Discovery of circa 115,000-year-old bone retouchers at Lingjing, Henan, China

Abstract

Most Chinese lithic industries dated between 300,000 and 40,000 are characterized by the absence of Levallois debitage, the persistence of core-and-flake knapping, the rarity of prepared cores, their reduction with direct hard hammer percussion, and the rarity of retouched flakes. Here we report the discovery of seven bone soft hammers at the early hominin Lingjing site (Xuchang County, Henan) dated to 125,000–105,000. These artefacts represent the first instance of the use of bone as raw material to modify stone tools found at an East Asian early Late Pleistocene site. Three types of soft hammers are identified. The first consists of large bone flakes resulting from butchery of large herbivores that were utilized as such for expedient stone tools retouching or resharpening. The second involved the fracture of weathered bone from medium size herbivores to obtain elongated splinters shaped by percussion into sub-rectangular artefacts. Traces observed on these objects indicate intensive and possibly recurrent utilization, which implies their curation over time. The last consists of antler, occasionally used. Lingjing bone tools complement what we know about archaic hominin cultural adaptations in East Asia and highlight behavioural consistencies that could not be inferred from other cultural proxies. This discovery provides a new dimension to the debate surrounding the existence of the Middle Palaeolithic in the region. The attribution of East Asian sites to the Middle Palaeolithic assumes that cultural traits such as the Levallois method represent evolutionary hallmarks applicable to regions of the world different from those in which they were originally found. Here, we promote an approach that consists in identifying, possibly from different categories of material culture, the original features of each regional cultural trajectory and understanding the behavioural and cognitive implications they may have had for past hominin populations.

Bone retouchers from the Middle Palaeolithic site of El Salt, Stratigraphic Unit Xa (Alicante, Spain): First data and comparison with the Middle to Upper Pleistocene European record

“…There are a few cases of total configuration of the tool as can happen as in the previous specimen, certainly conditioned by the suitability of the bone fragment and the need for its use. Similar examples found Peña Miel in North Spain, with controlled fractures along the longitudinal length (Mozota, ), or in the Lingjing site in China, with some bone retouchers intentionally configured by percussion to obtain more ergonomic pieces with subrectangular morphology (Doyon et al, ). These materials were clearly of special relevance and used intentionally in the productive tasks carried out by the Neanderthal groups who came to El Salt.…”

“…There is no agreement in the scientific literature with regard to the preparation and configuration of the tools. In , or in the Lingjing site in China, with some bone retouchers intentionally configured by percussion to obtain more ergonomic pieces with subrectangular morphology (Doyon et al, 2018). These materials were clearly of special relevance and used intentionally in the productive tasks carried out by the Neanderthal groups who came to El Salt.…”

“…At first, they were considered fortuitous tools, derived from the reuse of diaphysis fragments after the fracturing of limb bones to gain access to the marrow (Armand & Delagnes, 1998;Chase, 1990;Patou-Mathis, 1999), but it was later suggested that they were specially selected and consciously configured tools, somewhere between animal and mineral resources (Mallye, Thiébaut, Mourre, & Costamagno, 2012;. In some instance, bone retouchers could be considered expedient tools with subsequent curation or rehabilitation processes (Doyon, Li, Li, & d'Errico, 2018). More recently, Daujeard et al (2014) proposed considering these types of remains in terms of a châine operatoire, as with lithic industry, highlight the human intentionally, evidenced by their collection and use.…”

Engraved bones from the archaic hominin site of Lingjing, Henan Province

“…A) Location of Lingjing (Henan Province, China); B) stratigraphy indicating the geological and cultural layers (after Doyon et al 2018). …”

Bone retouchers and technological continuity in the Middle Stone Age of North Africa

“…Since then bone retouchers have been identified in many assemblages dating from the Lower, Middle, and Upper Palaeolithic as well as from the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Geographically, the distribution of these tools extends across Europe [9,10] to the Levant [11] and the Altai Mountains [12], and recently even as far east as Lingjing in China [13].…”