as a construction age or as a cultural attribution. However, the OSL investigation opens a testable research question and provides further trans-disciplinary evidence for the spread of a Naqada migration via intermediate stations to Tenerife.