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Stone tools that were excavated in the southwest of China helped a mysterious group that spent their livelihood in a cold and hard environment 60,000 to 50,000 years ago.
But whose hands did they shape? According to new research, the answer could shake what is known about human origins during this period of the Stone Age.
Archaeologists who dig out the Longan site in the province of Yunnan on the southwestern edge of the Tibetan plateau discovered hundreds of stone artifacts from two trenches that were dug in the red, muddy tone of the region.
The research team found that many of the tools were manufactured in the style known as Quina, which is typically regarded as an archaeological signature by Neanderthals, a kind of old man. The style or complex has not yet been found in East Asia, according to the study, which was published on Monday in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The discovery at the Longtan location is noteworthy because it documents this special tradition far (at least 7,000 or 8,000 kilometers) from the region, which is traditionally associated with this techno-cultural complex,” studied co-co-author Davide Delpiano, a postdoctoral student in the Paläleritic Archeology at the University of Ferrara in Italal in Italal.
Neanderthals roamed 400,000 years in Eurasia before he disappeared 40,000 years ago, but there is no evidence of their remains east of the Altai mountains in southern Siberia.
Neanderthal bones and skeletons were previously found in addition to Quina Stone tools at several locations in Western Europe, including the namesake of La Quina in southwestern France. Quina is one of a series of stone tool styles connected to Neanderthals, which archaeologists describe MOUSTERIAN Culture.
The unprecedented discovery in Longtan had “significant effects,” said Delpiano and increased two competing opportunities. Neanderthals would have hiked to the east and reached today’s China, or another kind of old man who may be incredibly similar to stone tools as during this time, which are known as a medium paleolithic during this time.
Stone tools with far -reaching effects
The tool set, which was discovered in Longtan in 2019 and 2020, includes scrap that was used for the work of skins or wood with a sharp side, stone points that may have been attached to wooden spears, and tools that had a bit like a saw.
In Europe, Neanderthals used Quina Stone tools 60,000 to 50,000 years ago in a dry and cold time in a landscape of open forests. According to the study, the tools had helped hunting migration herds from reindeer, giant deer, horses and bison.
Quina tools usually had a long period of use and were often retouched and recycled – which indicates that they were a reaction to inconsistent resources and a very mobile lifestyle, the researchers wrote.
The analysis of the old pollen grains from Longtan showed that the climate and environment in southwestern China would have been similar in Europe. However, the authors did not find any animal remains on site, so it is not known whether the people who lived there hunted similar animals, they said.
“The Quina package represents an adaptation to highly developed mobility strategies: These artifacts were designed in such a way that nomadic human groups had to search for resources that became scarce due to increasingly hard climate conditions,” said Delpiano.
It was possible that Neanderthals made it as far east as Southwest China, or they encountered other human species in their home area, an interaction that made it possible for their stone tool technology to spread to the east, he said.
Fossils from the Denisova cave in the Altai Mountains show that Neanderthals about 200,000 years ago at about the same time as a sister species, which is known as Denisovan, it is assumed that she has lived throughout Asia.
The authors of the study added that skulls in Xuchang in Henan Province Henan from Central China also showed some Neanderthal characteristics that “could indicate that human interactions have occurred between the West and the East”.
“I would not be surprised if Neanderthals occasionally incorporate ideas into the Chinese territory.
The problem, however, is that we currently lack this technological package in the rest of Asia and that we are connected to us in a hypothetical migration path without a clear “bread crumb path”, ”said Delpiano.
Neanderthals against Denisovans
An equally plausible explanation that the study presented was that the Hominine, the once Longtan Home – possibly Denisovans or another unknown species – developed the same style of the stone tool as a Neanderthals in response to the similarly hard environment.
“Although we cannot yet confirm the presence of Neanderthals in China who were responsible for the middle paleolithic (tools) in Europe and Central Asia – we know that their” sister “species, the Denisovan, were present in the region,” he said.
“It is therefore temporarily possible to attribute these innovations and ecological adjustments to them,” he said.
“Based on a technological basis based on knowledge that European Neanderthals are in common, local groups have” reinvented “this tradition of tools because it was well suited to its ecological conditions,” said Delpiano.
Dongju Zhang, archaeologist and professor at China’s University of Lanzhou, who was not involved in the study, said both hypotheses are plausible, albeit speculative. Specific evidence was needed to understand who made the tools, she said.
“It is far too early for me to explain the producers of this style in Longtan. I am looking forward to seeing more new finds and more certain human fossil or old DNA or paleoprotomic (old protein) in East Asia,” she said by e -mail.
The only way to prove in China in China that Neanderthals have lived in China to work there to find a Neanderthal fossil in China, said John Shea, professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University in New York.
“Stone tools are not ID cards,” he said.
The new study makes a number of unsolved questions of how human history in Asia develops in the region before the large -scale arrival of our own species, Homo sapiens.
“For me, the importance of this paper is that it contributes to a constantly growing list of the latest discoveries that emphasize the eastern and southeastern Asia as hotspots for research in human origin,” said Ben Utting, a post-doctorate in the Anthropology Department of Smithonian National Museum for Natural History in Washington, DC.
“While archaeologists and anthropologists regarded long eastern and southeastern Asia as a cultural” backwater “, these discoveries help to reverse and show that the people living in these regions were just as dynamic and complex as people who lived at the same time.”
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