In spite of the harsh climate, freezing many regions of Tibet's upper plateaus in the mountains of Asia, researchers have uncovered a rich anthropological history of the past amidst frozen objects of the past. And what they reveal is that even in the far off past, the surmounting odds against survival in the region known as the "Roof of the World" created many interesting challenges for ancient man.
Tribes need to learn how to work together, how to traverse harsh terrain, how to find/build shelter, and above all, they had to learn how to feed themselves year-round. And though the odds were stacked against them, with frigid temperatures and low-oxygen conditions complicating living conditions in the new place early Tibetans called their new home, researchers now say that early men were able to conquer this uninhabited ecosystem thanks to a cold-hardy crop used to make beer - barley.
Publishing their results this week in the journal Science, archaeologists from the University of Cambridge described 53 archaeological sites in the Qinghai province of northwestern China, where remnants of human habitation in intense regions from 5,600 to 11,000 feet above sea level. And while signs of periodic human presence in the region date back to the Ice Age at least 20,000 years ago, researchers say that permanent settlements with agriculture and livestock practices emerging 3,600 years ago were contingent on the introduction of species like barley, which were imported into the region at that time.
"They could quite plausibly be the earliest sustained settlements in the world at this altitude" co-author on the study, archaeologist Martin Jones says. "As barley is frost hardy and cold tolerant, it grows very well on the Tibetan Plateau even today."
"Therefore, barley agriculture could provide people enough - and sustained - food supplies even during wintertime."
Taking a genetic and adaptive point of view for their newest study, the researchers reveal the essential nature that high-altitude and cold-resistant species like barley played in the development of human culture in Tibetan plateaus. And while some archaeological sites revealed intermittent habitation in the coldest peaks back to the Ice Age, it appears that it wasn't until the introduction of suitable crops for agriculture that civilizations moved their cities farther north - an important expansion in the history of mankind.
But researchers also say that livestock was of vital importance in sustaining early settlements. By domesticating sheep around the same time as the introduction of barley and wheat, which were grown side by side, early settlers were able to conquer extreme altitudes and expand their habitats even higher over time. Something that points to a distinct expansion in not only the trade in between civilizations, but also the pan-continental cultural exchange between two hemispheres, that allowed for early man to find a new niche with an entirely new set of possibilities.
"Our current knowledge of agricultural foods emphasizes a relatively small number of crops growing in the intensively managed lowlands" Jones says. "The more we learn about the rich ecology of past and present societies, and the wider range of crops they raised in the world's more challenging environments, the more options we will have for thinking through food security issues in the future."
