Hominins, deserts, and the colonisation and settlement of continental Asia Robin Dennell Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4ET, UK article info Article history: Available online xxx abstract Deserts are now extensive across continental Asia south of 45  N from Arabia and SW Asia to the Thar Desert of India, and north-eastwards through Central Asia to North China. Despite the potential importance of arid regions to human evolutionary studies, Palaeolithic records from areas that are now desert are generally poor, and the best information tends to be derived from springs and palaeolakes, partly because these are obvious taphonomic traps for archaeological, faunal and other environmental material, and partly because water would have been the most critical resource for survival. This paper provides an overview of what can currently be stated about the Palaeolithic record from areas of Asia that are now deserts, particularly in relation to Middle Pleistocene hominin evolution, the expansion in MIS4- 3 of Homo sapiens, and the extinction of its competitors. It is suggested that among the reasons why H. sapiens was ultimately more successful than Neanderthals in MIS 3-4 in colonising continental Asia are that they were physiologically better adapted to high summer temperatures, and were probably more skilled in creating a viable resource base in semi-arid and arid landscapes. Neanderthals in Central Asia may have faced additional problems in dealing with low winter temperatures, large areas of salt deserts and sand seas, and non-potable water supplies. Nevertheless, even H. sapiens does not appear to have developed the means to survive habitually in Asian deserts until the terminal Pleistocene, and in most cases, the Holocene. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction At present, deserts cover w6 million km 2 of continental Asia (Fig. 1), or an area almost 50% larger than the 4.3 million km 2 of the European Union. Overall, Asia contains ca. 32% of the global arid zone (Thomas, 2011). These deserts exist mainly because of two climate systems. In west Asia, the main precipitation occurs in winter and spring and derives from the Mediterranean and Black Seas. Most of this falls as rain in the Levant and in western Turkey, and little penetrates inland, apart from Eastern Turkey, the Cauca- sus and Zagros Mountains (which can receive heavy snow in winter). East of the Caucasus, most of the rain from the Caspian is drawn to the Elburz Mountains of northern Iran, so very little reaches the Iranian Plateau and Central Asia. In South and East Asia, most of the rain falls during the summer monsoon which brings rain from the Indian and western Pacific Oceans. Its northward penetration is blocked by the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, and thus the “Northern Arid Area of China” (NAAC) is arid or hyper- arid. In winter, the cold, dry winds of the winter monsoon blow southward from Siberia and Mongolia, and further accentuate the aridity of northern China. The Arabian Peninsula misses out on most of the rainfall from both the Mediterranean and Indian monsoonal systems, with the exception of the Yemeni Highlands, which receive some rainfall from the summer monsoon. Human- induced activities over the past 10,000 years such as over-grazing and the gathering of shrub vegetation for fuel have doubtless increased the current extent of deserts, particularly by destabilising sand dunes, but are not a primary cause of desert formation. Unlike northern Africa, which is dominated by the Sahara, Asia contains several deserts (Table 1). The smallest are the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, and the Negev, Israel. The largest in South- west Asia is the Arabian Desert, which adjoins and grades into the Syrian and Mesopotamian Deserts. In Iran, the Iranian Plateau largely comprises the Dasht-i-Kavir (Plain of Sand) in the North, and the Dasht-i-Lut (Plain of Salt) in the south. To the east of the latter, Baluchistan and Sindh in southern Pakistan are desert, and further east, there is the Thar Desert of northwest India. Central Asia is dominated by the deserts of the Kara Kum and Kyzil Kum between the Caspian and the Pamirs. Eastwards of these and between the Tienshan and Kunlun Mountains lie the deserts of northern China e the Taklamakan, the Turfan Basin, the Gobi, Tengger, Badan Jarain, Ordos and Mu Us deserts. Much of the Tibetan Plateau and Mongolia E-mail address: r.dennell@sheffield.ac.uk. Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.12.002 Quaternary International xxx (2012) 1e9 Please cite this article in press as: Dennell, R., Hominins, deserts, and the colonisation and settlement of continental Asia, Quaternary International (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.12.002