GIS-based, least-cost analyses employing continental scale elevation data, coupled with information on the late glacial location of ice sheets and pluvial lakes, suggest possible movement corridors used by initial human populations in colonizing the New World. These routes, demographic evidence, and the location of Paleoindian archaeological assemblages, support the possibility of a rapid spread and diversification of founding populations. Initial dispersal, these analyses suggest, would have been most likely in coastal and riverine settings, and on plains. The analyses suggest areas where evidence for early human settlement may be found in North and South America. In some cases, these areas have received little prior archaeological survey. The method can be used to explore patterns of human migration and interaction at a variety of geographic scales.

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The fossil record suggests that at least two major human dispersals occurred across the Eurasian steppe during the Late Pleistocene. Neanderthals and Modern Humans moved eastward into Central Asia, a region intermittently occupied by the enigmatic Denisovans. Genetic data indicates that the Denisovans interbred with Neanderthals near the Altai Mountains (South Siberia) but where and when they met H. sapiens is yet to be determined. Here we present archaeological evidence that document the timing and environmental context of a third long-distance population movement in Central Asia, during a temperate climatic event around 45,000 years ago. The early occurrence of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic, a techno-complex whose sudden appearance coincides with the first occurrence of H. sapiens in the Eurasian steppes, establishes an essential archaeological link between the Siberian Altai and Northwestern China . Such connection between regions provides empirical ground to discuss contacts between local and exogenous populations in Central and Northeast Asia during the Late Pleistocene.

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