Response to Comment on "Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene".

We show that Zhang and Li's sedimentological model for the Chusang travertine neglects the three-dimensional information from multiple outcrops and that their optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) age of about 20,000 years for the human imprints is untenable. We highlight the robustness of our chronology and explore reasons why Zhang and Li's OSL age is a gross overestimation of the real depositional age of the imprinted travertine.