Introduction

This book is an edited volume of essays by leading international scholars from half a dozen different countries and over a dozen different research institutes concerning the character, timing, and geography of large-scale migrations connecting Inner Asia to northeast Asia and eventually to all corners of the New World during the Upper Paleolithic (specifically between 17,000 and 13,000 years ago). The authors come from a variety of disciplines and apply several district methodologies to discuss “Great Migrations” in Asia and the Americas. The 12 chapters are the result of a 3-day international conference co-organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, the second international conference on “Great Migrations” spearheaded His Excellency Erlan Idrissov. This volume, as with the conference, deals with the timing, routes, cultural aspects, and human ecology of the demographic growth and diffusion of people across the Americas, as well as the earliest people to live in Inner and northeastern Asia.