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EFCHED

Searching for traces of the Southern Dispersal: environmental and historical research on the evolution of human diversity in southern Asia and Australo-Melanesia

This project asked whether or not an early modern human population colonised southern Asia and Australia-Melanesia from Africa independently of the colonisation of western Eurasia.

We investigated whether such a dispersal would actually have been feasible given the environmental conditions at the time.

We also asked whether morphometric analysis of skeletal material from potential population outliers along the hypothesised route, as well as the chronology and technology of Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Arabian Peninsula and South Asia, would highlight any affinity with African groups.

Three of our major findings

1. Coasts, deserts and river valleys: how realistic is the model?

Flint flake from Jwalapuram locality 3A, Middle Palaeolithic, from 1.2m below the base of volcanic tephra dated to 74ka. Image: M PetragliaOur study reviewed information on the coastal environment of the Indian Ocean rim during MIS4, while geographically-explicit simulations estimated the likelihood of human populations using the coasts as dispersal routes.

The results are complex. In certain regions the coasts would have clearly been the most attractive landscape for mobile foragers, but a consistently coastal dispersal is unlikely to have been competitively successful or even sustainable.

2. Tools, landscapes and volcanoes: how critical was South Asia?

Jwalapuram Locality 3, Kurnool district, India. Image: M PetragliaFieldwork on the Upper Pleistocene archaeological record of South Asia revealed a completely unmapped prehistoric landscape in the Kurnool district of peninsular India.

It included the discovery of the longest stratigraphically continuous Pleistocene microlithic industry, with complex and rich patterns of technological variation across space and time.

These discoveries have led to new projects on the potential role of the Toba volcanic eruption on the human occupation of South Asia.

Our preliminary results reinforce those of several genetic studies which point towards South Asia playing a central role in the evolution of human diversity in Eurasia as the main 'first' modern human colony outside Africa.

3. Fossils, pygmies, and islands: how unique are the people of the Indian Ocean rim?

Robust skull from the southern coast of PNG, held at the PNG National Museum, Port Moresby. Image: M LahrOur preliminary analyses of the morphology of South Asian Holocene human fossils, as well as those of Australo-Melanesian populations, also point towards South Asia as an important intermediate phase in the evolution of southern and south-east Asian populations. Furthermore, the combination of longitudinal river systems, deep forests, and later Holocene extreme insularity, has promoted several, probably independent, evolutionary trajectories in South Asia and the South Pacific, creating one of the richest human landscapes in the world.

But our study confirms that all such comparisons are hampered by the lack of earlier fossil remains.

This summary was compiled by Marta Mirazon Lahr and Michael Petraglia. The 'EFCHED-Southern Dispersal' project is directed by Marta Mirazon Lahr and Michael Petraglia (LCHES, Cambridge).

The project has benefited from the work of Julie Field, Chris Clarkson, Charu Sharma, and the contributions of our colleagues Ravi Korisettar, Abdullah Alsharekh, Kevin White, Nick Drake, Pete Ditchfield, Clive Oppenheimer, Nicole Boivin, and Robert Foley. Many students, whose PhD projects overlap with the aims of the project have also played a major part, particularly Sacha Jones, Hannah James, Richard Wielechowski and Jinu Koshy.