title: Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene.
abstract: Current models of the peopling of the higher-elevation zones of the Tibetan Plateau postulate that permanent occupation could only have been facilitated by an agricultural lifeway at ~3.6 thousand calibrated carbon-14 years before present. Here we report a reanalysis of the chronology of the Chusang site, located on the central Tibetan Plateau at an elevation of ~4270 meters above sea level. The minimum age of the site is fixed at ~7.4 thousand years (thorium-230/uranium dating), with a maximum age between ~8.20 and 12.67 thousand calibrated carbon-14 years before present (carbon-14 assays). Travel cost modeling and archaeological data suggest that the site was part of an annual, permanent, preagricultural occupation of the central plateau. These findings challenge current models of the occupation of the Tibetan Plateau.
authors.affiliation: University of Innsbruck, Institute for Geology, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria. michael.meyer@uibk.ac.at maldenderfer@ucmerced.edu.
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Meyer
authors.affiliation: School of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA. michael.meyer@uibk.ac.at maldenderfer@ucmerced.edu.
authors.forename: M S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Aldenderfer
authors.affiliation: University of Innsbruck, Institute for Geology, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.affiliation: National Isotope Centre, GNS Science, Lower Hutt 5040, New Zealand.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Dahl
authors.affiliation: ADD Ideas Albrecht and Detlev Degering, zum Erzengel Michael 19, D-01723 Mohorn, Germany.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Degering
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA.
authors.forename: W R
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Haas
authors.affiliation: Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research, D-26382 Wilhelmshaven, Germany.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Schlütz
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000266:history*; D000531:Altitude; D001106:Archaeology; D002250:Carbon Radioisotopes; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009790:Occupations / Q000266:history*; D018609:Tibet
chemical_list: D002250:Carbon Radioisotopes