“Indigenization” of Eastern Asian Initial Upper Paleolithic and formation of Early Upper Paleolithic: Case Study from North-Central Mongolia

Evgeny P. Rybin* and Arina M. Khatsenovich

Around 50 ka BP, assemblages of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) blade industries appear for the first time in Eurasia. The core area of the Central/Eastern Asian IUP is located within the mountain systems of the Altai and Tian Shan, at the junction of southern Siberia and eastern Central Asia, where the earliest sites attributed to this technocomplex are found. By approximately 45 ka BP, IUP blade assemblages are already documented in territories located more than 2,000 km to the east and southeast of the core area. There, they exhibit the same cultural packages observed in the earliest manifestations of this technocomplex. Following this dispersal event, this cultural package in its "typical" and homogeneous form persisted for approximately three millennia, despite the considerable distances separating site clusters. Subsequently, notable changes occurred based on local trends, leading to the formation of new traditions. These remained blade-based but differed markedly from those of the "pioneer" IUP populations and sporadically include elements such as Levallois reduction methods – unknown in "typical" IUP industries but present in local final Middle Palaeolithic assemblages. As a case study of such development, we examine the territory of North-Central Mongolia. Located within one of the Upper Palaeolithic migration routes of Northeast Asia – the Selenga corridor – local multilayered IUP-EUP sites of crucial importance for reconstructing models of Upper Palaeolithic formation based on the sequential occupation of this region by the same populations over a period of 10,000 years. This study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 24-18-01099.