2007 / 2019-08-30 22:08:37

New Evidence of Highland Silk Road in Prehistory From Qugong Site, in Central Tibetan Plateau

1、第四纪地质与全球变化 > 专题3：史前-历史时期人-环境相互作用

It’s widely accepted that Tibetan Plateau(TP) played a key role in prehistoric cultural communication, where the Eastern crops met the Western ones. However, there is only one piece of evidence from a trial excavation of Changguogou site in central TP. Qugong site is the earliest and most important Neolithic settlement in central TP. Domestic animal bones like yak (Bos grunniens), sheep (Ovis aries) and dog (Canis familiaris) were unearthed here. But no archaeobotanic studies had been done and there was no clue for agriculture so far. We collected sedimentary samples from cultural deposition of the Qugong site. Macroscopic plant remains and phytoliths, together with direct AMS 14C dating on charred grain seeds support that both foxtail millet (Setaria italica), common millet (Panicum miliaceum) from East Asia and wheat (Triticum aestivum), barley (Hordeum vulgare) from West Asia coexisted in Qugong site in late-Second Millennium BC. Artificial relics excavated before also show relationships to the Eastern and Western TP. Multi-evidence indicates that the East and West cultures arrived central TP in late Neolithic Age via different routes. The cross-cultural communication not only flourished central TP in prehistory but also laid the foundation of the later “Highland Silk Road”.