Bioarchaeology of East Asia: Movement, Contact, Health

2. Human Ecology in Continental and Insular East Asia

2 Human Ecology in Continental and Insular East Asia KATE PECHENKINA AND MARC OXENHAM People, plants, animals, the land, and everything else on earth are interlaced in singular and sometimes dysfunctional ways. Daniel W. Gade 1999: 1 ContinentalEastAsiaislooselydemarcatedbytheTibetanplateauinthewest, theTianShanandAltaimountainrangesinthenorthwest,theYablonevyand Stanovoy ridges in the northeast, several distinct mountain ranges including Hengduan Shan and Fan Si Pan Sa Phin in the south, and the expanse of the Pacific Ocean on the east and southeast (figure 2.1). For Homo sapiens, with their capacity to move from place to place, these geographic boundaries are relatively permeable. Nevertheless, during prehistory and early history they circumscribed a conglomerate of human communities that formed an interaction network, an ancient oikoumene, within which genes and ideas were traded more freely than with outsiders. Kwang-Chih Chang proposed the concept of a Chinese interaction sphere1 to represent the indigenous cultures of the Huang He (Yellow River) and Chang Jiang (Yangtze River) valleys that were interlinked since at least the time of the Neolithic (Chang 1986: 241). However, developments within early human communities across East Asia, including innovations in lithic technology (Sagawa 1998), the transition to farming (Crawford and Shen 1998; Crawford and Lee 2003; Bettinger et al. 2007; Barton et al. 2009; Crawford 2009; Jones and Liu 2009; Ahn 2010; Zhao 2010; Cohen 2011; Fuller and Qin 2011; Zhao 2011), and technological advances in pottery making and metallurgy (Linduff 1995, 1998; Wagner 1999) often involved interaction over a much wider territory, encompassing both continental and insular populations; not all were centered on the Chinese core. Figure 2.1. Continental East Asia. 30 Kate Pechenkina and Marc Oxenham Tosaythatanareaofover12,000,000km2 encompassesdiverseecological settings would be to state the obvious. The East Asian landscape, often dominated by hills or low mountains, gives ample opportunity for microclimate formation. Ecosystems range from dense subtropical forests in the south to deciduous and coniferous forests in the north, as well as alpine grasslands at higher altitudes. However, when the large extent of continental East Asia is considered, environmental settings are fairly monotonous when compared with the extreme zonality found in the South American Andes, New Guinea, or Madagascar. From southeast to northwest, climate gradually changes from monsoon-dominated subtropics to temperate continental with wellexpressed seasonality. This is not to say that climate in the area is stable or predictable, as severe droughts and heavy rainfall causing floods show great interannualvariabilityacrosstheregion(YangandLau2004).Limitedzonality ,overshadowedbyconsiderable climaticchange fromseasonto seasonand year to year, likely favored population movement and did not considerably obstruct the exchange of farming technology and other innovations among distant communities. Cold boreal climate dominates Manchuria, as well as northern Hokkaido. Japan, with four main islands and numerous smaller ones, extends from the subtropicallatitudesinthe south (Okinawa,24°north)to the subarcticnorth (45° north). Nonetheless, with very limited lowland areas, much of the land falls within the temperate zone. The archipelago is mountainous, extensively forested even today, and experiences very high levels of rainfall. Vegetation ranges from warm, broad-leaved evergreen forests in Kyushu, Shikoku, and the south of Honshu, to deciduous and mixed forests in Honshu and coniferous forests in Hokkaido, with alpine and subalpine vegetation at higher elevations (Aikens and Higuchi 1982: 1–2). Initial Peopling of the Region Whenandinwhatmanner our conspecificsfirstreachedEastAsia isa subject of vigorous debate among the supporters of various multiregional continuity, assimilation,andout-of-Africa or replacementmodelsof humanorigins(e.g., Pope 1992; Aiello 1993; Wu X 1998, 2004; Wu R 1999; Wolpoff et al. 2000; Liu et al. 2010). That discussion is outside the scope of this volume. No scientist would contest that modern humans were well established in continental East Asia by the Late Pleistocene. A mandibular fragment with symphyseal morphology characteristic of anatomically modern humans, found in 2007 at Zhiren Cave (智人洞) in southern Guangxi Province, seems to document that anatomically modern humans entered East Asia very early, possibly at Human Ecology in Continental and Insular East Asia 31 the very beginning of the Late Pleistocene (Liu et al. 2010). Other anatomically modern fossils found in China include a calvarium from the south slope of Xujiafen Hill in Huanglong (黄龙) (Wang and Li 1983) and a tooth from the Changwu (长武) site in the Yaotouguo Valley (Huang and Zheng 1982), both in Shaanxi Province; the perfectly preserved Liujiang (柳江) skull and a hip bone from the Tongtianyan Cave in Guangxi (Wu R 1982; Wu X 1997); and five teeth from Fox Cave (Lidong—狸洞) at Qingliu (清流) in Fujian (Dong and Fan 1996...