Angela
Elite member
- Messages
- 21,823
- Reaction score
- 12,329
- Points
- 113
- Ethnic group
- Italian
See
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/20...serts-during-wetter-conditions/3181559238176/
"New research suggests northern and central Asia may have hosted early human migrations between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago.During the Late Pleistocene, early humans began spreading out across Eurasia. Previously, archaeologists and paleoanthropologists assumed pathways across northern and central Asia were blocked by mountains and deserts. As a result, most research efforts have focused on a southern migration route along the Indian Ocean."
"New research, however, suggests climate variation made northern and central Asia accessible to humans for brief periods of times.
"Archaeological discussions of the migration routes of Pleistocene Homo sapiens have often focused on a 'coastal' route from Africa to Australia, skirting around India and Southeast Asia," Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said in a news release. "In the context of northern Asia, a route into Siberia has been preferred, avoiding deserts.
But when scientists used paleoclimate data to model the history of the Gobi desert and other locations in northern and central Asia, they determined wetter periods between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago would have made human migration possible."
"The new analysis, published this week in the journal PLOS One, suggests several interior regions in Asia were greener and more hospitable than scientists previously realized, including the Gobi Desert, the Junggar Basin,and the Taklamakan Desert. According to the study, humans could even have penetrated the Altai Mountains, the Tien Shan and the Tibetan Platea."
For the paper:
Feng Li et al:
"
"Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia"
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216433
"Abstract
The adaptability of our species, as revealed by the geographic routes and palaeoenvironmental contexts of human dispersal beyond Africa, is a prominent topic in archaeology and palaeoanthropology. Northern and Central Asia have largely been neglected as it has been assumed that the deserts and mountain ranges of these regions acted as ‘barriers’, forcing human populations to arc north into temperate and arctic Siberia. Here, we test this proposition by constructing Least Cost Path models of human dispersal under glacial and interstadial conditions between prominent archaeological sites in Central and East Asia. Incorporating information from palaeoclimatic, palaeolake, and archaeological data, we demonstrate that regions such as the Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountain chains could have periodically acted as corridors and routes for human dispersals and framing biological interactions between hominin populations. Review of the archaeological datasets in these regions indicates the necessity of wide-scale archaeological survey and excavations in many poorly documented parts of Eurasia. We argue that such work is likely to highlight the ‘northern routes’ of human dispersal as variable, yet crucial, foci for understanding the extreme adaptive plasticity characteristic of the emergence of Homo sapiens as a global species, as well as the cultural and biological hybridization of the diverse hominin species present in Asia during the Late Pleistocene."
Very interesting paper, and good graphics.
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/20...serts-during-wetter-conditions/3181559238176/
"New research suggests northern and central Asia may have hosted early human migrations between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago.During the Late Pleistocene, early humans began spreading out across Eurasia. Previously, archaeologists and paleoanthropologists assumed pathways across northern and central Asia were blocked by mountains and deserts. As a result, most research efforts have focused on a southern migration route along the Indian Ocean."
"New research, however, suggests climate variation made northern and central Asia accessible to humans for brief periods of times.
"Archaeological discussions of the migration routes of Pleistocene Homo sapiens have often focused on a 'coastal' route from Africa to Australia, skirting around India and Southeast Asia," Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, said in a news release. "In the context of northern Asia, a route into Siberia has been preferred, avoiding deserts.
But when scientists used paleoclimate data to model the history of the Gobi desert and other locations in northern and central Asia, they determined wetter periods between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago would have made human migration possible."
"The new analysis, published this week in the journal PLOS One, suggests several interior regions in Asia were greener and more hospitable than scientists previously realized, including the Gobi Desert, the Junggar Basin,and the Taklamakan Desert. According to the study, humans could even have penetrated the Altai Mountains, the Tien Shan and the Tibetan Platea."
For the paper:
Feng Li et al:
"
"Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia"
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0216433
"Abstract
The adaptability of our species, as revealed by the geographic routes and palaeoenvironmental contexts of human dispersal beyond Africa, is a prominent topic in archaeology and palaeoanthropology. Northern and Central Asia have largely been neglected as it has been assumed that the deserts and mountain ranges of these regions acted as ‘barriers’, forcing human populations to arc north into temperate and arctic Siberia. Here, we test this proposition by constructing Least Cost Path models of human dispersal under glacial and interstadial conditions between prominent archaeological sites in Central and East Asia. Incorporating information from palaeoclimatic, palaeolake, and archaeological data, we demonstrate that regions such as the Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountain chains could have periodically acted as corridors and routes for human dispersals and framing biological interactions between hominin populations. Review of the archaeological datasets in these regions indicates the necessity of wide-scale archaeological survey and excavations in many poorly documented parts of Eurasia. We argue that such work is likely to highlight the ‘northern routes’ of human dispersal as variable, yet crucial, foci for understanding the extreme adaptive plasticity characteristic of the emergence of Homo sapiens as a global species, as well as the cultural and biological hybridization of the diverse hominin species present in Asia during the Late Pleistocene."
Very interesting paper, and good graphics.