Modelling plateau peoples: the early human use of the world's high plateaux

Abstract Today, humans live in large numbers at elevations above 2500 metres above sea level. However, the world's high plateaux, despite being surrounded by our ancestors in deep antiquity, remained unoccupied and little used until late in the Pleistocene, and in some reconstructions not until the Holocene. Among the causes that may help to explain the relative tardiness of the use of these plateaux are the challenges posed by their physical accessibility, their limited resource availability and limited behavioural flexibility on the part of some of our hominid ancestors.