Breakthrough in East Asian Paleolithic Research from the Perspective of "Preparing Stone Core Technology" (Part II) - Archaeological Revelation of Cenjiawan Site
Editor's note: Looking at the world, after understanding the same Paleolithic Age, those epoch-making "stone tools" and "stone cores" in human history, and the manufacturing and development of five different stages and five different technologies, let us turn our attention back to the Cenjiawan site in the Yangyuan Nihewan Basin, what exactly was found at the Cenjiawan site, and what kind of stone tool technology is the "preparation stone core technology" (P r e p a r e d c o r e t e c c h n o l o g y) mentioned in the latest research results? Why is it an important breakthrough in the study of paleolithic tools in the Nihewan Basin and even East Asia?
In this issue, let's explore the site of Cenjiawan in the Nihewan Basin——
"Apes say goodbye. Only a few stones have been grinded, childhood. "Don't underestimate the "little thing" of "only a few stones have been grinded", which contains the wisdom accumulated on the long road of human evolution.
What was found at the site of Cen Jia Wan
From 1921 to the present, the archaeology of the Nihewan Basin has lasted for more than 100 years, as a representative site of the Paleolithic Age, the importance of the Nihewan Basin is self-evident, but the early stone tool technology in China is considered to have been stagnant for a long time, and is in a relatively primitive "Olduvai technology" mode.
Combined with the first part of this paper, "Breakthrough in Paleolithic Research in East Asia from the Perspective of "Preparing Stone Core Technology": The Evolution of Stone Tool Technology", we can know that the Olduvai technology is about 2.6 million years old, and the representative location is the Olduvai Grand Canyon in East Africa, and ancient humans living in this area began to be able to make a set of stone products with stone cores and stone chips as the main body, and the production process of these stone products is simple, reflecting the characteristics of the embryonic stage of human stone tool making technology. With the advancement of time, for more than 2 million years, the technology of stone tool production tools has been continuously improved, such as Acheuli technology, Moster technology, Late Paleolithic stone leaf technology, Mesolithic fine stone leaf technology, these technical models show obvious characteristics of phased and systematic succession, they should have been found in the "Paleolithic treasure house" in the Nihewan Basin, but unfortunately, in addition to the earliest "Olduvai technology" and the more recent "fine stone leaf technology" found more, several other representative stages, Technology, which is rarely discovered. Not only that, looking at the whole country, as an important area for the evolution of ancient humans in the eastern part of the Old World, the mainland has many archaeological sites from the Early to Middle Pleistocene, but the stages and technologies of the above five models are rarely discovered. In response to this phenomenon, scholars have put forward different hypotheses to explain the performance of stone tool technology in East Asia, including a certain amount of biological isolation, cultural loss, or a small population and lack of innovation in East Asia.
A hypothesis is a hypothesis, and research must be based on physical evidence. In recent years, more and more scholars have become aware of the diversity and particularity of ancient human stone tool technology in the early Paleolithic period of China, and have emphasized the possible technological innovation and environmental adaptation factors. Therefore, the evolution characteristics of early and Middle Pleistocene stone tool technology in China, the emergence time of Acheulian technology, and the change of the current research concept of early stone tool technology are all long-term scientific problems faced by the academic community.
This problem finally found a breakthrough at the Cenjiawan site.
In 1984, the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology found that the paleomagnetic age of the Cenjiawan site was about 1.1 million years ago, and it was once a dense area of ancient human activities. In the 20th century, the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology carried out four excavations on the site, and in 2019, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences carried out supplementary excavations on the site, and a total of more than 2,000 stone products and rich animal fossils were unearthed. In addition to stone artifacts such as stone cores, stone chips, and repair tools, 152 stone tool assembling groups have been unearthed, with a splice rate of up to 30%, which is one of the Early Pleistocene sites with the highest assembling rate in the world, providing important materials for revealing the technical and behavioral characteristics of ancient humans.
What do these findings have to do with the "preparation of stone core technology"?
What is "Preparing Stone Core Technology"?
"Stone core preparation technology" originated from the Acheulan technique of the evolution of ancient human stone tool technology, and is an important technical element in the Acheulian industrial system. A common combination of artifacts in the Acheuli technique is a hand axe, a pickaxe, and a thin-bladed axe. These large tools are likely to be used in combination with cutting, cutting, digging, and other functions, and will be used as a combination. Acheulian technology was the first stage of standardized production before mankind entered the era of industrialization.
