Tag: Tibet

Earliest Americans and Denisovan art

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It was Mary Leakey’s jaw-dropping discovery in the 1970s of the footprints of two adult Australopithecus afarensis and an accompanying juvenile in 3.6 Ma-old volcanic ash at Laetoli, Tanzania that provided the oldest palpable evidence of a bipedal hominin species. Just seeing a high-resolution image of this now legendary trackway made me determined to call my book on Earth and human evolution Stepping Stones: the Making of our Homeworld. Human footprints have figured several times in Earth-logs articles. A jumble of footprints in 1.0 to 0.78 Ma old Pleistocene interglacial sediments at Happisbugh on England’s Norfolk coast marks the presence there of Homo antecessor: the earliest known, northern Europeans. In The first volcanologists (March 2003) I noted the discovery of evidence that Neanderthal children played in 350 ka volcanic ash on the Roccamonfina volcano in Italy. The emotion generated by seeing such relics has never left me. Two similarly important proofs of human presence emerged in September 2021.

Footprints thought to have been made by children and teenagers between 23 and 21 thousand years ago in lake shore muds at White Sands, New Mexico. (Credit Bennett et al. 2021)

Since 2011 a variety of evidence has accumulated that the Americas began to be populated by anatomically modern humans before what had long been assumed to be the ‘first arrivals’: the Clovis people who made finely-worked stone spear points first found in 13 ka-old sediments in New Mexico. To the pre-Clovis artefacts that suggested earlier immigrations have been added indisputable signs of human presence even earlier than anticipated. They were uncovered in lake sediments beneath the gypsum sand dunes of White Sands National Park in New Mexico. The site is not far from where Robert Oppenheimer exclaimed to himself ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’ after he witnessed his creation, the first detonation of a nuclear weapon on 9 July 1945. These lake sediments have yielded thousands of human and animal footprints over the years, but the latest have been dated at between 23 to 21 ka (Bennett, M.R. and 13 others 2021. Evidence of humans in North America during the Last Glacial Maximum. Science, v. 373, p. 1528-1531; DOI: 10.1126/science.abg7586). As with the Happisburgh and Roccamonfina human trackways, size analysis suggests that they were made mainly by children and teenagers! Other animal trackways show that the lake edge was teeming with game at the height of the last Ice Age: abundant food for hunter-gatherers generally results in lots of free time. So maybe these early American people were having fun too. When ice sheets were at their maximum extent sea level had fallen, leaving the Bering Strait dry. The broad Beringia land-bridge made the Americas accessible from Eurasia. Whatever objections have previously been raised as regards human penetration south from Alaska during the Last Glacial Maximum, the White Sands find sweeps them away; people overcame whatever obstacles there were.

Travertine outcrop covered with hand- and footprints at Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau (Credit: Zhang et al., Fig. 1c)

Much older footprints and handprints, preserved in a biogenic carbonate (travertine) deposit from the Tibetan Plateau – more than 4,000 metres above sea level – are reported in an article soon to be published by Elsevier (Zhang, D.D. and 17 others 2021. Earliest parietal art: hominin hand and foot traces from the middle Pleistocene of Tibet, Science Bulletin v 66 online; DOI: 10.1016/j.scib.2021.09.001). Travertine forms when calcium carbonate is precipitated from lime-rich spring water onto films of algae or bacteria. At first it is soft and spongy, hardening as more carbonate is precipitated and solidifying when dried out to form a porous rock. People made a jumble of prints when they pressed their hands and feet into the originally spongy biofilm. Three-dimensional images of the slab provide the basis for interpreting how the prints were made. There are 5 handprints and 5 footprints. From comparing their sizes with modern humans’ feet and hands, it seems that the handprints were made by a single 12-year-old, and the footprints by a child of about 7. Although the travertine layer would have been steep and slippery none of the prints show signs of falling or sliding. They seem to have been deliberately placed close to one another, with suggestions that at least one thumb was wiggled. The authors argue that the prints are a form of art similar to the hand stencils commonly seen on Palaeolithic cave walls. It could be that a couple of kids took delight in leaving signs that they had been there, ‘messing around’: but still an art form. What is especially exciting is their age, between 169 and 226 ka. The children are unlikely to have been anatomically modern humans, who first reached Tibet only a little before 21 ka. One alternative is that they were Denisovans (see: Denisovan on top of the world, May 2019.

See also: Bennett, M.R. 2021.  Fossil footprints prove humans populated the Americas thousands of years earlier than we thought. The Conversation, 23 September 2021. 2021Metcalf, T. 2021. Art or not? Ancient handprints spark debate. NBC News, 16 September 2021.

