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The radiation of human populations across Asia
and into the New World is among the most captivating subjects of interest for
both Russian and North American archaeologists. This process appears to have
commenced at least during the middle Pleistocene period with the spread of Homo
Neanderthal populations into China and Mongolia. The peopling of the Altai and
Trans-Baikal regions of southern Siberia exploited a wide selection of
Pleistocene age fauna with the use of Levallois points, scrapers and large
blades.
With the onset of the late Pleistocene
glaciation populations appear to have been suppressed southward, probably along
the Amur River, and peopled the maritime regions of the Sea of Japan. This
southern expansion of people included the initial peopling of the northern Sea
of Japan, as well as a migration along the Sakhalin land-bridge into the modern
Japanese islands of Hokkaido and Honshu. During this time period stone tool
industries appear to have incorporated new technologies, including micro cores
and blades, bifacial points and knives and dart or arrowhead projectile
points.
Coincident with these events was an evident
increase in interest in marine resources, especially salmon. It is reasonable to assume that at least by
the warming period after the Last Glacial Maximum that coastal populations had
developed the use of reliable watercraft.
Whether seafaring abilities developed during the late Pleistocene is
still a subject of considerable speculation, however, firm archaeological
evidence from insular locations across the North Pacific clearly support the
presence of seafaring populations dating from the Early Holocene period.
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