While the heat of fire could protect them from the cold, the family at Chusang couldn’t shelter from an obvious yet insurmountable obstacle of living on the plateau: the air becomes thinner with every step towards the sky. They were here year-round, enduring the heavy snowfall, biting winds, and encroaching glaciers of winter. Living at the centre of the plateau, they simply couldn’t migrate up and down the mountain with the seasons as other Tibetan people did during this period. All that is known, as shown in a study from January 2017, is that the Chusang prints were made between 12,700 and 7,400 years ago, making it one of the oldest archaeological sites known on the Tibetan Plateau.īut what makes the Chusang family special is their isolation, says Mark Aldenderfer, an anthropologist from the University of California at Merced and one of the study’s authors. Their marks leave no answers to such questions. But who were they? And what brought them to such high altitudes? A foraging trip perhaps? Hunting? Or were they simply curious, always searching for lands untouched? Judging by the size of the prints - and the hands and feet that made them - the family group contained six individuals, two of which were children. As they walked and played, 19 hand and footprints were pressed into the clay-like mud that seeped from the spring and, as they dried, were preserved into the present. Their fire has long gone out, but the family still left a lasting impression on the world. At night, the family lit fires in a hollow built into the slope, a lonely flicker against the peak of darkness. Fuelled by the tectonic forces that raise and support the plateau, a hot spring at the surface provided a welcoming buffer against the chilled air. They called it home.Īlthough far from the comfort of more lowly climes, this location had its perks. They lived on the Tibetan Plateau, 4200m (14,100ft) above sea level, in a site now known as Chusang. Some time in the past, a family sat on the top of the world and gazed at the stars.
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