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

沙漠约占陆地栖息地的20%，构成了世界主要生态系统之一。考虑到许多大沙漠的相当古老的历史，以及它们在现代人类潜在扩张路线上的重要地理位置，沙漠地区一定在人类进化中发挥了重要作用。沙漠等极端栖息地通常被建模为屏障或走廊。然而，这种二元模型与目前的遗传、化石和考古记录所显示的复杂的沉降动力学和扩展过程形成了越来越大的对比。我们认为，对沙漠生境中古人类行为的研究可以为完善古人类进化模型提供关键数据。在这个项目中，我们将测试人类适应沙漠的模型，并从沙迦（阿联酋）的研究区域收集新的考古和古环境数据。我们研究区域沙漠环境中的人类行为策略。为了达到这些目标，我们将把考古、古环境、年代学和微观形态学的研究整合到一个跨学科的努力中。该项目的研究结果将为阿拉伯东南部沙漠生境晚更新世人类行为的演变提供新的信息，并为该地区古环境条件的演变提供新的数据。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。我们的结果将为当前的科学论述提供重要的贡献。

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.