SAS Webinar
Saturday, February 13, 2021
2:00 p.m.
Peopling of the Tibetan Plateau: the occupation history and high-altitude adaptation
by Peiqi Zhang
Tibetan populations have successfully settled in the Tibetan Plateau for generations. As the largest and highest highland in the world, with an average elevation of 4,000 meters above sea level (masl), the Tibetan Plateau is not only surrounded by mountains and alpine peaks but also with many selective pressures for humans to live permanently on this plateau. However, when and how Tibetan populations permanently occupied the region are still under debate. To address these questions, the occupation history and evolution of Tibetans is critical. Therefore, to understand the process of human adaptation to this harsh high-altitude environment, here, the study starts from the human occupation history since Middle Pleistocene to the Holocene, then to investigate the behavioral and biological adaptations in the high-altitude plateau.

Peiqi Zhang. PhD candidate at University of California Davis, whose research interest is the Paleolithic Archaeology and Paleoanthropology, specifically about the behaviors and dispersals of Homo sapiens in eastern Eurasia including areas of Siberia of Russia, Mongolia, and China. Her research focuses on the hunter-gatherer migrations along the Northern route of modern human dispersal, and their response to environmental pressures during the movements, as well as the high-altitude adaptations to the Tibetan Plateau. In
2018 and 2020 Peiqi received scholarships from Sacramento Archeological Society, Inc. to pursue her research.