2:31 PM - 2:53 PM
[MIS12-03] Appearance of Modern human in Mongolia and Transbaikal, Russia
★Invited Papers
Keywords:Initial Upper Paleolithic, Modern Human, Mongolia and Transbaikal, Russia (MO-TB), Ecosystem changes
The Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) is archaeological phenomena which archaeologists often refer to as one of the “evolved” Upper Paleolithic behaviors: the most widespread, the earliest (~45 ka), appearing as highly variable in its composition and duration, and are discontinuous across Eurasia. In order to better understand whether the broad similarities of material culture reflect phylogenetic connections or broad convergence in its local scale, this paper investigates the correspondence between the chronological sequence from the Initial to Early Upper Paleolithic (EUP) and the ecosystem changes during MIS 3 in Mongolia and Transbaikal, Russia (MO-TB), as a test case. Having a rapid increase in the number of AMS dates in archaeological sites, archaeologists have made a consensus that chronological sequence of the IUP-EUP in MO-TB likely fall within the range of 45,000-30,000 Cal yr BP. Currently, environmental reconstructions are available and those provide higher-resolution than other datasets mainly due to lake sediment core analyses. Combining those archaeological and environmental data, some recent arguments propose that the modern human occupations were possibly placed at the onset of climatic ameliorations: IUP coincides with the interval between Heinrichs event (H) 5 and H4, and EUP between H4 and H3, respectively. Here I present changes in the occupational intensity during the IUP-EUP sites in MOTB, suggesting that the foragers were pulled to hospitable area accompanied by the local ecological changes.