Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study
The early peopling of the Americas has been one of the most hotly contested topics in American anthropology and a research issue that draws archaeologists into a multidisciplinary debate. In South America, although the background data on this issue has increased exponentially in recent decades, the...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:7375534 2023-05-15T14:03:10+02:00 Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study Prates, Luciano Politis, Gustavo G. Perez, S. Ivan 2020-07-22 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375534/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32697794 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236023 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375534/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32697794 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236023 © 2020 Prates 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 PLoS One Research Article Text 2020 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236023 2020-08-09T00:25:36Z The early peopling of the Americas has been one of the most hotly contested topics in American anthropology and a research issue that draws archaeologists into a multidisciplinary debate. In South America, although the background data on this issue has increased exponentially in recent decades, the core questions related to the temporal and spatial patterns of the colonization process remain open. In this paper we tackle these questions in the light of the quantitative analysis of a screened radiocarbon database of more than 1600 early dates. We explore the frequency of radiocarbon dates as proxies for assessing population growth; and define a reliable and statistically well supported lower chronological bound (not to the exact date) for the earliest human arrival. Our results suggest that the earliest chronological threshold for the peopling of South America should be between 16,600 and 15,100, with a mean estimated date ~ 15,500 cal BP (post Last Glacial Maximum). Population would have grown until the end of Antarctic Cold Reversal stadial ~12,500 cal BP at the time of the main extinctions of megafauna–, when the increase rate slows, probably as a result of the changes that occurred in the trophic niche of humans. Text Antarc* Antarctic PubMed Central (PMC) Antarctic PLOS ONE 15 7 e0236023 |
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Research Article Prates, Luciano Politis, Gustavo G. Perez, S. Ivan Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study |
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Research Article |
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The early peopling of the Americas has been one of the most hotly contested topics in American anthropology and a research issue that draws archaeologists into a multidisciplinary debate. In South America, although the background data on this issue has increased exponentially in recent decades, the core questions related to the temporal and spatial patterns of the colonization process remain open. In this paper we tackle these questions in the light of the quantitative analysis of a screened radiocarbon database of more than 1600 early dates. We explore the frequency of radiocarbon dates as proxies for assessing population growth; and define a reliable and statistically well supported lower chronological bound (not to the exact date) for the earliest human arrival. Our results suggest that the earliest chronological threshold for the peopling of South America should be between 16,600 and 15,100, with a mean estimated date ~ 15,500 cal BP (post Last Glacial Maximum). Population would have grown until the end of Antarctic Cold Reversal stadial ~12,500 cal BP at the time of the main extinctions of megafauna–, when the increase rate slows, probably as a result of the changes that occurred in the trophic niche of humans. |
format |
Text |
author |
Prates, Luciano Politis, Gustavo G. Perez, S. Ivan |
author_facet |
Prates, Luciano Politis, Gustavo G. Perez, S. Ivan |
author_sort |
Prates, Luciano |
title |
Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study |
title_short |
Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study |
title_full |
Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study |
title_fullStr |
Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study |
title_full_unstemmed |
Rapid radiation of humans in South America after the last glacial maximum: A radiocarbon-based study |
title_sort |
rapid radiation of humans in south america after the last glacial maximum: a radiocarbon-based study |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375534/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32697794 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236023 |
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Antarctic |
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Antarctic |
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Antarc* Antarctic |
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Antarc* Antarctic |
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PLoS One |
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7375534/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32697794 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236023 |
op_rights |
© 2020 Prates 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.0236023 |
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