Breaching the Biogeographic Boundary: Early expansions of modern humans into monsoonal Asia
- Date: Feb 22, 2023
- Time: 01:30 PM - 02:30 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Dr. James Blinkhorn
- Pan African Evolution Research Group, MPI-GEA
- Location: Zoom
- Host: Department of Archaeology
- Contact: gjha@shh.mpg.de
Today, half of the world’s population live in regions dominated by the Asian Monsoon and are reliant upon it and the unique ecologies it supports for both water and food security. This talk will explore the first steps of early modern human populations into monsoonal Asia, focusing on western India
Firstly, the talk will examine why focusing on a biogeographic threshold separating monsoonal Asia from the Saharo-Arabian desert belt may offer a more appropriate, bottom up structure to explore human expansions than traditional top-down evaluations based on a binary division of African and Eurasia. Secondly, the talk will review recent geomorphological and archaeological evidence from western India spanning the later Middle and Late Pleistocene. Finally, the talk will evaluate evidence from western India in the context of broader regional and global records of human dispersals.