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The data presented in this paper provide direct microbotanical evidence concerning the early use of potato (Solanum tuberosum) within its botanical locus of origin in the high south-central Andes. The data derive from Jiskairumoko, an early village site in the western Titicaca Basin dating to the Late Archaic to Early Formative periods (∼3,400 cal y BC to 1,600 cal y BC). Because the site reflects the transition to sedentism and food production, these data may relate to potato domestication and early cultivation. Of 141 starch microremains recovered from 14 groundstone tools from Jiskairumoko, 50 are identified as consistent with cultivated or domesticated potato, based on reference to published materials and a study of wild and cultivated potato starch morphology. Along with macro- and microbotanical evidence for chenopod consumption and grinding tool data reflecting intensive use of this technology throughout site occupation, the microbotanical data reported here suggest the intensive exploitation, if not cultivation, of plant resources at Jiskairumoko. Elucidating the details of the trajectory of potato domestication is necessary for an overall understanding of the development of highland Andean agriculture, as this crop is central to the autochthonous agricultural suite. A paucity of direct botanical evidence, however, has hindered research efforts. The results of the modern and archaeological starch analyses presented here underscore the utility of this method in addressing questions related to the timing, mode, and context of potato origins.

Sedentism is an adaptive alternative in human societies which is often associated with the emergence of complex societies in the Holocene. To elucidate the factors and processes of the emergence of sedentary societies, continuous accumulation of case studies based on robust evidence from across the world is required. Given abundant archaeological and geological evidence from the late Pleistocene to early Holocene, Tanegashima Island, situated in the southern Japanese Archipelago of the northwestern Pacific Rim, has significant potential to unravel factors and processes of sedentism. Our study evaluates long-term change in hunter-gatherer mobility on Tanegashima Island from the Upper Paleolithic to Incipient Jomon (ca.36,000–12,800 cal BP). Based on Bayesian age modelling, we performed diachronic analyses on lithic toolkit structure, lithic reduction technology, lithic raw material composition, and occupation intensity. The results illustrate that settlement-subsistence strategies on Tanegashima primarily correspond to the change in environmental conditions, mainly food resources, and foragers increased their degrees of sedentism when abundant forest existed. More important is that highly stable sedentism, which is not observed until the Incipient Jomon, depends not only on such a productive environment, but also on the increase in population size. High occupation intensity during the Incipient Jomon on the island is likely attributed to an influx of people from Kyushu proper. Although the relationship between cause and effect of these factors is still to be clarified in future work, our study provides insights on the fundamental causes of sedentism in the temperate forest of the late Pleistocene.

Current models of early human subsistence economies suggest a focus on large mammal hunting. To evaluate this hypothesis, we examine human bone stable isotope chemistry of 24 individuals from the early Holocene sites of Wilamaya Patjxa (9.0–8.7 cal. ka) and Soro Mik’aya Patjxa (8.0–6.5 cal. ka) located at 3800 meters above sea level on the Andean Altiplano, Peru. Contrary to expectation, Bayesian mixing models based on the isotope chemistry reveal that plants dominated the diet, comprising 70–95% of the average diet. Paleoethnobotanical data further show that tubers may have been the most prominent subsistence resource. These findings update our understanding of earliest forager economies and the pathway to agricultural economies in the Andean highlands. The findings furthermore suggest that the initial subsistence economies of early human populations adapting to new landscapes may have been more plant oriented than current models suggest.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314311.].

Neolithization was a complex, protracted process of domestication, sedentarization, and technology change that occurred in various combinations in various times and places around the world. Understanding the causal relationships among those and other important human behaviors remains an analytical challenge. This study examines Neolithization through the lens of lithic artifact variation in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru. Drawing on previous lithics research, we outline a synthetic model linking changing diet, mobility, and projectile technology to predicted trends in lithic assemblages. The expectations are then compared to two large, well-dated lithic assemblages from the Titicaca Basin—one from the Middle/Late Archaic forager site of Soro Mik’aya Patjxa (8.0–6.5 cal. ka) and the other from the Terminal Archaic horticultural site of Jiskairumoko (5.2–3.4 cal. ka). We find that the strongest signal in lithic technology change is related to the introduction of archery technology. Signals for subsistence change and declining mobility are relatively weak. The results suggest an early but unconfirmed adoption of archery technology in the Terminal Archaic Period with major transitions in mobility and diet likely to have occurred subsequently in the Terminal Archaic or Formative periods. The findings are consistent with a behavioral model in which changes in projectile technology played a prominent role in the evolution of resource intensification and residential sedentism as well as resource privatization and sexual division of labor in the high Andes.

