| Abstract: |
The palaeoenvironment, chronology and lithic industries of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic both in East and West Asia will be discussed in this paper. West Asia, especially the Mediterranean Levant, occupies an important geographic position between Africa, East Asia and Europe. It served as the corridor for the early hominid migration out of Africa. The Lower Palaeolithic assemblages in this area, such as the early assemblage of "Ubeidiya," were similar to those of the Early Palaeolithic in China and other regions of the Far East in representing core-chopper industries, not Acheulean. After that time, the relationship of the Palaeolithic industries between the two regions became increasingly weaker. A comparison of the Lower to Middle Palaeolithic sequences between East and West Asia indicates the following conclusions: (1) that connections between East and West Asia probably existed earlier than 1 mya
(2) that there were bottlenecks in cultural and gene flow between East and West Asia from the late Lower Pleistocene into the early Upper Pleistocene
and (3) that the principal reason for interruptions between East and West was the geographic barrier created by the dramatic uplift of the Qinghai-Xizang (Tibetan) Plateau since the Lower Pleistocene.
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