Earliest presence of humans in northeast Asia

Abstract

The timing of the earliest habitation and oldest stone technologies in different regions of the world remains a contentious topic in the study of human evolution. Here we contribute to this debate with detailed magnetostratigraphic results on two exposed parallel sections of lacustrine sediments at Xiaochangliang in the Nihewan Basin, north China; these results place stringent controls on the age of Palaeolithic stone artifacts that were originally reported over two decades ago. Our palaeomagnetic findings indicate that the artifact layer resides in a reverse polarity magnetozone bounded by the Olduvai and Jaramillo subchrons. Coupled with an estimated rate of sedimentation, these findings constrain the layer's age to roughly 1.36 million years ago. This result represents the age of the oldest known stone assemblage comprising recognizable types of Palaeolithic tool in east Asia, and the earliest definite occupation in this region as far north as 40 degrees N.

Environments, Adaptation, and Evolutionary Medicine Should We Be Eating a Stone Age Diet?

“…Ma [49], demonstrates that H. erectus grade hominins were not confined to arid savanna grasslands in the tropics. Working on the assumption that these dispersed Eurasian populations did not contribute to the gene pool of modern humans does not significantly limit the importance of environmental variability and potential for adaptive flexibility in the human lineage -H. ergaster and descendents in Africa would have been subject to the climatic cyclicity described above, as well as experiencing marked spatial differences in environments, which may well have included dispersal into and exploitation of tropical forest well before the development of agriculture [70].…”

“…Archaeological and geological data from early Pleistocene deposits in China suggest that hominins were subject to significant climate (and thus environmental) variability driven by both regional and global processes [49]. The extreme climatic fluctuations of the Pleistocene would have made a significant impact on hominin environments.…”

ESR dating of the Donggutuo Palaeolithic site in the Nihewan Basin, northern China

“…1). Its exploration has led to the discovery of numerous palaeontological or archaeological localities, including the Donggutuo site, one of the most famous early Palaeolithic sites in China and one of the most studied localities in the Nihewan Basin (Li and Wang, 1985;Schick et al, 1991;Qiu, 2000;Zhu et al, 2001Zhu et al, , 2004Wang et al, 2005).…”

“…The Nihewan Basin (Fig. 1), in temperate northern China, has significantly contributed to our understanding of early human adaptability to high-latitude in East Asia (Zhu et al, 2001(Zhu et al, , 2004Deng et al, 2006Deng et al, , 2007, as most of the rare Early Pleistocene archaeological sites of this region were found in this basin. The age of the Palaeolithic sites in mainland East Asia has long been controversial due to the absence of suitable material for accurate isotopic dating.…”

“…The age of the Palaeolithic sites in mainland East Asia has long been controversial due to the absence of suitable material for accurate isotopic dating. Since the pioneering paleomagnetic work of Zhu et al (2001) on the dating of the famous Xiaochangliang Palaeolithic site, considerable progress has been made during the past decade towards paleomagnetism applied on the Palaeolithic sites in this basin (Zhu et al, 2001(Zhu et al, , 2003(Zhu et al, , 2004Wang et al, 2004;Wang et al, 2005;Deng et al, 2006Deng et al, , 2007Li et al, 2008;Liu et al, 2010).…”