Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia
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 mount...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6541242 2023-05-15T15:07:43+02:00 Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia Li, Feng Vanwezer, Nils Boivin, Nicole Gao, Xing Ott, Florian Petraglia, Michael Roberts, Patrick 2019-05-29 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6541242/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31141504 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216433 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6541242/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31141504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216433 © 2019 Li et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216433 2019-06-09T00:24:49Z 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. Text Arctic Siberia PubMed Central (PMC) Arctic PLOS ONE 14 5 e0216433 |
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Research Article Li, Feng Vanwezer, Nils Boivin, Nicole Gao, Xing Ott, Florian Petraglia, Michael Roberts, Patrick Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia |
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Research Article |
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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. |
format |
Text |
author |
Li, Feng Vanwezer, Nils Boivin, Nicole Gao, Xing Ott, Florian Petraglia, Michael Roberts, Patrick |
author_facet |
Li, Feng Vanwezer, Nils Boivin, Nicole Gao, Xing Ott, Florian Petraglia, Michael Roberts, Patrick |
author_sort |
Li, Feng |
title |
Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia |
title_short |
Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia |
title_full |
Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia |
title_fullStr |
Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia |
title_full_unstemmed |
Heading north: Late Pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern Asia |
title_sort |
heading north: late pleistocene environments and human dispersals in central and eastern asia |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6541242/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31141504 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216433 |
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Arctic |
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Arctic |
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Arctic Siberia |
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Arctic Siberia |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6541242/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31141504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216433 |
op_rights |
© 2019 Li et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
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CC-BY |
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216433 |
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