9A short chronology for the peopling of the Tibetan Plateau

Archeological research over the past several years has started to provide evidence relevant to understanding both the timing of and processes responsible for human colonization of the Tibetan Plateau. This harsh, high-elevation environment is known to exact a heavy demographic toll on recent migrants, and such costs likely erected a substantial biogeographic barrier to initial human colonization. This chapter presents a series of simple metapopulation models that link processes of colonization to mutually exclusive archeological predictions. Current archeological evidence from the northern Tibetan Plateau suggests that seasonal forays into high elevation settings were ‘‘adaptive radiations’ ’ coincident with the appearance of both Early (ca. 30 ka) and Late Upper Paleolithic (ca. 15 ka) adaptations in low-elevation sourc