The Timing and Nature of Human Colonization of Southeast Asia in the Late Pleistocene: A Rock Art Perspective

The rock art of Southeast Asia has been less thoroughly studied than that of Europe or Australia, and it has generally been considered to be more recent in origin. New dating evidence from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia, however, demonstrates that the earliest motifs (hand stencils and naturalistic animals) are of late Pleistocene age and as early as those of Europe. The similar form of the earliest painted motifs in Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia suggests that they are the product of a shared underlying behaviour, but the difference in context (rockshelters) indicates that experiences in deep caves cannot have been their inspiration.

Download Full-text

Palaeolithic Cave Art at Creswell Crags in European Context

10.1093/oso/9780199299171.001.0001 ◽

2007 ◽

Keyword(s):

Late Pleistocene ◽

Rock Art ◽

Ice Age ◽

Upper Palaeolithic ◽

Southern France ◽

European Context ◽

The World ◽

Cave Art ◽

Illustrated Book

Cave art is a subject of perennial interest among archaeologists. Until recently it was assumed that it was largely restricted to southern France and northern Iberia, although in recent years new discoveries have demonstrated that it originally had a much wider distribution. The discovery in 2003 of the UK's first examples of cave art, in two caves at Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border, was the most surprising illustration of this. The discoverers (the editors of the book) brought together in 2004 a number of Palaeolithic archaeologists and rock art specialists from across the world to study the Creswell art and debate its significance, and its similarities and contrasts with contemporary Late Pleistocene ("Ice Age") art on the Continent. This comprehensively illustrated book presents the Creswell art itself, the archaeology of the caves and the region, and the wider context of the Upper Palaeolithic era in Britain, as well as a number of up-to-date studies of Palaeolithic cave art in Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy which serve to contextualize the British examples.

Download Full-text

Late Pleistocene human paleoecology in the highland savanna ecosystem of mainland Southeast Asia

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-96260-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kantapon Suraprasit ◽

Rasmi Shoocongdej ◽

Kanoknart Chintakanon ◽

Hervé Bocherens

Keyword(s):

Southeast Asia ◽

Late Pleistocene ◽

Tooth Enamel ◽

Stable Carbon Isotope ◽

Lower Latitude ◽

Stable Carbon ◽

Hunter Gatherers ◽

Carbon And Oxygen Isotope ◽

Northwestern Thailand ◽

Mainland Southeast Asia

AbstractThe late Pleistocene settlement of highland settings in mainland Southeast Asia by Homo sapiens has challenged our species’s ability to occupy mountainous landscapes that acted as physical barriers to the expansion into lower-latitude Sunda islands during sea-level lowstands. Tham Lod Rockshelter in highland Pang Mapha (northwestern Thailand), dated between 34,000 and 12,000 years ago, has yielded evidence of Hoabinhian lithic assemblages and natural resource use by hunter-gatherer societies. To understand the process of early settlements of highland areas, we measured stable carbon and oxygen isotope compositions of Tham Lod human and faunal tooth enamel. Our assessment of the stable carbon isotope results suggests long-term opportunistic behavior among hunter-gatherers in foraging on a variety of food items in a mosaic environment and/or inhabiting an open forest edge during the terminal Pleistocene. This study reinforces the higher-latitude and -altitude extension of a forest-grassland mosaic ecosystem or savanna corridor (farther north into northwestern Thailand), which facilitated the dispersal of hunter-gatherers across mountainous areas and possibly allowed for consistency in a human subsistence strategy and Hoabinhian technology in the highlands of mainland Southeast Asia over a 20,000-year span near the end of the Pleistocene.

Download Full-text

Human Colonization of Asia in the Late Pleistocene: An Introduction to Supplement 17

Current Anthropology ◽

10.1086/694420 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 58 (S17) ◽

pp. S373-S382 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Christopher J. Bae ◽

Katerina Douka ◽

Michael D. Petraglia

Keyword(s):

Late Pleistocene ◽

Human Colonization

Download Full-text

Re-evaluating the origins of late Pleistocene fire areas on Santa Rosa Island, California, USA

Quaternary Research ◽

10.1016/j.yqres.2012.06.006 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 78 (2) ◽

pp. 353-362 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Torben C. Rick ◽

John S. Wah ◽

Jon M. Erlandson

Keyword(s):

Late Pleistocene ◽

Younger Dryas ◽

Fire Regimes ◽

Fire Frequency ◽

X Ray Diffraction ◽

X Ray ◽

Sedimentary Deposits ◽

Natural Fires ◽

Human Colonization ◽

Santa Rosa Island

AbstractAt the close of the Pleistocene, fire regimes in North America changed significantly in response to climate change, megafaunal extinctions, anthropogenic burning and possibly, even an extraterrestrial impact. On California's Channel Islands, researchers have long debated the nature of late Pleistocene “fire areas,” discrete red zones in sedimentary deposits, interpreted by some as prehistoric mammoth-roasting pits created by humans. Further research found no evidence that these red zones were cultural in origin, and two hypotheses were advanced to explain their origin: natural fires and groundwater processes. Radiocarbon dating, X-ray diffraction analysis, and identification of charcoal from six red zones on Santa Rosa Island suggest that the studied features date between ~ 27,500 and 11,400 cal yr BP and resulted from burning or heating, not from groundwater processes. Our results show that fire was a component of late Pleistocene Channel Island ecology prior to and after human colonization of the islands, with no clear evidence for increased fire frequency coincident with Paleoindian settlement, extinction of pygmy mammoths, or a proposed Younger Dryas impact event.

Download Full-text