How early people conquered the ‘Roof of the World’
The Tibetan Plateau doesn’t seem like a very inviting place to live. At nearly three miles above sea level, the air is extremely thin. And yet, despite minimal vegetation and frigid temperatures, people have made this highland home – perhaps for tens of thousands of years.
Stone tools newly unearthed on the plateau could be the first hard evidence that people made a living at those high elevations some 30,000 years ago. Genetics had hinted at that timeline, but archaeologists hadn’t found any sites older than 15,000 years old – until now. The new find was published Thursday in the journal Science.
The peopling of such a seemingly hostile environment is a
Human adaptabilitySecret of our success