The high-altitude transverse valleys [>3,000 m above sea level (masl)] of the Himalayan arc from Arunachal Pradesh to Ladahk were among the last habitable places permanently colonized by prehistoric humans due to the challenges of resource scarcity, cold stress, and hypoxia. The modern populations of these valleys, who share cultural and linguistic affinities with peoples found today on the Tibetan plateau, are commonly assumed to be the descendants of the earliest inhabitants of the Himalayan arc. However, this assumption has been challenged by archaeological and osteological evidence suggesting that these valleys may have been originally populated from areas other than the Tibetan plateau, including those at low elevation. To investigate the peopling and early population history of this dynamic high-altitude contact zone, we sequenced the genomes (0.04×–7.25×, mean 2.16×) and mitochondrial genomes (20.8×–1,311.0×, mean 482.1×) of eight individuals dating to three periods with distinct material culture in the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) of Nepal, spanning 3,150–1,250 y before present (yBP). We demonstrate that the region is characterized by long-term stability of the population genetic make-up despite marked changes in material culture. The ancient genomes, uniparental haplotypes, and high-altitude adaptive alleles suggest a high-altitude East Asian origin for prehistoric Himalayan populations.

Prevailing models of agricultural origins tend to envision that economic hardship drove the transition from foraging to farming economies. Growing human populations and the depletion of high-ranked animal resources forced humans into increasingly intensive and dependent relationships with plant foods. Current evidence from the Andean Altiplano (High Plateau, 3800 masl) identifies the Terminal Archaic Period (5.0–3.5 cal. ka) as the period of economic transition from Archaic foraging economies to Formative Period agro-pastoral economies. Consistent with models of agricultural origins, isotope chemistry (δ 13 C collagen , δ 13 C apatite , δ 15 N collagen ) of human bone samples from 16 individuals from the Terminal Archaic sites of Kaillachuro and Jiskairumoko (5.3–3.0 cal. ka) indicates that C 3 plants comprised approximately 84% of the dietary protein. Archaeobotanical data show that chenopods may have been the most important subsistence resource, and zooarchaeological remains indicate that protein was derived from camelid meat. Inconsistent with the working model of plant intensification, the Terminal Archaic diets reported here are statistically indistinguishable from previously published values of Early—Late Archaic (9.0–6.5 cal. ka) individuals in the same region, which also show approximately 84% of protein coming from plants. Rather than being a process of dramatic dietary change and economic hardship, the agricultural transition on the Altiplano appears to have been one of remarkable resilience in which plant:meat ratios remained relatively stable over six millennia, spanning the transition from Archaic foraging and hunting to Formative farming and herding economies. Plant and animal domestication on the Altiplano thus represents a process of economic sustainability rather than one of food insecurity and hardship, as many prevalent agricultural origins models would suggest.

Present-day Tibetans have adapted both genetically and culturally to the high altitude environment of the Tibetan Plateau, but fundamental questions about their origins remain unanswered. Recent archaeological and genetic research suggests the presence of an early population on the Plateau within the past 40 thousand years, followed by the arrival of subsequent groups within the past 10 thousand years. Here, we obtain new genome-wide data for 33 ancient individuals from high elevation sites on the southern fringe of the Tibetan Plateau in Nepal, who we show are most closely related to present-day Tibetans. They derive most of their ancestry from groups related to Late Neolithic populations at the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau but also harbor a minor genetic component from a distinct and deep Paleolithic Eurasian ancestry. In contrast to their Tibetan neighbors, present-day non-Tibetan Tibeto-Burman speakers living at mid-elevations along the southern and eastern margins of the Plateau form a genetic cline that reflects a distinct genetic history. Finally, a comparison between ancient and present-day highlanders confirms ongoing positive selection of high altitude adaptive alleles. Liu et al. report genome-wide data of 33 ancient individuals from the Himalayas, illuminating the deep genetic history of Tibetans and other Tibeto-Burman-speaking populations around the Tibetan Plateau in fine resolution.

Settlement size predicts extreme variation in the rates and magnitudes of many social and ecological processes in human societies. Yet, the factors that drive human settlement-size variation remain poorly understood. Size variation among economically integrated settlements tends to be heavy tailed such that the smallest settlements are extremely common and the largest settlements extremely large and rare. The upper tail of this size distribution is often formalized mathematically as a power-law function. Explanations for this scaling structure in human settlement systems tend to emphasize complex socioeconomic processes including agriculture, manufacturing, and warfare-behaviors that tend to differentially nucleate and disperse populations hierarchically among settlements. But, the degree to which heavy-tailed settlement-size variation requires such complex behaviors remains unclear. By examining the settlement patterns of eight prehistoric New World hunter-gatherer settlement systems spanning three distinct environmental contexts, this analysis explores the degree to which heavy-tailed settlement-size scaling depends on the aforementioned socioeconomic complexities. Surprisingly, the analysis finds that power-law models offer plausible and parsimonious statistical descriptions of prehistoric hunter-gatherer settlement-size variation. This finding reveals that incipient forms of hierarchical settlement structure may have preceded socioeconomic complexity in human societies and points to a need for additional research to explicate how mobile foragers came to exhibit settlement patterns that are more commonly associated with hierarchical organization. We propose that hunter-gatherer mobility with preferential attachment to previously occupied locations may account for the observed structure in site-size variation.