Earliest Prepared core technology in Eurasia from Nihewan (China): Implications for early human abilities and dispersals in East Asia

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ma, Dong- Dong; Pei, Shu- Wen; Xie, Fei; Ye, Zhi; Wang, Fa- Gang; Xu, Jing- Yue; Deng, Cheng- Long; de la Torre, Ignacio
• 署名单位: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC); CSIC - Instituto de Historia (IH); Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology, CAS; Chinese Academy of Sciences; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, CAS; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Geology & Geophysics, CAS
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-9825
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2313123121
• 发表日期: 2024-03-12
• 关键词: paleolithic site; pleistocene; basin; timescale; cenjiawan; AFRICA

摘要

Organized flaking techniques to obtain predetermined stone tools have been traced back to the early Acheulean (also known as mode 2) in Africa and are seen as indicative of the emergence of advanced technical abilities and in-depth planning skills among early humans. Here, we report one of the earliest known examples of prepared core technology in the archaeological record, at the Cenjiawan (CJW) site in the Nihewan basin of China, dated 1.1 Mya. The operational schemes reconstructed from the CJW refit sets, together with shaping patterns observed in the retouched tools, suggest that Nihewan basin toolmakers had the technical abilities of mode 2 hominins, and developed different survival strategies to adapt to local raw materials and environments. This finding predates the previously earliest known prepared core technology from Eurasia by 0.3 My, and the earliest known mode 2 sites in East Asia by a similar amount of time, thus suggesting that hominins with advanced technologies may have migrated into high latitude East Asia as early as 1.1 Mya.