Early human expansion into Kazakhstan and subsequent paleolithic migrations

Abstract

There are still a great number of unanswered questions relating to the spread of the first modern humans into Central Asia from Africa, via South Asia during the Paleolithic. The limited number of Paleolithic sites, likely due to heavy loess and colluvial buildup, has provided us with a highly fragmentary view of the earliest migrations into this broad geographic region. In this chapter I discuss a few new sites that researchers are using to try and piece together this wave of colonization and then link early Central Asian peoples to the expansion into northeast Asia and ultimately into the New World.