Constraining the chronology and ecology of Late Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupations at the margins of the monsoon.

ABSTRACT: South Asia hosts the world's youngest Acheulean sites, with dated records typically restricted to sub-humid landscapes. The Thar Desert marks a major adaptive boundary between monsoonal Asia to the east and the Saharo-Arabian desert belt to the west, making it a key threshold to examine patterns of hominin ecological adaptation and its impacts on patterns of behaviour, demography and dispersal. Here, we investigate Palaeolithic occupations at the western margin of the South Asian monsoon at Singi Talav, undertaking new chronometric, sedimentological and palaeoecological studies of Acheulean and Middle Palaeolithic occupation horizons. We constrain occupations of the site between 248 and 65 thousand years ago. This presents the first direct palaeoecological evidence for landscapes occupied

SUBMITTER: Blinkhorn J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8492674 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature