Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene Emma M. Finestone ID1,2*, Paul S. Breeze3, Sebastian F. M. Breitenbach4, Nick Drake2,3, Laura Bergmann5, Farhod Maksudov6, Akmal Muhammadiyev6, Pete Scott ID7, Yanjun Cai8, Arina M. Khatsenovich9, Evgeny P. Rybin9, Gernot Nehrke10, Nicole Boivin2,11,12,13, Michael Petraglia2,11,14,15 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Finestone EM, Breeze PS, Breitenbach SFM, Drake N, Bergmann L, Maksudov F, et al. (2022) Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene. PLoS ONE 17(10): e0273984. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0273984 Editor: Marco Peresani, Universita degli Studi di Ferrara, ITALY Received: March 24, 2022 Accepted: August 19, 2022 Published: October 21, 2022 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273984 Copyright: © 2022 Finestone et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 1 Department of Anthropology, The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland, OH, United States of America, 2 Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany, 3 Department of Geography, Kings College London, London, United Kingdom, 4 Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom, 5 Department of Physical Geography, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany, 6 National Center of Archaeology, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences, Tashkent, Uzbekistan, 7 Centre for Microscopy, Characterisation and Analysis, The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, 8 Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, 9 Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, 10 AlfredWegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany, 11 School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, 12 Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada, 13 Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States of America, 14 Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, United States of America, 15 Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia * Abstract Central Asia is positioned at a crossroads linking several zones important to hominin dispersal during the Middle Pleistocene. However, the scarcity of stratified and dated archaeological material and paleoclimate records makes it difficult to understand dispersal and occupation dynamics during this time period, especially in arid zones. Here we compile and analyze paleoclimatic and archaeological data from Pleistocene Central Asia, including examination of a new layer-counted speleothem-based multiproxy record of hydrological changes in southern Uzbekistan at the end of MIS 11. Our findings indicate that Lower Palaeolithic sites in the steppe, semi-arid, and desert zones of Central Asia may have served as key areas for the dispersal of hominins into Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene. In agreement with previous studies, we find that bifaces occur across these zones at higher latitudes and in lower altitudes relative to the other Paleolithic assemblages. We argue that arid Central Asia would have been intermittently habitable during the Middle Pleistocene when long warm interglacial phases coincided with periods when the Caspian Sea was experiencing consistently high water levels, resulting in greater moisture availability and more temperate conditions in otherwise arid regions. During periodic intervals in the Middle Pleistocene, the local environment of arid Central Asia was likely a favorable habitat for paleolithic hominins and was frequented by Lower Paleolithic toolmakers producing bifaces. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273984 October 21, 2022 1 / 31 PLOS ONE Funding: This work was funded by the Max Planck Society: https://www.shh.mpg.de/en. Research by PSB was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (ECF2019-538). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have decades that no competing interests exist. Paleolithic occupation of arid Central Asia in the Middle Pleistocene Introduction Central Asia is situated at a crossroad that links east and north Asia with Europe and the Levant. This region is fundamental to questions of early hominin dispersals because of its position at the gateway between key regions where at least two Middle Pleistocene hominin species are known to have interacted [1]. Subsequently our own species also moved through these regions [2, 3], with the routes and timings of its initial dispersals remaining debated. Despite the importance of Central Asia for understanding the spatial and temporal patterning of hominin occupations in Eurasia, however, our knowledge of hominin activity in this vast and diverse landscape is disproportionately limited when compared with other regions on the continent. Because of the absence of dated and stratified Lower Paleolithic sites in Central Asia, most studies have focused on the region’s Middle and Upper Paleolithic occupation. Currently, available evidence indicates that the Pamir, Tian Shan, and Altai mountains served as corridors of occupation and movement for populations of multiple hominin species through the Late Middle and Late Pleistocene, including Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans [4]. Hominins occupied Central Asia consistently through the Late Pleistocene, even throughout periods of climatic downturn during the coldest episodes of the Last Glacial Period [5–8]. However, the initial occupation of Central Asia and the role the low and mid-altitude plains played in dispersal and occupation remain poorly understood and contentious. The early colonization of Central Asia has been previously reviewed most notably by Ranov and Davis [9], Davis and Ranov [10], Vishnyatsky [11], Derevianko [12], and Glantz [13]. However, understanding the environmental dynamics of these regions is made difficult by the lack of well-dated paleoclimat (...truncated)