Publication Date:
2015-03-15
Description:
Human occupation of tropical rainforest habitats is thought to be a mainly Holocene phenomenon. Although archaeological and paleoenvironmental data have hinted at pre-Holocene rainforest foraging, earlier human reliance on rainforest resources has not been shown directly. We applied stable carbon and oxygen isotope analysis to human and faunal tooth enamel from four late Pleistocene-to-Holocene archaeological sites in Sri Lanka. The results show that human foragers relied primarily on rainforest resources from at least ~20,000 years ago, with a distinct preference for semi-open rainforest and rain forest edges. Homo sapiens' relationship with the tropical rainforests of South Asia is therefore long-standing, a conclusion that indicates the time-depth of anthropogenic reliance and influence on these habitats.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Roberts, Patrick -- Perera, Nimal -- Wedage, Oshan -- Deraniyagala, Siran -- Perera, Jude -- Eregama, Saman -- Gledhill, Andrew -- Petraglia, Michael D -- Lee-Thorp, Julia A -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Mar 13;347(6227):1246-9. doi: 10.1126/science.aaa1230.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Dyson Perrins Building, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK. patrick.roberts@rlaha.ox.ac.uk. ; Postgraduate Institute of Archaeology, 407 Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo 00700, Sri Lanka. ; Department of Archaeology, Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. ; Division of Geographic, Archaeological and Environmental Sciences, University of Bradford, Bradford BD7 1DP, UK. ; School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, Dyson Perrins Building, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25766234" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Archaeology
;
Carbon Isotopes/analysis
;
Dental Enamel/chemistry
;
Diet
;
*Fossils
;
History, Ancient
;
Humans
;
Oxygen Isotopes/analysis
;
Paleodontology
;
Plants
;
*Rainforest
;
Sri Lanka
;
Time
;
Trees
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
