Early Sri Lankan coastal site tracks technological change and estuarine resource exploitation over the last ca. 25,000 years.

ABSTRACT: The island of Sri Lanka was part of the South Asian mainland for the majority of the past 115,000 years, and connected most recently during the Last Glacial Maximum via the now submerged Palk Strait. The degree to which rising sea levels shaped past human adaptations from the Pleistocene and into the mid to late Holocene in Sri Lanka has remained unclear, in part because the earliest reliable records of human occupation come from the island's interior, where cave sites have revealed occupation of tropical forest ecosystems extending back to 48 thousand years (ka). The island's earliest known open-air sites are all much younger in date, with ages beginning at 15 ka and extending across the Holocene. Here we report the earliest well-dated open-air coastal site in Sri Lanka, Pathirajawela, wh

SUBMITTER: Amano N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11535000 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature