The ongoing debate about when and how anatomically modern humans (“AMH”) made their presence in east Asia has taken another turn with new evidence recovered from a cave in central China. The finds may push back the generally accepted time of their appearance in the region by as much as 50,000 years.
A team of six researchers from four institutions, using high-precision mass spectrometric U-series dating techniques, were able to determine a reliable and constrained date range of between 81 and 101 ka (thousand years) for seven human fossil teeth recovered from the Huanglong Cave in the Hubei Province of central China. The teeth, determined to exhibit anatomically modern human characteristics, were revealed in a layer associated with stone tools and other fossilized animal remains during excavations conducted in 2004, 2005 and 2006 by a joint team from the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The excavations were followed by further fieldwork in 2010 and 2011.
Reports Guangun Shen, et al., “the existence of localized thin flowstone formations bracketing the hominin [ancient human] fossil-bearing deposits enables us to firmly constrain the human teeth into the range between 81 ka and 101 ka, probably the most narrow time span for any hominin fossil beyond 45 ka in China”.* Flowstones are sheetlike deposits of calcite formed over many thousands of years, the result of water flowing down the walls or along the floors of caves. They are a type of speleothem, or secondary mineral deposit such as a stalagtite or stalagmite, often found in ancient cave systems.
Modern Humans Were in China Much Earlier Than Previously Thought
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