Did Neanderthals migrate as far east as China? Discovery of stone tools suggests it’s a possibility
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The stone tools discovered in southwestern China helped a mysterious group to live in a cold and harsh environment 60,000 to 50,000 years.
But who have formed them? The answer can shake what is known about human origins during this period of the Stone Age, according to the new research.
Archaeologists who dig the Longtan site in Yunnan Province, on the southwestern edge of the Tibet Plateau, revealed hundreds of stone artifacts from the trenches engraved in red and indifferent clay.
The research team decided that many tools were made in a style known as Quina, which is usually considered an archaeological signature of primitive human beings, a type of ancient man. The method, or the complex, was not found in East Asia before, published on Monday in the magazine The facts of the National Academy of Sciences He said.
The study team said it was the first time the stone tool associated with Neanderthals, called Quina, was found in East Asia. – qi-jun roan/hao li
“The discovery on the Longtan site is great, because it documents this particular tradition (at least 7000 or 8,000 km) from the traditional region associated with this cultural technical complex,” said the author of the co -author of David Delibano, a post -PhD fellow in Ferrara in Italy, via e -mail.
Negative human beings wandered in Eurasia about 400,000 years ago before they disappeared 40,000 years ago, but there is no evidence of their remains east of the Tai Mountains in southern Siberia.
Bones and primitive skeletons were found by Quina Stone tools in many locations in Western Europe, including La Quina in southwestern France. Quina is one of the number of patterns of stone tools associated with the primitive human being called by archaeologists Mousa culture.
Delibano said that the unprecedented discovery in Longan had “great effects”, which sparked two competitors. Primitive human beings could have migrated east and reached what is now China, or a different type of ancient stone tools that may be similar to those made in Europe during this period known as the Middle Age.
Stone tools with long -term effects
The set of tools that were discovered in Longtan in 2019 and 2020 include scraps, used for work or wood with a sharp one side, stone points that may be linked to wooden spears, and tools that were like a saw.
In Europe, primitive humans used Quina Stone tools during a dry and cold period 60,000 to 50,000 years in a landscape of open forests. The tools would help primitive people to chase reindeers, giant deer, horses and bisson, according to the study.
The researchers wrote that Quina tools were usually a long period of use and are often recycled and recycled – indicating that they were a response to incomplete resources and a very mobile lifestyle.
Old pollen analysis from Longan revealed that the climate and the environment were similar in southwestern China with Europe. However, the authors did not find any animal on the site, so it is not known whether the people who lived there were hunting similar animals, as they said.
The excavators discovered hundreds of stone tools from the site during the excavations in 2019 and 2020. The participant studied in David Delibano (the third of the right) from the University of Ferrara with members of the research team. – qi-jun roan/hao li
“The Quina package is adapting to very advanced navigation strategies: these artifacts were designed to continue for a long time, as Bedouin human groups were forced to search for resources, due to harsh climatic conditions, they became more famous,” Delpiano said.
He said it was possible that primitive humans had reached the Far East, like southwestern China, or perhaps they faced other human species in their lands, a reaction that allowed the technology of stone tools to spread east.
Excavations from Denisova Cave at the Tai Mountain Exhibition Negative humans live there About about 200,000 years ago, almost the same as the migraine known as the name DenisovanThose believed to have lived throughout Asia.
The authors of the study added this Smiles in Xuchang In the Chinese province of Hanan in central China, it also offered some primitive features, which “may indicate that human reactions occurred between the West and the East.”
“I will not be surprised if the primitive humans make the accidental incursions into Chinese territory.
However, the issue is that we are currently lacking this technological package in the rest of Asia, and we left without a clear “baking pass” to contact a virtual emigration path.
Primitive human beings versus Denisovan
The reasonable interpretation was as much as the study presented was that the huntins who once called them Longtan Home – Perhaps Denisovan or another unknown type Separately developed the same pattern of stone tool as primitive humans in response to a similar cruel environment.
“Although we cannot confirm the presence of primitive human beings in China – who were responsible for the ancient Stone Age (tools) in Europe and Central Asia – we know that their types” their sister “, Denisovan, was present in the region,” he said.
He said: “It is initially possible to attribute these innovations and environmental adaptations to them.”
“From a base of knowledge-the common technological basis in the primitive European human beings-local groups may have” invented “this tradition in making tools because it was completely appropriate for its environmental conditions,” Delibano said.
Dongju Zhang, an archaeologist and professor at the University of Lanzhou, who did not participate in the study, said that both hypotheses were reasonable, if the speculation was. She said that more concrete evidence is needed to understand tools.
“For me, it is too early to provide an explanation of the producers of this style in Longan. I look forward to seeing more Red proteins She said via e -mail: “Old Protein) in East Asia.”
John Xia, a professor of anthropology at Stone Brock University in New York, said that the only way to prove that primitive humans lived in what is now China is for excavation scientists who work there to find Neanderthal’s fossils in China.
“Stone tools are not identity cards,” he said.
The new study adds to a set of questions that have not been resolved about How the human story was revealed in Asia Before accessing our own types, homo sapiens, in the area.
“For me, the importance of this paper is that it contributes to a constantly increasing list of modern discoveries that highlight East and Southeast Asia as hot points of human asset research.”
“While archaeologists and anthropologists have long been considered east and southeast Asia as” cultural background areas “, these discoveries help in reflecting this narration and proving that humans who live in these areas were everything dynamic and complicated for behaviors who live in another place at the same time.”
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