Bits that don’t fit # 4 ~ Footprints on Ice Age Tibetan Plateau
Red = Tibetan Plateau
Yellow = Yana in “Arctic Siberia”
The Tibetan Plateau is on average 4500 meters above sea level and it often called “the roof of the world.” It is an extremely cold environment. Today the average summer temperatures range between 5 and 10 degrees C and in the winter it is usually 40 degrees below zero C.[1]
Until 2002 earth scientists believed that the first humans to arrive on the cold barren Tibetan Plateau only arrived there about 4000 years ago.[2] Then two scientists from the University of Hong Kong found the footprints and markings of at least six people who had stepped in mud some 20,000 years ago. Five years later, more scientists confirmed the evidence and claimed the humans were living on the Tibetan Plateau during height of the Ice Age. This evidence does not fit with anything earth scientists can currently explain.
This anomaly is easily explained once we realize that the Tibetan Plateau, like the Ice Age settlement in “arctic” Siberia at Yana, were, before the last displacement of the crust, some 30 degrees further south than they are today. Indeed, Lhasa, the capital of Tibet was on the equator when the North Pole was centered on the Hudson Bay.
[1] Yuan et. al. “New Evidence for Human Occupation of northern Tibetan Plateau, China, during the Late Pleistocene,” Chinese Science Bulletin, 2007 (also on the web).
[2] Ball, Philip “Humans dwelt in Ice-Age Tibet”, Nature, “Update” 27 March 2002.
