Covering an area of 1 million square miles, the Tibetan Plateau is often called the "roof of the world" and is the highest landmass in the world, with an average altitude of 14,000 feet. Despite the extremely harsh environment, humans have been permanent residents there since prehistoric times. Using advanced geospatial modeling, new research has uncovered ancient "mobile highways" that connected communities on the Tibetan Plateau, revealing the role of environmental adaptability in shaping human social relationships and cultural identity.
Today, agriculture and animal husbandry play an important role in the economy of the Tibetan Plateau, as it has historically. To make the most of the harsh environment, farmers, agro-pastoralists and mobile pastoralists interacted and moved with each other, which in turn shaped the overall economic and cultural geography of the plateau.
A new study published today (February 2) in Scientific Reports by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Sichuan University in China traces the roots of long-term cultural interactions on the Tibetan Plateau to prehistoric times, as far back as the Bronze Age.
The researchers used advanced geospatial modeling techniques to compare environmental and archaeological evidence linking ancient mobility and subsistence strategies to the cultural connections that developed between Bronze Age and Iron Age farmers and pastoralists. Their results suggest that these strategies influenced settlement patterns and the transmission of pottery styles (such as the materials used, features and decorative features of the pots) between distant prehistoric groups on the plateau.
The study was made possible thanks to advances in geospatial data analysis and high-resolution remote sensing technology, said Michael Frachetti, the study's corresponding author and professor of archeology in the University of Washington's College of Arts and Sciences.
First, the researchers modeled the optimal migration paths used by prehistoric farmers and herders, based on land cover and the environment's ability to support crop or herd needs. For example, plateau herders often migrate through areas rich in grass resources toward the more limited arable land on the plateau. Repeating patterns emerging from these simulations are statistically correlated with the geographical location of thousands of prehistoric sites on the Tibetan Plateau.
To test how these routes might have affected social interactions, the team compiled a large database of published archaeological finds from Bronze and Iron Age sites across Tibet and generated a social network based on the shared techniques and designs of the ceramics found at these sites. The resulting social network shows that even distant sites were well-connected and well-connected across the land of Tibet thousands of years ago.
Frachetti said: "When we overlaid mobility maps with social networks, we found a strong correlation between subsistence-oriented mobility routes and strong connections in material culture between regional communities, suggesting the emergence of 'mobility highways' over hundreds of years of use. Not only does this tell us that people moved based on the needs of farming and grazing - which were heavily influenced by environmental potential - but it also tells us that mobility was key to building social relationships and the regional identity of ancient communities on the Tibetan Plateau."
Their findings also revealed an interesting caveat: These patterns were not consistent between western and eastern Tibet. The authors believe this points to an alternative cultural orientation in Central Asia, where similar mobility patterns linked prehistoric communities to the west. These East-West differences have also been found in other archaeological studies, they said.
"For decades, archaeologists have been trying to understand how and why ancient human communities established social relationships and cultural identities in Tibet's extreme terrain," said first author Chen Xinzhou, who received his PhD from the University of Washington in 2023 and now works at the Center for Archaeological Science at Sichuan University. This study provides a new perspective on exploring the formation of human social cohesion in archaeology. "
Compiled source: ScitechDaily