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Lake-centred sedentary lifestyle of early Tibetan Plateau Indigenous populations at high elevation 4,400 years ago

Nature Ecology & Evolution (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

The onset of sedentism on the Tibetan Plateau is often presumed to be associated with the dispersal of agriculture or farmers from archaeological sites located in the low elevation margins of the plateau. Previous studies of the plateau assumed that all foragers were probably mobile, but few systematic excavations at forager sites have been conducted to inform us about their settlement patterns. Here we report the world’s highest elevation sedentary way of living exhibited by the Mabu Co site at 4,446 metres above sea level, deep in the interior of the Tibetan Plateau 4,400–4,000 years ago. Our interdisciplinary study indicates that the site was occupied by Indigenous inhabitants of the plateau, representing the earliest known DNA evidence of foragers who predominantly harbour the southern plateau ancestry. The evidence shows that they had a sedentary lifestyle primarily supported by fishing at nearby lakes, supplemented by mammal and bird hunting, as well as small-scale exchanges of millet and rice crops.

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Fig. 1: Geographical location and setting of the Mabu Co site.
Fig. 2: Typical profile of the Mabu Co site, fishing tools and charred crop plant remains.
Fig. 3: Genetic characterization of Mabu Co human bones.
Fig. 4: Evidence for year-round hunting.
Fig. 5: δ13C and δ15N results for human, animal and crop remains from the Mabu Co site.

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Data availability

Key data used in this study are available in the main text, Extended Data Figs. 1–10 and the accompanying Supplementary Information. Other datasets generated in this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request. The raw sequencing reads, aligned BAM files and the mitochondria FASTA files are available through the Genome Sequence Archive and the Genbase datasets (https://bigd.big.ac.cn/gsa-human and https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/genbase; accession no. PRJCA024667; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/s/LZ2QzlVY; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/genbase/review/4969bfb8c3f4). The pseudo-diploid genotype calls are available through the OMIX database, China National Center for Bioinformation/Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (accession no. OMIX006078; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/omix/preview/g7zYGt1X; https://share.cncb.ac.cn/9eac48fa9254). Ancient human and archaeological samples have been stored at the Tibetan Institute of the Preservation of Cultural Relics.

Code availability

The software used for the population genetics analysis (smartpca, f3, f4, qpAdm) was based on the ADMIXTOOLS (https://github.com/DReichLab/AdmixTools) and EIG (https://github.com/DReichLab/EIG) tools developed by the David Reich lab. All PAR files containing the parameters used in the analysis and the scripts used for plotting and table creation are available at https://github.com/RickRan/MabuCo.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the support of the National Cultural Heritage Administration and Tibetan Cultural Heritage Administration for our excavations in 2020–2023. We thank the villagers in Gala Town, Kangmar county, Tibet Autonomous Region, for their participation in the excavation of the Mabu Co site. We also thank H. Wang, Z. Ma, Z. Ling, X. Shen, Yongco, Y. Wang and Y. Lu for their help with the field surveys that led to the first discovery of the Mabu Co site, and B. Fitzhugh, H. Lu and D. Zhang for their helpful comments on this paper. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41930323 to X.Y. and grant no. 41988101 to F.C.), the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (grant no. 2019QZKK0601 to F.C., X.Y., S.W. and Y.G.), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 2022068 to Y.G.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41925009 to Q.F.), the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2021YFC1523600 to Q.F.) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. YSBR-019 to Q.F. and grant no. 2023000065 to Y.L.).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Xiaoyan Yang, Yu Gao, Shargan Wangdue, Jingkun Ran, Qing Wang, Songtao Chen, Jishuai Yang, Tianyi Wang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), Key Scientific Research Base of Bioarchaeology in Cold and Arid Regions (National Cultural Heritage Administration), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, China

