archaeological support for the three-stage expansion of modern humans across northeastern eurasia and into the americas考古支持三级现代人类的扩张在欧亚大陆和美洲东北部.pdfVIP

Archaeological Support for the Three-Stage Expansion of Modern Humans across Northeastern Eurasia and into the Americas Marcus J. Hamilton1,2,3*, Briggs Buchanan4,5 1 Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America, 2 Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America, 3 Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America, 4 Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada, 5 Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, United States of America Abstract Background: Understanding the dynamics of the human range expansion across northeastern Eurasia during the late Pleistocene is central to establishing empirical temporal constraints on the colonization of the Americas [1]. Opinions vary widely on how and when the Americas were colonized, with advocates supporting either a pre-[2] or post-[1,3,4,5,6] last glacial maximum (LGM) colonization, via either a land bridge across Beringia [3,4,5], a sea-faring Pacific Rim coastal route [1,3], a trans-Arctic route [4], or a trans-Atlantic oceanic route [5]. Here we analyze a large sample of radiocarbon dates from the northeast Eurasian Upper Paleolithic to identify the origin of this expansion, and estimate the velocity of colonization wave as it moved across northern Eurasia and into the Americas. Methodology/Principal Findings: We use diffusion models [6,7] to quantify these dynamics. Our results show the expansion originated in the Altai region of southern Siberia ,46kBP , and from there expanded across northern Eurasia at an average velocity of 0.16 km per year. However, the movement of the colonizing wave was not continuous but underwent three distinct phases: