Early Human Occupation of the Tibetan Plateau and the Development of High Altitude Adaptations

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，P. Jeffrey Brantingham博士和一个由中美科学家组成的小组将在青藏高原北缘进行为期三年的考古和古环境研究。然而，研究小组最近收集的证据表明，人类最早冒险进入海拔3000米以上的高海拔地区是在距今15000年前，可能直到距今8000年前才永久占据高原。青藏高原的晚期殖民化与距今4万年前人类向其他极端环境（如戈壁沙漠和高纬度北极）的早期迁移形成鲜明对比，研究人员通常将其归因于早期解剖学上的现代人类的生物地理能力扩大。当前项目的目标是了解推动人类在青藏高原北部最初殖民的过程，并确定为什么殖民的时间和特征如此明显地不同。Brantingham假设，青藏高原的殖民化发生在几个阶段，并受到社会和环境压力的共同推动。在晚更新世（15,000-11,000 BP），旧石器时代晚期晚期的采集者首次在高原北部的边缘地区季节性地活动，依靠高原周围低海拔环境中发展起来的文化适应性。在全新世早期（8200-6400 BP），低海拔定居农业社区的竞争性迁移迫使采集者永久占据高海拔地区，并在低海拔环境中与农民建立互惠关系，为畜牧业的进化创造了充分的条件。该团队将通过实地调查和挖掘相结合的方法来验证这些假设，并以密集的地质年代测定程序为基础。青藏高原东北部上缘的一系列埋藏遗址跨越了15000 - 5000 BP的关键时期，这一时期是高原现代适应基本特征形成的时期。挖掘这些遗址将有助于描述促进成功殖民化的适应策略。在周边地区的调查将使我们能够描述相关的土地利用模式。该项目的智力价值在于提供新的见解，以了解生物地理限制和竞争/互惠过程在推动人口流动和出现全新的适应策略（如畜牧）方面的相对作用。因此，研究结果将与围绕现代人类起源和传播以及复杂社会和经济适应发展的更广泛问题相关。这项研究通过促进长期的国际科学合作，为下一代美国和中国考古学家提供高质量的研究生教育经验，并向公众和专业受众扩展关于我们自己物种的广泛历史和适应能力的知识，明确支持更广泛的积极社会影响。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. P. Jeffrey Brantingham and a team of U.S. and Chinese scientists will conduct three years of archaeological and paleoenvironmental research on the northern margins of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau. Genetic studies of contemporary Tibetans and stone tools found in surface archaeological settings have been used to suggest that human foragers first colonized of the Plateau environment as early as 30,000 year ago. Recent evidence collected by the research team suggests, however, that human humans first ventured into the high elevation areas, in excess of 3000m above sea level, as recently as 15,000 years BP, and possibly did not permanently occupy the Plateau until around 8000 BP. The late colonization of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau stands in sharp contrast to the early movement of people into other extreme environments such as the Gobi desert and high arctic at 40,000 BP, which researchers generally attribute to an expanded biogeographic capacity among early anatomically modern humans. The goal of the current project is to understanding the processes driving initial human colonization of the northern Qinghai Tibet Plateau and establish why the timing and characteristics of colonization differed so markedly.Dr. Brantingham hypothesizes that colonization of the Qinghai Tibet Plateau occurred in several phases and was driven by a combination of social and environmental pressures. Late Upper Paleolithic foragers first occupied the margins of the northern Plateau during the late Pleistocene (15,000-11,000 BP) only seasonally, relying on cultural adaptations developed in low elevation environments surrounding the Plateau. During the early Holocene (8200-6400 BP), competitive displacement by low-elevation sedentary farming communities forced foragers to permanently occupy high elevation areas and established conditions sufficient for the evolution of pastoralism based on mutualistic relationships with farmers in low-elevation environments. The team will test these hypotheses using a combination of field survey and excavation, anchored by an intensive geochronological dating program. A series of buried sites on the upper margins of the northeast Qinghai Tibet Plateau are known to span the critical 15,000-5,000 BP period when the basic characteristics of modern adaptations on the Plateau developed. Excavation of these sites will allow characterization of the adaptive strategies that facilitated successful colonization. Survey in the surrounding areas will allow us to characterize the accompanying land use patterns.The intellectual merit of the project will be to offer new insights into the relative roles of biogeographic constraints and competitive/mutualistic processes in driving human population movements and the emergence of radically new adaptive strategies such as pastoralism. The results will therefore be relevant to broader questions surrounding the origin and spread of modern humans and the development of complex social and economic adaptations.The research explicitly supports broader positive societal impacts by fostering long-term international scientific collaborations, delivering quality graduate educational experiences to the next generation of American and Chinese archaeologists, and expanding knowledge about our own species' broad history and adaptive capacities to public and professional audiences.