Tales of the Earliest Human Uses of the World’s Mountain Ranges

Abstract/Description

Chitral, one of the secluded valleys of Pakistan is located on the westernmost part of the Himalaya and on the southern slope of the Hindu Kush Mountain ranges. The valley is counted among the highest regions of the world ranging from 1094 metres at Arundu to 7726 metres at Tirich Mayer. Chitral occupies the northwesterly part of the present Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan. It has the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan to the west, Wakhan to the north, The Gilgit Baltistan region of Pakistan to the east and Dir and Swat districts to the south. The mountainous nature of the valley is extreme, with over forty peaks exceeding 6000 metres. Between these tall mountains, there are small but fertile valleys along the rivers and smaller streams that provided sufficient resources for human population for survival since the prehistoric time. The mountain passes also played a significant role in human migration and traveling. Archaeological field investigations in the Hindu Kush-Himalaya region of Chitral has revealed tales of the early peoples, ranging from the prehistoric to the 21st century. The remains of these stories are found in the form of rock art, cemeteries, ancient forts & fortresses, tombs and shrines along with portable artefacts including households, ritual and trade objects. Apart from the archaeological remains, there are also interesting tales about the early humans still preserved in the memory of the local community. The present research is based on the archaeological findings collected through explorations and excavation and traditional stories, orally transferred from one generation to the others, which are often neglected by archaeologists while narrating the human past of this mountainous region. The present research is thus aimed at considering the anthropological knowledge of the local communities along with the archaeological data to understand the tales of human past. It highlights the significance and limitation of anthropological knowledge to understand and interpret the archaeological data to complete the tales of early humans. This present research also elaborates the exceptional features of the early human tales found in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region of Chitral.

Abstract/Description

Co-author Bonnie Pitblado argued in a 2017 paper that the Rocky Mountains were an earlier and more important part of the initial peopling of the western hemisphere than most archaeologists had traditionally believed. In this presentation, we summarize evidence for the earliest occupation of the Rockies, beginning in Clovis time (13,400 – 12,600 cal BP) and increasing in the immediately subsequent Folsom era (12,800 – 12,300 cal BP). We use this big picture to contextualize the very recent findings of co-author Powell in the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB) of southwestern Colorado, where he has documented Clovis artifacts in contexts where they have previously not been known to occur. We also touch on the method Powell used—partnering with local UGB residents who possess artifact collections from their ranches—to detect traces of that very rare early material. We end with the suggestion that in places like the western United States, where private land owners legally possess most of the material record of the past, understanding Clovis and other difficult-to-detect components of the archaeological record requires such collaboration.

Abstract/Description

Once upon a time, at the end of the Pleistocene (between 13,000 and 11,700 years ago), cold conditions in the North Atlantic pushed the Intertropical Convergence Zone southward over the central Andes. The South American Summer Monsoon, which brings precipitation to the Andean highlands, was strengthened. Rainfall increased, lake levels rose, and biotic productivity was boosted, just as the first people were setting foot on the last major continent where no human had gone before. Archaeological sites between 2500 and 4500 meters above sea level in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina attest to extensive human presence in the mountains by 12,000 years ago, soon after, or perhaps at the same time as, the earliest sites in adjacent lowlands.

How and why did people choose to engage with the high Andes so soon after initial arrival to South America? The answer may lie in deep-time cultural knowledge of mountain systems, their challenges, resources, and opportunities. In this talk I will examine some probable reasons why people chose to explore and reside in the Andes, drawing on geographic, ecological, and archaeological lines of evidence. Early transfers of obsidian from many geologic sources in the Andes provide a temporal baseline for thorough knowledge of the topographically complex highlands by early South Americans. How this knowledge was acquired so quickly currently confounds explanation, although I will suggest some possibilities.

Abstract/Description

Australia’s Eastern Highlands have traditionally been viewed as a cold-climate barrier to Late Pleistocene mobility, with older evidence restricted to elevations below the periglacial zone. However, this model has not been adequately tested with regionally specific, high-resolution archaeological data. Here we report new excavation results from a high-altitude (1,073m) cave, Dargan Shelter, in the upper Blue Mountains, which indicate that occupation first occurred ~ 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum (LGM), making this the highest elevation Pleistocene site so far identified in Australia. We provide evidence for previously undetected interactions along the mountain range and the repeated use of this cold-climate landscape during the Late Pleistocene. Our results align the Australian continent for the first time with global sequences which indicate that cold climates were not necessarily natural barriers to human mobility and occupation.