The pollen sequence of Les Echets (France): a new element for the chronology of the upper Pleistocene.

Abstract

Les Echets mire (near Lyon, France) is one of the very few European sites showing an almost continuous record from the glaciation that preceded the Eemian to the present. The pollen diagram can easily be correlated with those from Grande Pile (Vosges). On the basis of a comparison between the two sequences, the age of three clearly temperate post-Eemian episodes (Saint-Germain Ia, Ic and II at Grande Pile) is discussed. The authors correlate these episodes with the Early Wurm Interstadials of Amersfoort, Brorup and Odderade described in Northern Europe and accept the chronology of Grande Pile that dates Saint-Germain I and Saint-Germain II between ca.115 000 and 70 000 BP, thus making them equivalents of deep sea isotopic stages 5c and 5a. This refutes the 14C chronology admitted up to now that places the Early Wurm between 75 000 and 55 000 BP. -Authors