气候变化以两种不同方式驱动了丝绸之路路线的变迁

Although climate change has convincingly been linked to the evolution of human civilization on different temporal scales,its role in influencing the spatial patterns of ancient civilizations has rarely been investigated,The northward shift of the ancient Silk Road(SR)route from the Tarim Basin(TB)to the Junggar Basin during~420-850 CE provides the opportunity to investigate the relationship between climate change and the spatial evolution of human societies.Here,we use a new high-resolution chironomidbased temperature reconstruction from arid China,combined with hydroclimatic and historical datasets,to assess the possible effects of climate fluctuations on the shift of the ancient SR route,We found that a cooling/drying climate in the TB triggered the SR route shift during~420-600 CE,However,a warming/wetting climate during~600-850 CE did not inhibit this shift,but instead promoted it,because of the favorable climate-induced geopolitical conflicts between the Tubo Kingdom and the Tang Dynasty in the TB.Our findings reveal two distinct ways in which climate change drove the spatial evolution of human civilization,and they demonstrate the flexibility of societal responses to climate change.

Population-influenced spatiotemporal pattern of natural disaster and social crisis in China, AD1–1910

Researchers mostly ascribe contemporary natural disaster and the concomitant social crisis to anomalous climate change or global warming. However, whether such a relationship is still valid in long-term historical settings remains doubtful. In this study, data obtained from historical records about natural calamities(flood and drought) and their social impacts(famine,cannibalism, and war) at provincial and decadal scales during AD1–1910 are applied to mathematical statistics such as correlation and regression analysis as well as spatial visualization. Also, the role of population in the nexus of meteorological catastrophes and human miseries is investigated. Results show that at the provincial scale, generally there is high consistency among different variables and most of them are clustered in eastern part of China, especially in the north. More in-depth examinations indicate regional disparities that variables account for higher proportion in the south during the later imperial era,which may be attributed to the southward movement of population center. At the decadal scale, drought is the primary contributor to famine and cannibalism, while severe or even out-of-control famine i.e. cannibalism is more likely to incur war than ordinary famine per se. Besides, population growth rate exerts its positive effect on natural hazards and food crises, whereas more wars bring population loss and relieve population stress despite the weak negative association. These findings supplement previous views and confirm that the distributions of disasters in ancient China are affected by population rather than climatic variability, which only determines the occurrence of disaster.

Earliest parietal art:hominin hand and foot traces from the middle Pleistocene of Tibet

At Quesang on the Tibetan Plateau we report a series of hand and foot impressions that appear to have been intentionally placed on the surface of a unit of soft travertine.The travertine was deposited by water from a hot spring which is now inactive and as the travertine lithified it preserved the traces.On the basis of the sizes of the hand and foot traces,we suggest that two track-makers were involved and were likely children.We interpret this event as a deliberate artistic act that created a work of parietal art.The travertine unit on which the traces were imprinted dates to between~169 and 226 ka BP.This would make the site the earliest currently known example of parietal art in the world and would also provide the earliest evidence discovered to date for hominins on the High Tibetan Plateau(above 4000 m a.s.l.).This remarkable discovery adds to the body of research that identifies children as some of the earliest artists within the genus Homo.