Handprints and footprints 20,000 years old reveal that people lived on the Tibetan plateau at the height of the Ice Age - 16,000 years earlier than scientists had thought. The newly found signs of life cast doubt on the idea that a glacier a kilometre thick covered the plateau at that time.

They also found a fireplace nearby, with the remains of a primitive stove, suggesting that the site was a camp, perhaps even a settlement.

The encampment is also a nail in the coffin for the ice-covered plateau hypothesis. It indicates that at least part of the plateau, which today is 4,000 metres high on average, was free of ice even during this frigid period of Earth's history.