The technology of preparing the stone core table and peeling the surface at the same time as shown by the ancient humans at the Cenjiawan site only began to appear in the middle of the Acheuli technology, such as the "West Victoria Stone Core" in South Africa 1 million years ago, which is also an example of this technology in Africa. In view of the technical characteristics of stone tools at the Cenjiawan site, the research team believes that the ancient humans at the Cenjiawan site have the cognitive level and technical ability of the Acheuri population, but they may have given up making large Acheuli tools due to adaptation to the stone tool raw materials and high-latitude ecological environment of the Nihewan Basin, and then produced small tools, which is an adaptation strategy for the flint raw materials and ecological resources and environment in the Nihewan Basin.
To put it simply, for stone tool making, the ancient humans at the Cenjiawan site have been able to carry out a series of "preparation steps", including the selection of raw materials, the prefabrication of stone core tables and peeling surfaces, etc., to produce thin stone flakes with relatively flat backs. There is a similarity in tool repair techniques, with the ability to deliberately truncate thin stone flakes and use half of them to further make sharpening tools.
In order to systematically reveal the technical characteristics of stone tools at the Cenjiawan site, the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of History of the Spanish Council for Advanced Scientific Research, the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and other domestic and foreign scientific research units have jointly carried out systematic research. Through the technical analysis of stone tools and high-precision 3D scanning of the Cenjiawan Composite Formation, the research team systematically reconstructed the stripping technology and tool repair strategies of ancient humans at the site. The results show that there is a "preparation of stone core technology" (P r e p a r e dc o r et e c h n o l o g y) at the Cenjiawan site, which is manifested in the production of a final product with a certain standard - the production of thin stone flakes with a relatively flat back.
This is not only the earliest attempt at stone assembling in China, but also the earliest "preparation of stone core technology" in Eurasia. The products of each peeling stage of the "preparation stone core technology" were also found in the site, and a single repair tool was also found in the repair tools, which provided more solid evidence for confirming the existence of the preparation stone core technology and tool repair model at the Cenjiawan site, and strongly supported the hierarchical, standardized and modeled stone tool technology of ancient humans in Cenjiawan, which was fundamentally different from the simple and primitive Olduvai technology and stages previously thought. At the same time, the ability of ancient human raw materials management and long sequence stripping ability shown by the technical characteristics of stone tools indicate that ancient humans at the Cenjiawan site have a high level of technology and cognitive ability.
In a paper published online in the journal P NA S (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), the authors further argue that although the hand axe is the most significant feature of the Acheulian technique, it should not be limited to the manifestation of the hand axe. In the process of research, it is necessary to change the concept and understand the Acheulian model as a technological complex of ancient humans with certain similar biological characteristics, cognitive levels and technical capabilities. The technique of western Eurasia, which is mainly characterized by hand axes, is a manifestation of Acheulian technology, and at the same time, in the process of adapting to different environments or raw materials in East Asia, ancient humans developed a different set of tools with similar technological capabilities. In view of the particularity of the Early Pleistocene to Middle Pleistocene Paleolithic sites in East Asia, the early technology in East Asia should not only be defined by the presence or absence of specific stone tool types, but also expand the perspective to the identification of the technical characteristics of small peeling products produced by ancient humans, and the cognitive level and technical capabilities of ancient humans reflected behind them.
The breakthrough value of "preparing the stone core technology".
At present, the Cenjiawan site is the earliest site in Eurasia with the technology of preparing stone cores, indicating that ancient humans with similar technical capabilities to the Acheeran technology lived in northern China 1.1 million years ago, and developed a set of survival strategies and technical manifestations adapted to the western part of the Old World, 300,000 years earlier than the previously reported 800,000-year-old Acheulian technology products in South China. The new results will have an important impact on the research concept of small-scale stone artifacts that were widespread in northern China in the early period, the evolution and innovation of early Paleolithic technology, and the origin and diffusion of Acheulian technology in East Asia. At the same time, the discovery of this technology in the Nihewan Basin also provides new thinking for the current debate on related technologies in the Middle Paleolithic in East Asia.
These breakthrough studies show that the Nihewan Basin, as a key area for studying human evolution and technological development outside of Africa, has great potential in the field of constructing a million-year model of human evolution and behavioral development in East Asia. In the future, the systematic study of ancient human information in the basin will be of great scientific and practical significance for enriching the scientific and cultural connotation of "the hometown of oriental mankind" and empirical the grand picture of "millions of years of human history" on the mainland. Reporter Wang Chenyin
Editor: Fan Fan
Source: Heshan News client