Human habitation in Central Asia sparks lecture

How long have humans inhabited greater Central Asia? John Olsen, a faculty member at the University of Arizona, will address this question during a free lecture at 7 p.m., April 17, in Life Sciences Center A-191 on ASU’s Tempe campus.

The lecture is titled “The Initial Peopling of the Tibet Plateau and Mongolia.”

Archaeological studies undertaken during the last decade in Mongolia, China and Tibet shed light on the earliest prehistoric human habitation of a varied ecological corridor running from Lake Baikal in southern Siberia, south through the Gobi Desert and up to the elevated Tibetan Plateau, north of the Himalayan massif, Olsen says.

The lecture is sponsored by the ASU School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and the Central Arizona Society of the Archaeological Institute of America.

For more information, contact Liz Griesman at (623) 974-0297 or elizabeth.griesman@asu.edu.