Studies of early human settlement in alpine environments provide insights into human physiological, genetic, and cultural adaptation potentials. Although Late and even Middle Pleistocene human presence has been recently documented on the Tibetan Plateau, little is known regarding the nature and context of early persistent human settlement in high elevations. Here, we report the earliest evidence of a prehistoric high-altitude residential site. Located in Africa’s largest alpine ecosystem, the repeated occupation of Fincha Habera rock shelter is dated to 47 to 31 thousand years ago. The available resources in cold and glaciated environments included the exploitation of an endemic rodent as a key food source, and this played a pivotal role in facilitating the occupation of this site by Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers.
In southern Africa, Middle Stone Age sites with long sequences have been the focus of intense international and interdisciplinary research over the past decade (cf. Wadley 2015). Two techno-complexes of the Middle Stone Age—the Still Bay and Howiesons Poort—have been associated with many technological and behavioural innovations of Homo sapiens. The classic model argues that these two techno-complexes are temporally separated ‘horizons’ with homogenous material culture (Jacobs et al.2008), reflecting demographic pulses and supporting large subcontinental networks. This model was developed on the basis of evidence from southern African sites regarded as centres of subcontinental developments.
<p><span>The advent of pastoralism in Eastern Africa is one of the most significant cultural transformations in the continent&#8217;s history. Traditionally, herding origins and its spreading routes have been studied in the lowlands and described as a complex and lengthy process that began before 4 ka BP and lasted until 1.3 ka BP. This cultural transition has long been argued to have been a process involving both environmental change and population movements. </span><span>Given the current patchy </span><span>archaeological data, most studies studies conclude that no single factor can be identified as a driver of the onset of herding in Eastern Africa, but almost all evidence is from lowland areas. The higher elevations of the Eastern African mountains are sensitive to climate and environmental change, so may be ideal for testing hypotheses of human-environmental relationships. However, the history of pastoralism in the African highlands, especially its connection with regional herding migrations and Holocene climate change, has thus far been poorly explored with few available records. </span></p><p><span> In this contribution, we provide evidence of early pastoral activities at high altitude in the Bale Mountains of southwest Ethiopia. We present a 4000-year multiproxy palaeoecological lacustrine sequence from Garba Guracha, a cirque lake at 3950 m asl, combining palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental proxies. Our record indicates the distinctive presence of faecal fungal spores (</span><span><em>Sporormiella, Cercospora, Podospora</em></span><span>) and the expansion of pollen and </span><span><em>seda</em></span><span>DNA from ruderal plants as early as 3.5 ka. To our knowledge, this is the highest altitude record of early animal husbandry traces on the continent. Coeval with the expansion of pastoralism indicators in Garba Guracha, we find important changes in the lake&#8217;s diatom community, as well as climate fluctuations reconstructed from biomarkers; these may be critical for understanding human occupation at high altitudes. However, archaeological studies conducted in the Garba Guracha basin have proved unfruitful in finding permanent settlements of herders, </span><span>suggesting</span><span> hypothes</span><span>es</span><span> of seasonal resource use. </span></p><p><span> We discuss different scenarios of pastoral expansion on the Eastern African highlands under changing local climates, as well as the general context of pastoralist migration across Eastern Africa. </span></p>
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.