    Xiaoyan Yang, Jishuai Yang, Yaofei Tian, Jianglong Guo, Ting You & Fahu Chen

  2. Group of Alpine Paleoecology and Human Adaptation (ALPHA), State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System, Resources and Environment (TPESRE), Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xiaoyan Yang, Yu Gao, Jingkun Ran, Qing Wang, Songtao Chen, Jishuai Yang, Zhengquan Gu, Ying Zhang, Shungang Chen, Qingli Sun, Yunzhe Huang, Xu Han, Qi Yang, Yunming Wang, Shihua Hu, Xinwei Liang, Yunan Zhang & Fahu Chen

  3. Tibetan Institute of the Preservation of Cultural Relics, Lhasa, China

    Shargan Wangdue, Yan Tong & Yazhong Li

  4. Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jingkun Ran, Tianyi Wang, Peng Cao, Qingyan Dai, Feng Liu, Xiaotian Feng, Yichen Liu & Qiaomei Fu

  5. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jingkun Ran, Qing Wang, Tianyi Wang, Shungang Chen, Yunzhe Huang, Xu Han, Qi Yang, Yunming Wang, Shihua Hu, Xinwei Liang & Fahu Chen

  6. National Centre for Archaeology, Beijing, China

    Songtao Chen & Ying Zhang

  7. Key Laboratory of Archaeological Science (Ministry of Education), School of Archaeology and Museology, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Nihanxue Jia, Yunan Zhang, Zhenhua Deng, Ling Qin & Xiaohong Wu

  8. Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Hangzhou, China

    Qingli Sun

  9. The Foundation for Archaeobotanical Research in Microfossils, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Linda Perry

  10. Department, of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Jade d’Alpoim Guedes

  11. Institute of Archaeology, University College London, London, UK

    Yijie Zhuang

Authors
  1. Xiaoyan Yang
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  2. Yu Gao
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  19. Jade d’Alpoim Guedes
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  38. Fahu Chen
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Contributions

F.C., X.Y. and S.W. designed the project. S.W., X.Y., Y.G. and Songtao Chen directed the excavation. Y. Tong., N.J., Q.W., Y. Li, J.Y., Ying Zhang, Q.Y., Y.W., Y.H., S.H., Y. Tian, J.G.J. X.L., T.Y., J.R., Z.D., L.Q. and Y. Zhuang participated in the excavation. Q.F., J.R., T.W. and Y.L. performed the human ancient DNA research. Ying Zhang and Q.W. performed the zooarchaeological research. Y.G. identified the archaeobotanical remains. Songtao Chen, Y.H. and J.Y. carried out the stable isotope analysis. Yunan Zhang, Y.G. and X.W. processed the dating samples. Z.G., Shungang Chen and Q.W. performed the animal ancient DNA analysis. X.Y., F.C., S.W., Y.G., J.Y., Q.F., J.R., T.W., Y. Liu, Songtao Chen, Ying Zhang and Q.W. analysed the data. J.Y., J.R. and Q.W. performed the data visualization. X.Y., Y.G., J.R., J.Y., Songtao Chen, L.P., J.D.G., Ying Zhang, Q.W., Y. Liu, Q.F. and F.C. wrote the paper with contributions from all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xiaoyan Yang, Shargan Wangdue, Yichen Liu, Qiaomei Fu or Fahu Chen.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Aerial view of the Mabu Co site.

Plan view map of excavation units and burials referred in this study at the Mabu Co site.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Post molds and typical burial from the Mabu Co site.

a, Overhead view of the trench (TN32E25) where the post molds are located. b, Post molds. Yellow dotted circles outline the locations of post molds. Postholes were found in an irregular aligngment which may correspond to a living structure. While the upper portion of this living structure was not found, it is possible that this structure was finished using organic material such as animal hide that was reused and moved from place to place as is common in other areas of the world. c, Close-up view of post molds. d, Illustration image of the burial NM3. Grave of women about 25-year-old, southwest-northeast orientation. A unique, local mortuary practice. The typical stone coffin burial, characterized by stone walls surrounding the occupants who were placed in an extended prone position. The positioning of the heads and feet of the human remains on a flat stone with the head facing front.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Selected artifacts from the Mabu Co site.

a and b, Pottery sherds. The pottery styles point to a connection to the East. The shapes of the pottery objects and their characteristic decorative patterns with engraving, stamping, embossing, and stacking techniques are similar to contemporaneous pottery assemblages from the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau more than 1000 km from Mabu Co81,82. c, Stone axe. d, Crystal microliths. e, Bone bead. f, Bone needle. g, Fish gorge hooks.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Age of the Mabu Co site.

