The Role of High Altitude Landscapes in the Peopling of the New World

DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel White.

The Anzick Site is a multi-component archaeological site located at approximately 5,000 ft above sea level in the Shields River Valley of south central Montana. Included in the archaeological discoveries at the site are the fragmentary human remains of two individuals as well as an assemblage of approximately 115 lithic and osseous tools diagnostic of Clovis Culture technology. This assemblage of tools was thickly covered with red ochre, as was one set of remains, presumably indicating a burial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecil Lewis. Christina Warinner.

Anthropological population geneticists often attempt to explain the pattern and distribution of human genetic variation globally. Central to this pursuit is understanding the degree to which cultural, biological, and geographic variation impact migration of people, and the genetic traits (alleles) they bear. Gene flow, the transfer of alleles from one population to another, flows in the path of least resistance. All other things being equal, this means that topology creates resistance, and we...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Maria Zedeño.

Euroamericans who encountered northern Plains bison hunters in the late 19th century believed that the Blackfoot held the Rocky Mountains in awe and fear, preferring to remain on the plains even as bison and elk herds dwindled. This incorrect assumption has hampered our ability to understand deep-time relationships between mountain and plains cultural expressions. Although the historic Blackfoot did not dwell in high elevations, the character of their relationship with the Rocky Mountain Front...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Daniela Osorio. Calogero Santoro. Marcela Sepúlveda. José Capriles. Paula Ugalde.

The problem of how and when the Andean highland (≥ 3,400 m above sea level) west of the Atacama Desert was colonized by humans has recently been the subject of extensive interdisciplinary research. New information challenges traditional interpretations that occupation of this extreme environment started relatively late in the process of peopling South America. Based on archaeological and paleoecological data from various sites in northern Chile, we propose that the Altiplano, a mega-ecological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lorna Moore.

The question of whether human populations have adapted genetically to high altitude (HA) has been of interest since studies began there in the early 1900s. Throughout the 20th century the dominant paradigm was that the major physiological attributes of HA residents were acquired during development or reflected other shorter-term processes. With the advent of genomic technologies and statistical methods for detecting genetic evidence of natural selection, a paradigm shift and an exponential rise...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Moore. Kurt Rademaker.

Mountain regions above 4000 m have been considered marginal because of low temperatures and low primary productivity compounded by the physical stress of hypoxia. Yet, the archaeological record of the puna (grasslands above 3800 m) of the Andes demonstrates widespread, persistent occupations by hunter-gatherers. The intensity and seasonality of these occupations offer insights into these regions of Peru and of the entry of people into South America more generally. New excavations at the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John Blong.

The earliest evidence for human occupation of eastern Beringia comes from the Tanana and Nenana river basin lowlands 14,000-13,000 calendar years ago, linked to the spread of shrub-tundra vegetation and associated resources as climate ameliorated during the Bølling-Allerød Interstadial. The earliest evidence for human activity in the adjacent uplands of the central Alaska Range is during the Younger Dryas interval, more than a thousand years after the initial colonization of the region....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Karen Weinstein.

High-altitude hypoxia, cold ambient temperatures, and malnutrition are critical environmental stressors affecting living human populations in the highland Andes. Decades of scholarship in human biology explain the complex physiological responses that provide adaptive fitness to living human groups at high altitudes through both developmental acclimatization, in which the human body adjusts to environmental stress during growth, and genetic adaptations from natural selection. Given the longevity...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lars Fehren-Schmitz.

The peopling of the high altitude Andes marks an important episode in South American population history, eventually leading to the formation of the most complex societies of the late pre-Columbian period, namely Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inca. Little is known about how population dynamic processes and genetic adaptation to physical stressors like hypoxia shaped the genetic diversity of the Andean highland populations over the ~10,000 years of human presence in high altitude leading to the emergence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jason LaBelle.

Colorado is well known for the dense concentrations of Paleoindian sites found within its eastern plains as well as several high altitude basins (Middle Park, Gunnison Basin, and San Luis Valley) to the west. Prominent mountain ranges separate these clusters, with the sinuous Continental Divide forming the headwaters of the Colorado, Rio Grande, and Platte River valleys. These mountains, with elevations routinely topping 3000-4000 m, would have presented both challenges and opportunities for the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hugo Yacobaccio.

The goal of this presentation is to review the current evidence in order to model the early peopling of the highlands of Northwestern Argentina. Paleoenvironmental evidence of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene is thoroughly reviewed in order to set the scenario of the process of human settlement at the Puna region of Argentina. I will analyze chronological evidence and the archaeological record –especially the archaeofaunas- of early hunter-gatherer occupations dated between 10,500 to the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Veronica Ortiz. Thomas Lynch.

In 1964 excavations at Quishqui Punku, Lynch described a diverse lithic industry, including small blades and elongated flakes, which I re-analyzed in 2014-15. Lynch did not take samples for radiocarbon dating because of severe mixing and contamination by later agriculturalists. Nevertheless, in this study of the blades and debitage, I recognized two fragments of Fishtail points. Typological considerations suggest occupation from the Terminal Pleistocene through the Early and Middle Holocene...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bonnie Pitblado.

Discussion of the prehistoric peopling of the New World is as old as North American archaeology, and peopling-related debate has only intensified through the decades. Starting with the Great Plains in the 1920s, the major physiographic regions of North America have each experienced “moments in the sun,” as archaeologists have researched Clovis and sometimes pre-Clovis sites in their midst. For reasons that make little sense in retrospect, the Rocky Mountains are the last major North American...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Edward Jolie. Verónica Lema. Sara López Campeny.

Accumulating evidence from Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene sites in the Americas attests to the antiquity and sophistication of perishable technologies such as cordage, netting, basketry, and textiles. Although the record of perishable industries is limited principally by factors of preservation, reevaluation of the available data for plant fiber-based technologies, and direct radiocarbon dates, continue to provide insights into the importance of these earliest perishable artifacts and...