Infectious diseases may have arrested the southward advance of microblades in Upper Palaeolithic East Asia

Abstract

An unsolved archaeological puzzle of the East Asian Upper Palaeolithic is why the southward expansion of an innovative lithic technology represented by microblades stalled at the Qinling–Huaihe Line. It has been suggested that the southward migration of foragers with microblades stopped there, which is consistent with ancient DNA studies showing that populations to the north and south of this line had differentiated genetically by 19 000 years ago. Many infectious pathogens are believed to have been associated with hominins since the Palaeolithic, and zoonotic pathogens in particular are prevalent at lower latitudes, which may have produced a disease barrier. We propose a mathematical model to argue that mortality due to infectious diseases may have arrested the wave-of-advance of the technologically advantaged foragers from the north.