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Radiocarbon Date Frequency as an Index of Intensity of Paleolithic Occupation of Siberia: Did Humans React Predictably to Climate Oscillations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Stuart J Fiedel  and
Yaroslav V Kuzmin
Stuart J Fiedel*
Affiliation:
Louis Berger Group, 203 East Cary Street, Suite 100, Richmond, Virginia 23219, USA
Yaroslav V Kuzmin
Affiliation:
Pacific Institute of Geography, Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Radio St. 7, Vladivostok 690041, Russia. Email: ykuzmin@tig.dvo.ru
*
Corresponding author. Email: sfiedel@louisberger.com
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Abstract

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Upper Paleolithic humans occupied southern Siberia by about 43,000–38,000 BP (14C yr), and afterward continued to live there despite the very cold climate. If climatic conditions limited expansion of the colonizing population in northern Siberia, the Paleolithic ecumene should have contracted during the coldest episodes within the last 40,000 yr, and fewer 14C-dated sites should be known from those periods. In fact, the human population seems to have remained stable or even expanded during cold periods. Comparison of calibrated 14C dates for Siberian occupations with Greenland ice cores fails to demonstrate a simple correlation between climatic fluctuations and the dynamics of human colonization and persistence in Siberia between about 36,000 and 12,000 BP. Cold climate does not appear to have posed any significant challenge to humans in Siberia in the Late Pleistocene, and a supposed Last Glacial Maximum “hiatus” in population dynamics seems illusory.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , 2007 , pp. 741 - 756
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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