Shangchen () is a

Lower Palaeolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears ...

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

in Lantian County,

Shaanxi Shaanxi is a Provinces of China, province in north Northwestern China. It borders the province-level divisions of Inner Mongolia to the north; Shanxi and Henan to the east; Hubei, Chongqing, and Sichuan to the south; and Gansu and Ningxia to t ...

, China, some 25 km south of

Weinan Weinan ( zh, s=渭南 , p=Wèinán) is a prefecture-level city in east-Guanzhong, central Shaanxi, Shaanxi province, northwest China. The city lies on the lower section of the Wei River confluence into the Yellow River, about east of the provinc ...

. It was discovered in 1964, and excavated during 2004 and 2017.

Stone tools Stone tools have been used throughout human history but are most closely associated with prehistoric cultures and in particular those of the Stone Age. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or knapped stone, the latter fashioned by a c ...

found at the site were dated based on

magnetostratigraphy Magnetostratigraphy is a geophysical correlation technique used to date sedimentary and volcanic sequences. The method works by collecting oriented samples at measured intervals throughout the section. The samples are analyzed to determine their ' ...

in a 2018 study. Artefacts were found in 17 layers, dated to between 1.26 Ma (palaeosol S15) and 2.12 Ma (loess L28). The date of 2.12 Ma predates the earliest known fossils of

archaic humans ''Homo'' () is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus ''Australopithecus'' and encompasses only a single extant species, ''Homo sapiens'' (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively calle ...

in Eurasia ('' Homo erectus georgicus'') by 300,000 years. Whether these tools were made by an early species in the genus ''

Homo ''Homo'' () is a genus of great ape (family Hominidae) that emerged from the genus ''Australopithecus'' and encompasses only a single extant species, ''Homo sapiens'' (modern humans), along with a number of extinct species (collectively called ...

'' or another

hominin The Hominini (hominins) form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae (hominines). They comprise two extant genera: ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos), and in standard usage exclude the genus '' Gorilla'' ( gorillas) ...

species is unknown.

Location

Shangchen is located in and named after the village of Shangchen (), Yushan Town ( zh), Lantian County,

, about southeast of the provincial capital at

Xi'an Xi'an is the list of capitals in China, capital of the Chinese province of Shaanxi. A sub-provincial city on the Guanzhong plain, the city is the third-most populous city in Western China after Chongqing and Chengdu, as well as the most populou ...

. The archaeological site is on the cliff faces of a gully in the

Loess Plateau The Loess Plateau is a plateau in north-central China formed of loess, a clastic rock, clastic silt-like sediment formed by the accumulation of Dust#Atmospheric, wind-blown dust. It is located southeast of the Gobi Desert and is surrounded by t ...

. Because

loess A loess (, ; from ) is a clastic rock, clastic, predominantly silt-sized sediment that is formed by the accumulation of wind-blown dust. Ten percent of Earth's land area is covered by loesses or similar deposition (geology), deposits. A loess ...

is a soil made by extremely fine particles blown in by the wind, all larger rocks found in loess deposits had to have been carried in by humans or other animals.

Discovery and excavation

Lantian County is where fossils of the ''

Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' ( ) is an extinction, extinct species of Homo, archaic human from the Pleistocene, spanning nearly 2 million years. It is the first human species to evolve a humanlike body plan and human gait, gait, to early expansions of h ...

'', now called Lantian Man, were discovered in 1964. The oldest fossil, a skull, was initially dated to 1.15 million years ago. In 2001, geologist Zhu Zhaoyu and other scientists began researching the site again, and determined that the skull was 1.63 million years old. Zhu's team surveyed the region around the fossil site, and discovered stone tools buried deep in the side of a gully in Shangchen, less than three miles away. The team, later joined by British paleoanthropologist Robin Dennell in 2010, thoroughly searched the gully and excavated the site between 2004 and 2017, and their findings were published in July 2018 in the journal ''Nature''. A total of 96 stone tools have been found at Shangchen, including flakes, points, and cores. They were found in 17 artefact layers.

Date

The oldest artefact-bearing layer at the site was dated at 2.12 million years ago, while the youngest was dated to 1.26 million years, indicating that the site was occupied (not necessarily continuously) for 850,000 years. Some of the tools were found with bone fragments of animals including deer and bovines. Even older remains may still lie undiscovered, as the deepest layers at Shangchen are inaccessible as of 2018 because the area is "actively farmed". The findings are highly significant as they represent one of the earliest evidence of ''

'' outside Africa after Masol( fr) in India, surpassing

Dmanisi Dmanisi ( ka, დმანისი, tr, , ) is a town and archaeological site in the Kvemo Kartli region of Georgia (country), Georgia approximately 93 km southwest of the nation’s capital Tbilisi in the river valley of Mashavera. Abandoned i ...

in the

Caucasus The Caucasus () or Caucasia (), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, comprising parts of Southern Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The Caucasus Mountains, i ...

region of

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

, which was the previously known oldest

Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3.3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears ...

site outside Africa, dating to 1.85 million years ago. It is also older than the

Yuanmou Man Yuanmou Man (, ''Homo erectus yuanmouensis'') is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited the Yuanmou Basin in Yunnan Province, southwestern China, roughly 1.7 million years ago. It is the first fossil evidence of humans in China, though ...

, the oldest hominin fossils found in East Asia, dating to 1.7 million years. As the Shangchen site lacks volcanic minerals which are abundant in African sites, the study dated the sediments using the

paleomagnetism Paleomagnetism (occasionally palaeomagnetism) is the study of prehistoric Earth's magnetic fields recorded in rocks, sediment, or archeological materials. Geophysicists who specialize in paleomagnetism are called ''paleomagnetists.'' Certain ...

method. The authors of the study argue that a natural origin of the claimed artefacts is ruled out as Shangchen and its immediate vicinity have no known ancient rivers, which might have carved natural rocks into shapes resembling human-made tools. Uninvolved scientists who reviewed the findings such as Michael Petraglia, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany consider the dates convincing. Study co-author Robin Dennell talking to a ''Nature News'' reporter was cited as speculating that "the Shangchen toolmakers belonged to an earlier species in the genus Homo" than ''H. erectus'', and one William Jungers (unaffiliated with the study) is cited as even reserving "the possibility that the Shangchen toolmaker was a species of ''

Australopithecus ''Australopithecus'' (, ; or (, ) is a genus of early hominins that existed in Africa during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. The genera ''Homo'' (which includes modern humans), ''Paranthropus'', and ''Kenyanthropus'' evolved from some ''Aus ...

''".

References

External links

*{{Cite news, url=https://www.science.org/content/article/our-ancestors-may-have-left-africa-hundreds-thousands-years-earlier-thought, title=Our ancestors may have left Africa hundreds of thousands of years earlier than thought, last=Gibbons, first=Ann, date=2018-07-11, work=Science, access-date=2018-07-13 2018 archaeological discoveries History of Xi'an Paleolithic sites in China Homo erectus sites