A new analysis of an archeological site in the high mountains of Tibet suggests that permanent residents may have set up camp thousands of years sooner than previously thought. Previous analyses have estimated that the site's founding residents arrived about 5.2 thousand years ago, but now a more comprehensive analysis by Michael Meyer et al. suggests that it was inhabited, likely on a permanent basis, at least 7.4 thousand years ago, but perhaps as long as more than 12 thousand years ago. Upon leaving Africa, humans effectively spread out across most of Earth - yet when they endeavored to move into the highest mountains the world, along the Himalayan range, remains debated. Among some of the best preserved sites for scientists to study is Chusang, a village perched in the central plateau more than 4,000 meters above sea level. The site, discovered in 1998, consists of 19 human hand- and footprints along the surface of a fossil travertine. In attempts to better date the village, Meyer and colleagues used three different techniques, including thorium/uranium dating of samples taken from, and adjacent to, the prints; optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to determine the date of quartz crystals; and radio carbon dating on microscopic plant remains at the site. Their new estimated range for settlement at Chusang, between 7.4 and 12.67 thousand years ago, is more in line with results from some genetic studies, the authors note. As well, they highlight how difficult travel from this base camp must have been, with roundtrip routes to other sites likely taking dozens of days and being impassable for most of the year; therefore they emphasize that is it very likely that Chusang represents a permanent settlement, before agriculture took hold in the area. Permanent pre-agricultural peopling of the plateau may have been enabled by a wetter climate that prevailed in the region at the time, Meyer and colleagues suggest.
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Article #11: "Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene," by M.C. Meyer; Z. Wang at University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria; M.S. Aldenderfer at University of California, Merced in Merced, CA; D.L. Hoffmann at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany; J.A. Dahl at National Isotope Centre, GNS Science in Lower Hutt, New Zealand; D. Degering at ADD Ideas Degering and Degering in Mohorn, Germany; W.R. Haas at University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY; F. Schlütz at Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research in Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
Journal
Science