The calibrated dates have been produced using OxCal v.4.4. The colored shadows represent the 95.4% probability density distribution of the calibrated ages. The white circles and bar ranges indicate the modeled mean ages and age ranges, with 68.2% probability intervals.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Principal component analysis of East Asia populations.

PCA of ancient East Asian populations projected on present-day East Asia populations (including Tibetans).

Extended Data Fig. 6 ADMIXTURE displaying ancestry components.

ADMIXTURE results for selected surrounding populations for K=2 to K=12.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Multidimensional scaling (MDS) of ancient Tibetans populations based on the genetic relation f3-outgroup value.

Here, the south, central, and northeast subgroups of the plateau are primarily distinguished by blue, orange, and black. The Mabu Co population clustered with the ancient South-southwest population lineage, represented by the color blue, mainly including ancient Shannan, Nepal populations.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Pair-wised individuals f4 (Mbuti, X; Mabuco_ind, Mabuco_ind) for grouping Mabu Co ancient samples.

We used world-wide 30 outgroup (X) to test the differences between each pair individuals, and the sum of the number of outgroups with significant differences (|Z|>3) was shown in heatmap.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Genetic differences inside Mabuco groups by f4(Mbuti, X; MabucoE1, MabucoE2).

Certain degree of variation between MabucoE1 and MabucoE2 two groups is further verified, based on the degree of their connections with lowland East Asians (for example Qihe, Bianbian, DevilsCave_N), f4(Mbuti, X; MabucoE1, MabucoE2) < 0, where solid dots represent the |Z|>3, Z-scores are calculated with 5 cM jackknifing standard error (SE), and the horizontal lines mark ±3 SEs ranges.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Selected animal fossils from the Mabu Co site.

a, Schizothoracids (Gymnocypris sp.). (1) Pharyngeal; (2) Cleithrum; (3) Basioccipital; (4) Vertebra I; (5) Vertebra II; (6) Other vertebrae. b, Red deer (Cervus elaphus) left metatarsal. c, Argali (Ovis ammon) right scapula. d, Lynx (Lynx lynx) left premaxilla and maxilla. e, Gazelle (Procapra przewalskii) right maxilla. f, Woolly hare (Lepus oiostolus) right mandible. g, Himalayan marmot (Marmota himalayana) left mandible. h, Pochard (Netta spp. & Aythya spp.) left coracoid. i, Coot (Fulica atra) left coracoid. j, Great cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo) right carpometacarpal. Scale bars, 2 cm.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary text for the population genetics analysis, Figs. 1–3, Tables 1–12 and Data 1–7.

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Supplementary Data

Supplementary Data 1. f3 statistics showing the relationship of Mabu CoE1 and Mabu Co E2 to early ancient sourthern populations. Supplementary Data 2. Different patterns of f4 statistics showing the relationship of Mabu Co E1/Mabu Co E2 and Shanna3k/Lubrak. Supplementary Data 3. f4 statistics revealing no significant increase/decrease in deep lineage signals in Mabu Co compared to other ancient plateau populations. Supplementary Data 4. Previous qpAdm result for Deep + ancient Northern EastAsia model on Shannan3k and Lubrak (black) and non-fitting qpAdm models of Mabu Co (Blue). Supplementary Data 5. Raw data for the stable isotope measurements in Beta Analytic. Supplementary Data 6. Raw data for the stable isotope measurements in JoInRLESA, SDU. Supplementary Data 7. Raw data for the stable isotope measurements in ESIL, CAAS.

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Yang, X., Gao, Y., Wangdue, S. et al. Lake-centred sedentary lifestyle of early Tibetan Plateau Indigenous populations at high elevation 4,400 years ago. Nat Ecol Evol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-024-02539-w

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