The dispersal and adaptation of Homo sapiens onto the Tibetan Plateau during MIS 3: an Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblage from Nwya Devu?

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The Tibetan Plateau is one of the most challenging environments inhabited by humans, where high elevation, rugged terrain, hypobaric hypoxia, cold temperatures, and strong seasonality impose significant constraints on human mobility and long-term settlement. We present a comprehensive study of the assemblage from Nwya Devu site to examine lithic production strategies and their implications for understanding human dispersal and occupation of the interior of the Tibetan Plateau during Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3). Our results indicate that lithic production at Nwya Devu reflects a genuine Upper Paleolithic blade system with relatively low technological investment and features consistent with a lithic workshop located near local raw material sources. From a regional perspective, Nwya Devu is a rare, excavated Upper Paleolithic blade assemblage that, alongside the Initial Upper Paleolithic (IUP) documented at Shuidonggou in North China, shows a general technological affinity with the blade-based industries widespread across the cold habitats of the Eurasian Steppe. However, the Nwya Devu blade assemblage lacks the major diagnostic features characteristic of the IUP industries at Shuidonggou and other typical northern IUP sites. This divergence may represent a regionally modified IUP variant, resulting from long-distance transmission and/or incomplete preservation of the full technological repertoire at a workshop site. Alternatively, Nwya Devu may reflect a separate dispersal of blade technology and its associated human populations from northern Asia into East Asia. Overall, these findings contribute new archaeological evidence regarding technological dispersal and human expansion, potentially by Homo sapiens , into the high-altitude environments of the Tibetan Plateau during MIS 3.