Human Adaptation to High Altitude Environments

人类是唯一在整个地球上定居并居住在如此广泛的栖息地的物种，包括像高山系统这样具有挑战性的环境。研究人员努力了解智人在艰苦的环境中发展出独特的、文化中介的生存和繁荣能力的过程。考古学非常适合探索这一问题，因为它允许人们随着时间的推移追踪构成人类行为进化的适应性过程的创新和成功--当然，也包括错误和失败。以前对山地适应的学术研究集中在世界上少数几片连续的高海拔地形-所谓的高高原-的永久殖民化，这发生在人类进化史的晚期。相比之下，人们在永久掌握高海拔之前从事高海拔活动的长期过程仍未被探索。人类在何时何地首次寻求令人眼花缭乱的新高度？是什么鼓励他们这样做的？非洲拥有一些世界上最早的证据，证明人类存在于这种环境中，但非洲大陆的高山系统被严重低估了。该项目将通过调查早期人类何时、为什么以及如何首次居住并最终定居南部非洲最高的山系-莱索托高原的马洛蒂-德拉肯斯堡山脉来纠正这一问题。通过绘制该地区人类-高原动力学的深度发展图，该项目将深入了解我们人类行为灵活性的深刻能力，这构成了我们今天的核心。该项目将产生一系列教学和发展成果，包括为本科生和研究生提供培训和研究机会，莱索托第一代考古学家的进一步职业化，以及通过公开开放日、学校实地访问、与当地酋长和其他利益攸关方协商以及广泛传播研究成果，提高对遗产的认识和能力。斯图尔特博士和一个多学科研究团队将针对高地异常密集的史前考古记录和古代沉积暴露，进行洞穴挖掘、景观调查和环境采样的综合计划。这些数据集将使它们能够以当地环境和水文变化的高分辨率记录为基础，构建高原适应和定居动态的详细图景。具体地说，他们将研究最近山地狩猎采集者记录的生存策略是否以及在多大程度上可以扩展到我们物种进化的早期阶段。还将探讨区域人口结构的较长期波动，以检验有关莱索托可能扮演的干燥阶段人类避难所角色的假设，以及对人口聚集、高文化创新率和将非洲山地地带视为人类行为和基因变化的震中的相关影响。

Humans are the only species to colonize the entire globe and inhabit such a vast array of habitats, including challenging environments like high mountain systems. Researchers strive to understand the process by which Homo sapiens developed the unique, culturally-mediated aptitude for living and thriving in arduous settings. Archaeology is ideally suited to exploring this issue because it allows one to trace over deep time the innovations and successes - but also, of course, the mistakes and failures - that constituted the adaptive process of human behavioral evolution. Previous scholarship into mountain adaptations has focused on the permanent colonization of the world's few expanses of contiguous high elevation terrain - the so-called high plateaus - which occurred late in human evolutionary history. In contrast, the longer-term processes by which people engaged with high altitudes before permanently mastering them remain unexplored. Where and when did humans first seek dizzying new heights and what encouraged them to do so? Africa contains some of the world's very earliest evidence for a human presence in such environments, yet the continent's high mountain systems are sorely under-investigated. This project will remedy this by investigating when, why and how early humans first inhabited and ultimately settled southern Africa's highest mountain system, the Maloti-Drakensberg Mountains of highland Lesotho. By charting the deep-time development of human-highland dynamics in this region, the project will yield insights into our species' profound capacity for behavioral flexibility that forms the core of who we are today. The project will produce a range of pedagogical and developmental outcomes, including training and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, the further professionalization of Lesotho's first generation of archaeologists, and heritage awareness and empowerment through public open-days, school site-visits, consultations with local chiefs and other stakeholders, and extensive dissemination of findings.Led by Dr. Brian Stewart of the University of Michigan, the project will reconstruct patterns of human dispersal, landscape learning and survival strategies necessary for living in highland Lesotho during the climatically volatile past two glacial cycles. Dr. Stewart and a multidisciplinary research team will conduct an integrated program of cave excavation, landscape survey and environmental sampling targeting the highlands' unusually dense prehistoric archaeological record and ancient sedimentary exposures. These datasets will allow them to construct a detailed picture of highland adaptations and settlement dynamics anchored to high-resolution records of local environmental and hydrological change. Specifically, they will examine whether and to what extent survival strategies documented for recent montane hunter-gatherers can be extended into earlier stages of our species' evolution. Longer-term fluctuations in regional demography will also be explored to test hypotheses regarding Lesotho's possible role as a dry-phase human refugium, with related implications for population packing, high rates of cultural innovation, and viewing Africa's montane zones as epicenters of human behavioral and genetic change.