Department of Anthropology, South Stevens Hall, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5773, USA. Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Schloß Hohentübingen, Burgsteige 11, 72070 Tübingen, Germany. Climate Change Institute, Bryand Global Sciences Center, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469, USA.
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory, Department of Physics and School of Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
Science. 2014 Oct 24;346(6208):466-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1258260.
Study of human adaptation to extreme environments is important for understanding our cultural and genetic capacity for survival. The Pucuncho Basin in the southern Peruvian Andes contains the highest-altitude Pleistocene archaeological sites yet identified in the world, about 900 meters above confidently dated contemporary sites. The Pucuncho workshop site [4355 meters above sea level (masl)] includes two fishtail projectile points, which date to about 12.8 to 11.5 thousand years ago (ka). Cuncaicha rock shelter (4480 masl) has a robust, well-preserved, and well-dated occupation sequence spanning the past 12.4 thousand years (ky), with 21 dates older than 11.5 ka. Our results demonstrate that despite cold temperatures and low-oxygen conditions, hunter-gatherers colonized extreme high-altitude Andean environments in the Terminal Pleistocene, within about 2 ky of the initial entry of humans to South America.
研究人类对极端环境的适应对于理解我们的文化和生存的遗传能力非常重要。秘鲁安第斯山脉南部的普雄盆地拥有世界上已发现的海拔最高的更新世考古遗址，比有明确日期的当代遗址高出约 900 米。普雄工作坊遗址（海拔 4355 米）包括两个鱼尾状投掷尖状器，其年代约为 12800 至 11500 年前。昆恰恰洞穴避难所（海拔 4480 米）拥有一个强大、保存完好且经过良好年代测定的居住序列，跨越了过去的 12400 年，其中有 21 个日期早于 11500 年。我们的研究结果表明，尽管温度较低，氧气含量较低，但是在人类进入南美洲的最初 2000 年内，狩猎采集者就在更新世末期殖民了极端高海拔的安第斯环境。
