New evidence on the earliest human presence at high northern latitudes in northeast Asia

Zhu, Rixiang; Potts, Richard; Xie, Fei; Hoffman, Kenneth A.; Deng, Chenglong; Shi, Chengyin; Pan, Yongxin; Wang, H. Q.; Shi, Ruizhi; Wang, Y. C.; Shi, Gongle; Wu, Naiqin

doi:10.1038/nature02829

Cited by 316 publications

(217 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Early hominins had expanded their ranges into the northern temperate latitudes of Eurasia much earlier, however, long before GBY. The finds from Dmanisi, Georgia (68), show that the southern Caucasus was already occupied by 1.7-1.8 Ma, whereas hominins were present in northern China at least by 1.66 Ma, as shown by data from the Nihewan Basin (69). The evidence from Dmanisi and the Nihewan Basin is older than any of the abovementioned African sites with contested traces of fire use.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

Roebroeks

Villa

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

557

309

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The timing of the human control of fire is a hotly debated issue, with claims for regular fire use by early hominins in Africa at ∼1.6 million y ago. These claims are not uncontested, but most archaeologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside Africa, especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures at time dropped below freezing, was indeed tied to the use of fire. Our review of the European evidence suggests that early hominins moved into northern latitudes without the habitual use of fire. It was only much later, from ∼300,000 to 400,000 y ago onward, that fire became a significant part of the hominin technological repertoire. It is also from the second half of the Middle Pleistocene onward that we can observe spectacular cases of Neandertal pyrotechnological knowledge in the production of hafting materials. The increase in the number of sites with good evidence of fire throughout the Late Pleistocene shows that European Neandertals had fire management not unlike that documented for Upper Paleolithic groups.human evolution | Paleolithic archeology | fireplaces | hafting adhesives T he emergence of stone tool manufacture and the control of fire are undoubtedly the two most significant events in the technological evolution of early humans. Although stone tool use and manufacture were regular activities from at least 2.6 million y ago (1), the timing of the human control of fire is a controversial issue (2), with some claims for regular fire use by early hominins in Africa at ∼1.6 million y ago (3-5). Longer chronologies for the use of fire include Wrangham's recent hypothesis that fire was a central evolutionary force toward larger human brains (6-9): eating cooked foods made early hominin digestion easier, and the energy formerly spent on digestion was freed up, enabling their energy-expensive brains to grow. Using fire to prepare food made early humans move away from the former feed-as-you-go-and-eat-raw-food strategy and toward the sharing of cooked foods around fires, which became attractive locations for increased social interaction between individuals. Wrangham situates these developments around the time of the emergence of Homo erectus, approximately two million y ago. Most archeologists would agree that the colonization of areas outside of Africa, especially of regions such as Europe where temperatures at time dropped below freezing (10), was tied to the use of fire to bridge gaps in the energy budget and in resource availability during winter (11). For much later periods, a greater control and more extensive use of fire is seen by some (12, 13) as one of the behavioral innovations that emerged in Africa among modern humans, favoring their spread throughout the world and their eventual evolutionary success.How strong are these hypotheses? To what extent are they backed up by archeological data on hominin use of fire? Our focus in this review is on Europe, an area of the Old World for which we have a rich record with a large number of sampling points distributed in time and space, w...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 80%

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

Roebroeks

Villa

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

557

309

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“…Dennell, 2003;Langbroek, 2004;Antó n and Swisher, 2004). However, new archaeological finds from the Nihewan basin (China) at a latitude of 408 N, on palaeomagnetic grounds dated to 1.66 Ma (Zhu et al, 2004) again underline the view that Asia saw an early hominin occupation.…”

Section: Establishing the Pattern?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The human colonisation of Europe: where are we?

Roebroeks

2006

J Quaternary Science

103

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This paper focuses on the earlier parts of the human colonisation of Europe and its wider setting and addresses the two basic tasks of archaeologists working in this field: (1) to identify the spatio-temporal patterns of human presence and absence, i.e. getting the pattern 'right '; (2) to explain these patterns. Archaeologists have invested mostly in the first task, while the second one takes us to the field of biogeography. Study of biogeographical limits of hominins necessitates integration of many aspects of a species, e.g. diet, life history and social organisation, and the way environmental factors shape these. Palaeoanthropologists need to combine these with establishing data on the chronology of hominin presence, on palaeoenvironment and climatic oscillations, on emergence and disappearance of land bridges, and so on. They further have to acknowledge the fact that only very small parts of the former ranges of the species have been sampled 'adequately'. The paper explores some of the key issues at stake in dealing with the human colonisation of Europe.

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“…1.9 Ma (Dennell, 2004), Yuanmou in southern China ~1.7 Ma and Majuangou in north eastern China dated to 1.66 Ma (Zhu et al, 2004). In contrast the lithic technology at 'Ubeidiya is Acheulean, a form that first appears ~1.7 Ma at Konso Gardula in Ethiopia (Asfaw et al, 1992).…”

Section: Hominin Dispersalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hominins without fellow travellers? First appearances and inferred dispersals of Afro-Eurasian large-mammals in the Plio-Pleistocene

O’Regan

Turner

Bishop

et al. 2011

Quaternary Science Reviews

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Discoveries of fossil Homo outside Africa predating 1.0 Ma have generated much discussion about hominin dispersal routes. However, tool-using bipeds were only one element of the inter-continental mammalian dispersals that occurred during the climatic changes of the Pliocene and Pleistocene. This paper will place hominin movements in the context of those of the wider mammalian fauna, which includes carnivores, bovids and non-human primates. The distribution of these different taxa suggests that species moved individually when the environmental conditions were right for them, rather than in multi-species waves of dispersal, and allows evaluation of the contextual evidence for the newly emerging 'Out of Asia' paradigm as well as the established 'Out of Africa' model.

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New evidence on the earliest human presence at high northern latitudes in northeast Asia

Cited by 316 publications

References 14 publications

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

On the earliest evidence for habitual use of fire in Europe

The human colonisation of Europe: where are we?

Hominins without fellow travellers? First appearances and inferred dispersals of Afro-Eurasian large-mammals in the Plio-Pleistocene

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