Tolbor (archaeological site)

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Tolbor is the name for a group of archaeological sites in the valley of the Tolbor River , tributary of the Selenga in the Changai Mountains in the Bulgan Province ( Mongolia ). The Tolbor-16 site, which was discovered in 2010 and where stone tools that are almost 45,000 years old were discovered, received special attention from experts . According to a study published in 2019, they are considered to be the oldest evidence of the presence of anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) in this region and are around 10,000 years older than the Salkhit skull, the oldest known fossil of Homo sapiens from Mongolia. The tool finds are also considered evidence that anatomically modern humans - coming from Africa - settled Asia not only on southern routes, but also on northern routes.

Tolbor-16

The excavations at the Tolbor-16 site lasted from 2011 to 2016. This site is located 1169 meters above sea level ( ASL , N49 13.619 E102 55.383) in the north of the Changai Mountains, on the western edge of the Tolbor Valley, around 13 kilometers from the Estuary of the Tolbor into the Selenga. A total of six find horizons were identified, the oldest of which was ascribed an age of 42,500 to 45,600 years by thermoluminescence dating . 826 stone artefacts were recovered from it, including 91 elongated, retouched blades that resemble those from sites in Siberia and northwest China. These finds are approximately the same age as the thigh bone from Ust-Ishim from western Siberia .

Since the Tolbor-16 site is located on a relatively low mountain pass that connects Siberia with the northern part of Mongolia, it was already suspected after an initial inspection of the tool finds in 2014 that this could possibly be evidence of a southwest-northeast migration route of Homo sapiens ("Selenga corridor hypothesis"). At the same time, the discovery of two pearls from the shells of ostrich eggs was reported.

literature

  • Anatoly P. Derevianko et al .: Early upper paleolithic stone tool technologies of northern Mongolia: The case of Tolbor-4 and Tolbor-15. In: Archeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia. Volume 41, No. 4, 2013, pp. 21-37.
  • Andrei V. Tabarev er al .: A paleolithic cache at Tolbor (northwestern Mongolia). In: Archeology, Ethnology & Anthropology of Eurasia. Volume 41, No. 3, 2013, pp. 14-21, full text

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicolas Zwyns, Cleantha H. Paine, Bolorbat Tsedendorj et al .: The northern route for Human dispersal in central and northeast Asia: new evidence from the site of Tolbor-16, Mongolia. In: Scientific Reports. Volume 9, Article No. 11759, 2019, doi: 10.1038 / s41598-019-47972-1
  2. ↑ Thibaut Devièse, Diyendo Massilani, Seonbok Yi et al .: Compound-specific radiocarbon dating and mitochondrial DNA analysis of the Pleistocene hominin from Salkhit, Mongolia. In: Nature Communications. Volume 10, Article No. 274, 2019, doi: 10.1038 / s41467-018-08018-8
  3. ↑ Humans migrated to Mongolia much Earlier Than Previously Believed. On: eurekalert.org from August 16, 2019
  4. ↑ Nicolas Zwyns et al .: The open-air site of Tolbor 16 (Northern Mongolia): Preliminary results and perspectives. In: Quaternary International. Volume 347, 2014, pp. 53-65, doi: 10.1016 / j.quaint.2014.05.043 , full text