More Denisovan connections

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In 2006 mining operations in NE Mongolia uncovered a human skull cap with prominent brow ridges. After having been dubbed Mongolanthropus because of its primitive appearance and then suggested to be either a Neanderthal of Homo erectus. Radiocarbon dating in 2019 then showed the woman to be around 34,500 years old and the accompanying sequencing of its mtDNA assigned her to a widespread Eurasian haplotype of modern humans. Powdered bone samples ended up in Svante Paabo’s renowned ancient-DNA lab at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and yielded a full genome (Massilani, D. and 14 others 2020. Denisovan ancestry and population history of early East Asians. Science, v. 370, p. 579-583; DOI: 10.1126/science.abc1166). From this flowed some interesting genetic history.

Skull cap of a female modern human from Salkhit in Outer Mongolia, which superficially resembles those of Homo erectus from Java (Credit: Massilani et al. Fig 1a; © Institute of Archaeology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences)

First was a close overall resemblance to living East Asians and Native Americans, similar to that of an older individual from near Beijing, China. This confirmed the antiquity of the East Eurasian population’s split from that of the west, yet contained evidence of some interbreeding with West Eurasians to the extent of sharing 25% of DNA and with Neanderthals. The two specimens also contained evidence of Denisovan ancestry in their genomes, but fragments that are more akin to those in living people in East Asia than to those of Papuans and Aboriginal Australians: these were definitely cosmopolitan people! The simplest explanation is two distinct minglings with Denisovans: that involving ancestors of Papuans and Australian being the perhaps earlier, en route to their arrival at least 60 thousand years on what became an island continent in the run-up to the last glacial maximum. Be that as it may, two separate Denisovan populations interbred with modern human bands. Further genetic connections with ancient Northern Siberian humans suggests complex movement across the continent, probably inevitable because these hunter-gatherers would have followed prey animals on their seasonal migrations, which would have been longer than today because of climatic cooling. The same can be surmised for Denisovans which would have increased the chances of contact

See also: Denisovan DNA in the genome of early East Asians (Science Daily, 29 October 2020)

In May 2019 (Denisovan on top of the world) I wrote about a human lower jaw that a Buddhist monk had found in a cave at a height of 3.3 km on the Tibetan plateau. Analysis of protein traces in the teeth it retained suggested that it was Denisovan. Like the earlier small remnants from Siberia, dating this putative Denisovan precisely proved to be impossible. The jawbone was at least 160 ka old from the age of speleothem carbonate encrusting it. Excavation of the sediment layers from Baishiya Cave has enabled a large team of Chinese, Australian, US and Swedish scientists to try out the ‘environmental DNA’ approach pioneered by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (see: Detecting the presence of hominins in ancient soil samples, April 2017). The cave confirmed occupation by Denisovans from mtDNA found in layers dated using radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence methods. Denisovan mtDNA turned up in four layers dated at ~100, ~60 and possibly as young as 45 ka, as well at that from a variety of other mammals (Zhang, D. and 26 others. Denisovan DNA in Late Pleistocene sediments from Baishiya Karst Cave on the Tibetan Plateau. Science, v. 370, p. 584-587; DOI: 10.1126/science.abb6320).  Denisovans were clearly able to live at high elevations for at least 100 thousand years: long enough to evolve the metabolic processes essential to sustain living in low-oxygen conditions, which it has been suggested was passed on to ancestral modern Tibetans.

Denisovan on top of the world

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Who the Denisovans were is almost completely bound up with their DNA. Until 2019 their only tangible remains were from a single Siberian cave and amounted to a finger bone, a toe bone three molars and fragment of limb bone. Yet they provided DNA from four individuals who lived in Denis the Hermit’s cave from 30 to more than 100 thousand years ago. The analyses revealed that the Denisovans, like the Neanderthals, left their genetic mark in modern people who live outside of Africa, specifically native people of Melanesia and Australia . Remarkably, one of them revealed that a 90 ka female Denisovan was the offspring of a Denisovan father and  a Neanderthal mother whose DNA suggested that she may have come from the far-off Balkans. Living, native Tibetans, whose DNA has been analysed, share a gene (EPAS1) with Denisovans, which regulates the body’s production of haemoglobin and enables Tibetans and Nepalese Sherpas to thrive at extremely high altitudes (see The earliest humans in Tibet).

