Comment on “Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene”

Abstract

Meyer (Reports, 6 January 2017, p. 64) claim that permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau started in the early Holocene without the support of an agropastoral economy. By careful examination, we find that neither the archaeological evidence nor the travel cost modeling provided by Meyer could support the permanent human occupation assertion.

Response to Comment on “Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene”

“…D rawing on a travel-cost analysis and comparisons with ethnographic hunter-gatherer data, we argued that the site of Chusang likely indicates permanent use of the interior Tibetan Plateau by at least 8000 years ago (1). In their Comment, Zhang et al (2) contend that "It is more likely that Chusang was part of a series of seasonally occupied camps produced by a group of foragers moving from place to place between lower-elevation margins and the high TP during the year." They base this claim on two points: (i) the lack of certain archaeological features at Chusang indicates that it cannot be considered as having a permanent occupation, and (ii) aspects of the travel model we employ are flawed.…”

Tibetan Plateau, Archaeology of

“…Both Brantingham et al (2013) and Chen et al (2015) have been criticized for their assumption of a unidirectional movement from the northeastern lowlands to the uplands, their disregard for the contribution of local hunter-gatherers, and their extrapolation from a small number of sites in the Northeast to the whole Plateau (Lü 2016). A new set of radiocarbon dates from Chusang at 4,270 masl on the central Plateau suggests that the site may have been part of permanent preagricultural occupation around 8,400-7,400 BP (Meyer et al 2017a) or even 20,000 BP (Zhang and Li 2017).…”

Early human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau

“…The cold, dry and hypoxic high-altitude environment of the plateau presents a major challenge to human survival. Therefore, the history and mechanisms of prehistoric human history on the Tibetan Plateau -from brief hunting expeditions to seasonal hunting-gathering and finally to permanent settlements -has attracted both general interest and substantial scientific debates [3][4][5][6]. Archaeological studies indicate that humans probably first explored the plateau at the end of the late Pleistocene.…”

“…Archaeological studies indicate that humans probably first explored the plateau at the end of the late Pleistocene. They practiced intensive seasonal hunting-gathering from 15 ka BP [6], and permanently settled regions above 3,000 masl after 3.6 ka BP, which was facilitated by the development of an agropastoral economy [3]. However, the early part of the human history of the Tibetan Plateau is still poorly documented, due to the lack of well-preserved archaeological sites and reliable dating results (Fig.…”

“…The first two stages are assumed to have relied mainly on a hunting-gathering economy, while the third stage mainly depended on an agropastoral economy which was benefited by the propagation of crops between eastern and western Eurasia [10]. However, we still know very little about human adaptation to the high-altitude environment of the plateau during the hunter-gathering epochs of the first two stages [6], compared with the agropastoral third stage [3]. Because of the lack of faunal and flora remains, the ND site remains difficult to provide key answers to the questions about how humans survived in the high and cold environment.…”