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November 21, 2014Science725 citationsOpen Access

Agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau after 3600 B.P.

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FCFahu ChenGDGuanghui DongDZDingyun Zhang

Key Points

  • The study aims to understand when humans first settled on the Tibetan Plateau and how agriculture enabled their adaptation at high altitudes.
  • Data sets from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau were analyzed to identify the establishment of the first villages around 5200 cal yr B.P.
  • The hypothesis that agropastoral economies facilitated year-round living at high altitudes since 3600 cal yr B.P. was tested.
  • The first villages were established by 5200 cal yr B.P.
  • The agropastoral economy supported successful adaptation to the cooler climate of the late Holocene.
  • Agriculture facilitated permanent human occupation of the Tibetan Plateau at elevations above 2000 to 3000 meters.

Abstract

Our understanding of when and how humans adapted to living on the Tibetan Plateau at altitudes above 2000 to 3000 meters has been constrained by a paucity of archaeological data. Here we report data sets from the northeastern Tibetan Plateau indicating that the first villages were established only by 5200 calendar years before the present (cal yr B.P.). Using these data, we tested the hypothesis that a novel agropastoral economy facilitated year-round living at higher altitudes since 3600 cal yr B.P. This successful subsistence strategy facilitated the adaptation of farmers-herders to the challenges of global temperature decline during the late Holocene.

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Cite This Study

Chen et al. (2014) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69d93cd2c7f0c3ae80a3c6e2https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1259172
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Also Consider

Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context:

  1. 1Permanent Human Occupation of the Western Tibetan Plateau in the Early Holocene2024 · 1 citations
  2. 2Mid-late Holocene cooling shaped agricultural transformation on the Tibetan Plateau2026
  3. 3The linguistic (pre)history on the eastern Tibetan Plateau: a multidisciplinary approach of archaeology, palaeoclimate and linguistics2026
  4. 4High-elevation sheep and goat provisioning on the Tibetan Plateau, 3000–2200 BP2024 · 6 citations
  5. 5Wood use strategies and settlement intensity of the earliest Neolithic populations on the eastern Tibetan Plateau: Evidence from Konglongcun site2026