image: The primary locus of hand and footprints can be seen just in front of the chorten (a reliquary common in Tibetan Buddhism). The prints have been smoothed and polished by pilgrims such that they are no longer easily visible. The primary saint of this is Milarepa, an important Tibetan yoga born in the 11th C CE. Local tradition attributes the impression of the hand and footprints into the stone to him. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Jan. 6, 2017, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by M.C. Meyer at University of Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria, and colleagues was titled, "Permanent human occupation of the central Tibetan Plateau in the early Holocene." view more
Credit: Mark Aldenderfer