Archaeology
MODERN humans were living in what is now China by 45,000 years ago. The finding means our species reached the area thousands of years earlier than was generally thought.
Francesco d’Errico at the University of Bordeaux in France and his colleagues have re-examined an archaeological site called Shiyu in northern China. It was first excavated in 1963, not long before the unrest of China’s Cultural Revolution. “This was not the best moment to find such an important site,” says d’Errico.
Shiyu is an open-air site in a river gully. It holds a 30-metredeep deposit of sand and other sediment, which the original excavators divided into four layers, the second-from-bottom of which was found to hold evidence of human occupation. The excavators found more than 15,000 stone artefacts and thousands of animal bones. There was also a piece of hominin skull, identified as modern human (Homo sapiens).
Some artefacts were taken to Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. But those left at local facilities – including the hominin bone – were lost. “We have perhaps 10 per cent of the stone tools,” says d’Errico. D’Errico and his colleagues have re-excavated Shiyu to find its age. They dated 15 sediment samples using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence and carbon-dated 10 animal bones and teeth. They say the hominin layer is about 44,600 years old (Nature Ecology &Evolution, doi.org/mdb6).
5000 Number of years the arrival of modern humans in China has been pushed back
The Shiyu hominins were probably H. sapiens, says Arina Khatsenovich at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, Russia, who wasn’t involved in the study. As such, the new study implies modern humans had reached northern China a
