Ancient humans managed to live on the Tibetan plateau, the highest plateau on Earth, during the coldest period of the past 2.5 million years, demonstrating their resilience and adaptability.
The last glacial maximum spanned 26,500 to 19,000 years ago, marking the harshest chapter of the Late Pleistocene ice age. During this time, polar ice caps and ice sheets covered vast swathes of Earth and global temperatures hovered around 4掳C to 5掳C below those that occur on average today.
鈥溈烀ǘ淌悠祍 previously thought the Tibetan plateau was uninhabitable during the last glacial maximum,鈥� says Wenli Li at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. 鈥淭he cold climate, combined with reduced vegetation and lower oxygen levels at high altitudes made survival extremely challenging.鈥�
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Prior evidence indicates that people lived on the Tibetan plateau before and after the last glacial maximum, but not during. But in 2019, Li and her colleagues discovered a site 3800 metres above sea level on the southern Tibetan plateau in the Yarlung Tsangpo river valley, with numerous artefacts indicating human habitation.
In total, the team unearthed 427 artefacts, including stone tools and the first pieces made of ochre 鈥� a red-coloured rock that ancient humans used to create art 鈥� ever discovered by scientists in Tibet.
Now, radiocarbon dating of ancient bones and charcoal at the site has revealed three successive human occupations took place, lasting from 29,200 to 23,100 years ago. Two periods, around 25,000 and 23,000 years ago, respectively, overlap with the last glacial maximum.
鈥淣o archaeological site had previously been dated to this period,鈥� says at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who wasn鈥檛 involved in the research. 鈥淭his finding supports the idea that early humans exhibited strong resilience and adaptability to extreme environments.鈥�
To understand the local environment during these occupations, the researchers studied samples of nearby stalagmites and lake cores, as their chemical composition can reveal information about past climates. This indicated that the river valley provided conditions damper than what was expected during the brutally dry ice age in Tibet, which could have enabled cold-tolerant plants and herbivores to survive.
鈥淭he valley likely offered access to water, vegetation and game resources, which were essential for survival,鈥� says Li.
Stone tools at the site match those from older sites farther north in the interior plateau, which suggests that Tibetans migrated into the river valley as the climate became colder and drier, says Li.
Prior research implies that river valleys on the southern Tibetan plateau could have been for Tibetans retreating from the increasingly bitter climate of the last glacial maximum, says He. 鈥淚t is quite satisfying to see that the new sites support this general hypothesis.鈥�
In future work, Li and her colleagues plan to continue to investigate how periods of cold during the last glacial maximum correlate with human occupation and migration at the site, which they named Pengbuwuqing after a nearby hill.
Quaternary Science Advances
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