Radiocarbon dates, microblades and Late Pleistocene human migrations in the Transbaikal, Russia and the Paleo-Sakhalin-Hokkaido-Kuril Peninsula

Human Dispersal from Siberia to Beringia

“…From what we know about EUP sites, they fall within the middle part of MIS 3, a paleoclimatic warm period punctuated by several cold intervals (Bezrukova et al 2010;Kind 1974). Radiocarbon databases, now numbering close to 1,000 dates (Buvit et al 2016;Kuzmin et al 2011), signal two possible pulses of EUP occupation, one at~50-42 ka and a subsequent one after 40 ka, both during warm intervals (GIS-12/11/10 and GIS-9/8) of the mid Upper Pleistocene. Given the limitation of radiocarbon dating near the working limit of the method as outlined by Douka and Higham 2017, we accept these age ranges with some caution.…”

“…Dates from Varvarina Gora (45-40 ka; Bazarov et al 1982;Kuzmin 1994), Khotyk (42 ka; Kuzmin et al 2006), and Kamenka (40-30 ka) east of Lake Baikal suggest more substantial habitation at 45-35 ka (Lbova 2000). Other dates obtained from fauna among the cultural materials at the sites of Masterov Kliuch' (Goebel, Waters, and Mescherin 2000) and Tolbaga (Bazarov et al 1982;Buvit et al 2016;Goebel and Aksenov 1995;Goebel and Waters 2001;Kuzmin et al 2011;Lbova 2005) range from about 48 to 30 ka. These Transbaikal sites are found in colluvial settings, so their long time ranges probably reflect redeposition of materials from various times.…”

“…This has led us to conclude that while limited occupation occurred during parts of the global LGM, both the Enisei (Graf 2009(Graf , 2015 and Transbaikal (Buvit et al 2015(Buvit et al , 2016 regions were abandoned or reduced to archaeological invisibility for at least 2-3 kyr between about 24.8 ka and 22.7 ka. Calibrated radiocarbon dates from the Altai, Saian, and Angara (Kuzmin et al 2011) indicate population decline during the LGM, but their gaps and occupations are temporally offset from each other and from gaps and occupations reported in the Enisei and Transbaikal.…”

Current evidence allows multiple models for the peopling of the Americas

“…There is no secure evidence of ~20,000-year-old American sites, while there is abundant evidence of human occupation in northeast Asia (for example, southern Siberia, Amur basin, Primor’ye, and Japanese archipelago) (fig. S1) ( 23 ). The LGM is regionally characterized by very cold and arid conditions with evidence for depopulation of north Asia and no evidence throughout Eurasia for northward expansions of humans ( 24 , 25 ).…”

On the Pleistocene Population History in the Japanese Archipelago

“…Flake technology, blade, and microblade technologies were incorporated into the LGM technocomplex in Hokkaido Nakazawa andIzuho 2006, Nakazawa et al 2005), which later converged into the microblade technocomplexes (Nakazawa and Yamada 2015). This development likely resulted from a combination of independent innovation, cultural transmission, and demic expansion from eastern Siberia and Paleo-Honshu in and after the LGM (e.g., Buvit et al 2016;Graf 2009;Nakazawa et al 2005;Nakazawa and Yamada 2015). Why the initial occupation of Paleo-SHK lagged behind that of Paleo-Honshu by some 15,000 years is another area that needs to be further investigated.…”