Human behavioral strategies in the desert environments of Southeast Arabia during the Late Pleistocene: A case study from Jebel Faya, UAE

荒漠植物约占陆地生境的20%，是世界上主要的生态系统之一。考虑到许多大沙漠的古老性，以及它们在现代人类潜在扩张路线上沿着重要地点的地理位置，沙漠地区肯定在人类进化中发挥了重要作用。沙漠等极端生境通常被建模为障碍或走廊。然而，这种二元模型越来越与目前的遗传、化石和考古记录所表明的复杂的定居动态和扩张过程形成鲜明对比。我们在这里认为，研究人类在沙漠栖息地的行为可以提供关键数据的人类进化模型的完善。在这个项目中，我们将有这个，我们将测试人类沙漠适应模型，并从我们在沙迦（阿联酋）的研究区域收集新的考古和古环境数据的演变特征。人类在沙漠环境中的行为策略。为了实现这些目标，我们将整合考古，古环境，年代和微形态学研究到一个跨学科的努力。该项目的结果将增加有关更新世晚期阿拉伯东南部沙漠栖息地人类行为演变的新信息，并增加该地区古环境条件演变的新数据。这些结果可以用来完善我们对人类进化模式的理解，并可以从考古学的角度测试现代人类从非洲扩张的模型。我们的研究结果将为当前的科学话语做出重要贡献。

Deserts form about 20 % of the terrestrial habitats and constitute one of the world's major ecosystems. Given the considerable antiquity of many of the great deserts in addition to their geographic position at important points along potential expansion routes of modern humans, desert regions must have played an important role in human evolution. Extreme habitats such as deserts are often modeled as either barriers or corridors. Such binary models, however, stand increasingly in contrast to the complex settlement dynamics and expansion processes suggested by the current genetic, fossil and archaeological records. We argue here that research on hominin behavior in desert habitats can provide key data for the refinement of hominin evolutionary models. In this project, we will having this, we will test models of human desert adaptation and characterize the evolution of collect new archaeological and paleoenvironmental data from our study region in Sharjah (UAE). human behavioral strategies in the desert environments of our study region. To reach these goals we will integrate archaeological, paleoenvironmental, chronological and micromorphological research into one interdisciplinary effort. Results of this project will add new information about the evolution of the human behavioral repertoire in the desert habitats of SE Arabia during the Late Pleistocene and add new data on the evolution of paleoenvironmental conditions in the region. These results can amongst others be used to refine our understanding about patterns of human evolution and can serve to test models for the expansion of modern humans out of Africa from an archaeological perspective. Our results will provide an important contribution to the current scientific discourse.