Agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau after 3600 B.P.

Abstract

Our understanding of when and how humans adapted to living on the Tibetan Plateau at altitudes above 2000 to 3000 meters has been constrained by a paucity of archaeological data. Here we report data sets from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau indicating that the first villages were established only by 5200 calendar years before the present (cal yr B.P.). Using these data, we tested the hypothesis that a novel agropastoral economy facilitated year-round living at higher altitudes since 3600 cal yr B.P. This successful subsistence strategy facilitated the adaptation of farmers-herders to the challenges of global temperature decline during the late Holocene.

Twenty-first century approaches to ancient problems: Climate and society

“…Speleothem records from Dongge, Jiuxian, and Sanbao caves in China, for example, are frequently used to infer changes in the East Asian Monsoon, which are then compared with human activity hundreds of kilometers away (32). Such extrapolations likely degrade the ability of archaeologists to model how changing local monsoonal intensities affected ancient humans living far from the location of the proxy record.…”

Dating Human Settlement in the East-Central Tibetan Plateau during the Late Holocene

“…In the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, Kayue and Nuomuhong societies had successfully settled above 3400 m asl since 1600 BC (3600 BP) (Chen et al 2015), and some of these Bronze-Age culture groups probably expanded further toward higher elevation areas, perhaps reaching Yushu around 1000 BC. There is also another possibility that the population in the Yushu during this period was huntergatherers or pastoralists (Guedes 2015).…”

“…Recent study further demonstrates that the development of millet agriculture in the western Loess Plateau promoted human expansion into the northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, and that the millet farming communities mainly settled below 2500 m asl between 5200 and 3600 BP, at relatively low elevations because of the cold-sensitivity of millet crops. The introduction and cultivation of cold-resistant barley and wheat facilitated more permanent human settlement up to 3400 m asl on the northeast Tibetan Plateau after 3600 BP (Chen et al 2015), although Guedes et al (2015) questioned the mechanism by which barley and wheat arrived at the high altitudes. When and how humans intensively colonized areas above 3400 m asl, where pastoral production practice is the primary subsistence strategy nowadays (Miller 1999), still remain unclear.…”

“…The history and strategies for achieving permanent human colonization on the Tibetan Plateau, the highest plateau on the earth, have been intensively studied in recent years (Madsen et al 1998(Madsen et al , 2006Zhang and Li 2002;Brantingham et al 2003Brantingham et al , 2007Aldenderfer 2006Aldenderfer , 2011Brantingham and Gao 2006;Rhode et al 2007;Yuan et al 2007;Sun et al 2012;Tang et al 2013;Guedes 2015;Guedes et al 2014Guedes et al , 2015Chen et al 2015). Archaeological investigation and optical dating indicate that foragers possibly reached 4200 m above sea level (asl) around 20,000 BP (Zhang and Li 2002), and definitely occupied areas above 3200 m asl after 15,000 BP (Brantingham and Gao 2006;Madsen et al 2006;Brantingham et al 2007;Rhode et al 2007Rhode et al , 2014Meyer et al 2017).…”

“…Archaeobotanical and zooarchaeological analyses have shed light on human subsistence strategies during prehistoric times on the Tibetan Plateau (Huang 1980;IA, CASS & CRBTAR 1999;Schlütz and Lehmkuhl 2009;Zhao 2009;Guedes et al 2013Guedes et al , 2014Guedes et al , 2015Miehe et al 2014;Chen et al 2015;Guedes 2015;Dong et al 2016aDong et al , 2016b, and promoted our understanding of how prehistoric humans adapted to this harsh environment. However, the prehistoric sites so far examined are mostly located in the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, and in a few scattered places on the southern Tibetan Plateau, roughly along the ancient Tang-Tibet road (Figure 1b;Chen 1989), which historically was the most important passageway for interregional interaction between the Yellow River valley and Lhasa.…”