A map of Central Asia derived by the authors using data for annual precipitation (Worldclim [14]), surface water [15], and rivers (Hydrosheds [16]). The study region (encircled with black line) is shown with the region of Caspian catchment (enclosed with red line). Key mountain ranges, deserts, and bodies of water are labeled. The location of Amir Timur Cave that hosted stalagmite S-12-4 analyzed in this study is shown as red circle.
According to new research findings published in PLOS ONE, central Asia around the Aral Sea, East of the Caspian Sea, was the probable point from which early hominins spread across Eurasia, having migrated north out of Africa and settled in the now semi-arid steppes which were then periodically suitable for human habitation.
The study was conducted by a team led by Dr. Emma Finestone, Assistant Curator of Human Origins at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Research Affiliate of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and which included Dr. Paul Breeze and Professor Nick Drake from Kings College London, Professor Sebastian Breitenbach from Northumbria University Newcastle, Professor Farhod Maksudov from the Uzbekistan Academy of the Sciences, and Professor Michael Petraglia from Griffith University in Queensland, Australia.
The team presents compelling evidence that this now arid area of Central Asia had periods when local climate change meant it was suitable for hominin occupation and that the record of flint tools patterns coincides with the evidence of this climate change obtained from stalactites in local caves.
According to a news release by Cleveland Museum of Natural History:
The team compiled and analyzed paleoclimatic and archaeological data from Pleistocene (ca. 2.58 million years ago to 11,700 years ago) Central Asia. This included building a dataset of Paleolithic stone tools and analyzing a mineral deposit that formed in a cave (a stalagmite) in southern Uzbekistan. Tool-making and tool modification are key to human ability to migrate to new environments and to overcome environmental challenges. Ancient hominins moved their tools with them as they dispersed. The researchers studied the location of stone tools and the environmental conditions that were reflected in the stalagmite as it grew at the end of the Marine Isotope Stage 11 (a warm period between glacials MIS 12 and MIS 10) around 400,000 years ago.Central Asia connects several zones that played important roles in hominin dispersals out of Africa and through Asia. Yet we know comparatively little about the early occupation of Central Asia. Most of the archaeological material is not dated and detailed paleoclimate records are scarce, making it difficult to understand early hominin dispersal and occupation dynamics in that region.
We argue that Central Asia was a favorable habitat for Paleolithic toolmakers when warm interglacial phases coincided with periods when the Caspian Sea was experiencing consistently high water levels, resulting in greater moisture availability and more temperate conditions in otherwise arid regions. The patterning of stone tool assemblages also supports this.
Dr. Emma Finestone, Lead author
Department of Anthropology
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History
Cleveland, OH, USA
And Department of Archaeology
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History,
Jena, Germany
Dr. Maksudov from the Uzbekistan Academy of the Sciences said relatively little is known about the region’s earliest toolmakers because the majority of Lower Paleolithic (the earliest subdivision of Paleolithic stone tools) occurrences in Central Asia lack reliable context for dating and environmental reconstruction.Despite the potential importance of Central Asia to early dispersals, our knowledge of the Lower Paleolithic across this vast and diverse landscape has been limited.
Dr Farhod Maksudov, co-author
National Center of Archaeology
Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
We compiled data on Paleolithic findings from across Central Asia, creating a dataset of 132 Paleolithic sites – the largest dataset of its kind. This allowed us to consider the distribution of these sites in the context of a new high-resolution speleothem-based multi-proxy record of hydrological changes in southern Uzbekistan from the Middle Pleistocene.
Professor Michael Petraglia, co-senior author
Department of Archaeology
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History,
Jena, GermanyDuring periodic warmer and wetter intervals, the local environment of arid Central Asia could have been a favorable habitat and was frequented by Lower Paleolithic toolmakers producing bifaces (stone tools that have been worked on both sides).Cave deposits are incredible archives of environmental conditions at the time of their growth. Using geochemical data from stalagmites we gain insights into seasonal to millennial-scale changes in moisture availability and the climatic dynamics that governed rain- and snowfall. Our work suggests that the local and regional conditions did not follow simple long-term trends but were quite variable.
Professor Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach, co-author
Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences
Northumbria University
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
The research ‘Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene’ has been published in PLOS ONE.
Abstract
Central Asia is positioned at a crossroads linking several zones important to hominin dispersal during the Middle Pleistocene. However, the scarcity of stratified and dated archaeological material and paleoclimate records makes it difficult to understand dispersal and occupation dynamics during this time period, especially in arid zones. Here we compile and analyze paleoclimatic and archaeological data from Pleistocene Central Asia, including examination of a new layer-counted speleothem-based multiproxy record of hydrological changes in southern Uzbekistan at the end of MIS 11. Our findings indicate that Lower Palaeolithic sites in the steppe, semi-arid, and desert zones of Central Asia may have served as key areas for the dispersal of hominins into Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene. In agreement with previous studies, we find that bifaces occur across these zones at higher latitudes and in lower altitudes relative to the other Paleolithic assemblages. We argue that arid Central Asia would have been intermittently habitable during the Middle Pleistocene when long warm interglacial phases coincided with periods when the Caspian Sea was experiencing consistently high water levels, resulting in greater moisture availability and more temperate conditions in otherwise arid regions. During periodic intervals in the Middle Pleistocene, the local environment of arid Central Asia was likely a favorable habitat for paleolithic hominins and was frequented by Lower Paleolithic toolmakers producing bifaces.
Finestone EM, Breeze PS, Breitenbach SFM, Drake N, Bergmann L, Maksudov F, et al. (2022)
Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene.
PLoS ONE 17(10): e0273984. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273984
Copyright: © 2022 The authors. Published by PLoS. Open access
Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
To the acute embarrassment of Creationists, all this took place several hundred thousand years before they believe Earth existed and the people who lived there were pre-modern hominins who probably later gave rise to the archaic hominins of Europe and Asia, before being displaced by modern Homo sapiens arriving from Africa, just as the emerging scientific account of the evolution of modern humans explains.
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