How to survive the glacial apocalypse: Hominin mobility strategies in late Pleistocene Central Asia Michelle Glantz a, * , Adam Van Arsdale b , Sayat Temirbekov a , Tyler Beeton c a Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA b Department of Anthropology, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, USA c Graduate Degree Program in Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA article info Article history: Available online xxx Keywords: Late Pleistocene Central Asia Hominin mobility Neandertals Denisovans Refugia Ecological niche model abstract Previous research concerning the biogeography of hominin populations in Central Asia indicates persistence across interglacial/glacial sequences. Hominin groups are present on the landscape during the coldest episodes of the Last Glacial Period. Moreover, the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) likely served as a geographic conduit for human groups that found refuge in the foothill regions of the Altai Mountains as well as those of the southwestern horn of the Tien Shan; this conduit can be construed as the stage upon which hominin admixture occurred. The present study broadens the geographic focus of previous work to include the steppe and steppe/desert zones immediately adjacent to the biologically productive foothills of the IAMC. Using an ecological threshold model, four abiotic variables that best predict hominin site locations are analyzed to examine differences in fundamental niche structure when the IAMC foothills are compared to the adjacent steppic zones. Our null hypothesis is that the foothills and adjacent steppe present similar abiotic profiles. Our results, however, indicate significant differences between these regions, suggesting the foothills would have presented hominins with a more attractive landscape in both glacial and interglacial time periods than the steppe. Coun- terintuitively, these differences are actually more extreme during interglacial time periods. This pre- liminary model of hominin-environment interactions serves as a useful example for the ways by which mid-scale hominin dispersal trajectories are mapped and interpreted. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Historically, Central Asia has never played a prominent role in the narrative of Pleistocene hominin evolution. Despite its geographic expanse and diverse topography, the area has yielded only a few significant hominin fossils and archaeological assem- blages when compared to Europe and parts of the Levant and Africa (Davis and Ranov, 1999; Vishnyatsky, 1999; Glantz, 2010). In addi- tion, the sparse, highly fragmented hominin record is morpholog- ically ambiguous (Glantz et al., 2008; Glantz, 2010) and only a small sub-set of Paleolithic assemblages are derived from well-dated, stratigraphically distinct sequences. Currently, however, Central Asia is presenting paleoanthropology with an unprecedented ancient DNA (aDNA) database that raises significant questions about hominin occupation and interaction in the region and across greater Eurasia (Reich et al., 2010, 2011; Meyer et al., 2012; Fu et al., 2014; Kuhlwilm et al., 2016). Geographically juxtaposed to former Soviet Central Asia, the Altai region of southern Siberia has a rich archaeological history (Derevianko and Markin, 1992; Derevianko et al., 2000; Derevianko and Shunkov, 2002; Derevianko and Rybin, 2003) as well as an unexpected trove of ancient genetic data from a number of hominin specimens. High coverage genetic data from an anatomically indistinct phalanx in the cave of Denisova provides tantalizing evidence of a hominin group yet to be identified in the fossil record (Reich, et al., 2010; Meyer, et al., 2012). Subsequent analyses reveal that the “Denisovan genome” has a surprising ancestral presence across populations of Southeast Asia (Reich, et al., 2011). More recently, and perhaps more perplexing given the Denisovan sequence, is the identification of a Neandertal genome from an Altai context (Prüfer, et al., 2014). The presence of a Neandertal genome in the Altai seems to support the growing consensus that the de- gree of Neandertal ancestry in contemporary East Asians exceeds that observed in European populations (Wall, et al., 2013). In addition, a modern human nuclear sequence dating to roughly 45 * Corresponding author. Department of Anthropology, Campus Mail 1787, Fort Collins, CO, 80523-1787, USA. E-mail address: Mica.Glantz@colostate.edu (M. Glantz). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.06.037 1040-6182/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. Quaternary International xxx (2016) 1e11 Please cite this article in press as: Glantz, M., et al., How to survive the glacial apocalypse: Hominin mobility strategies in late Pleistocene Central Asia, Quaternary International (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2016.06.037