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The Baishiya Karst Cave in eastern Tibet, with Buddhist prayer flags (credit: Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University )

Part of a hominin lower jaw unearthed by a Buddhist monk in 1980 from a cave on the Tibetan Plateau, at a height of 3280 m, found its way by a circuitous route to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig in 2016. It carries two very large molars comparable in size with those found at the Denisova Cave, and which peculiarly have three roots rather than the four in the jaws of non-Asian, living humans. East Asians commonly show this trait. This and other aspects of the fossil teeth resemble those of some uncategorised early hominin fossils from China. Dating of speleothem calcium carbonate with which the jaw is encrusted suggests that the fossil dates back to at least 160 thousand years ago, around the oldest date recovered from Denisova Cave; during the glacial period before the last one. So the individual was able to survive winter conditions worse than those experienced today on the Tibetan Plateau. Further excavation in the cave found numerous stone artefacts and cut-marked animal bones (Chen, F. and 18 others 2019. A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature, v. 569, published online; DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1139-x).

Unfortunately the Tibetan Jaw did not yield DNA capable of being sequenced, so the issues of inheritance of the ‘high-altitude’ gene and wider relatedness of the individual could not be checked. However, one of the teeth did contain preserved protein that can be analysed in an analogous way to DNA, but with less revealing detail. The results were sufficient to demonstrate that the mandible was consistent with a hominin population closely related to the Denisovans of the Siberian cave.

No doubt a path has already been beaten to the Tibetan cave, in the hope of further hominin material. To me the resemblance of the Tibetan fossil jaw to other hominin finds in China, including those from Xuchang, summarised here, is exciting. None of them have been subject to modern biological analysis. Perhaps the ‘real Denisovan’ will emerge from them.

See also: Mysterious ancient human found on the ‘roof of the world’ (National Geographic magazine); Major discovery suggests Denisovans lived in Tibet 160,000 years ago (New Scientist); Finally, a Denisovan specimen from somewhere beyond Denisova Cave (Ars Technica)

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Explosive erosion in the Himalaya

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As the Yalung-Tsangpo River on the northern flank of the Himalaya approaches  a bend the rotates its flow by almost 180 degrees to become the Brahmaputra it enters one of the world’s largest canyons. Over the 200 km length of the Tsangpo Gorge the river descends two kilometres between peaks that tower 7 km above sea level. Since the area is rising tectonically and as a result of the unloading that attends erosion, for the Tsangpo to have maintained its eastward flow it has been suggested that an average erosion rate of 3 to 5 km per million years was maintained continuously over the last 3 to 5 Ma. However, new information from the sediments downstream of the gorge suggests that much of the gorge’s depth was cut during a series of sudden episodes (Lang, K.A. et al. 2013. Erosion of the Tsangpo Gorge by megafloods, Eastern Himalaya. Geology, v. 41, p. 1003-1006).

English: Map of the Yarlung Tsangpo River wate...
The Yarlung Tsangpo River watershed which drains the north slope of the Himalayas. (credit: Wikipedia)

It has become clear from a series of mountainside terraces that during the Pleistocene glaciers and debris from them often blocked the narrow valleys through which the river flowed along the northern flank of the Himalaya. Each blockage would have impounded enormous lakes upstream of the Tsangpo Gorge, containing up to 800 km3 of water. Failure of the natural dams would have unleashed equally spectacular floods. The researchers from the University of Washington in Seattle examined the valley downstream of the gorge, to find unconsolidated sediments as much as 150 m above the present channel. They have similar grain size distributions to flood deposits laid down some 30 m above the channel by a flood unleashed in 2000 by the failure of a temporary dam caused by a landslide. The difference is that the higher level deposits are densely vegetated and have well-developed soils: they are almost certainly relics of far larger floods in the distant past from the lakes betrayed by the terraces above the Tsangpo Gorge.

By measuring the age of zircons found in the megaflood deposits using the U/Pb methods the team  have been able to show that the sediments were derived mainly from 500 Ma crystalline basement in the Tsangpo Gorge itself rather than from the younger terranes in Tibet. There are four such deposits at separate elevations above the modern river below the gorge. Like the 2000 AD flood deposit, each terrace is capped by landslide debris suggesting that flooding and associated erosion destabilised the steep slopes so characteristic of the region. Because the valleys are so narrow (<200 m at the bottom), each flood would have been extremely deep, flows being of the order of a million cubic metres per second. The huge power would have been capable of moving blocks up to 18 m across with 1 m boulders being carried in suspension. It has been estimated that each of the floods would have been capable of removing material that would otherwise have taken up to 4000 years to erode at present rates of flow.

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