General Planner: Zhang Lifang Cao Yangkui
Coordinator: Han Lisen, Cui Liqiu, Zhang Wenrui, Sun Jingchang
Executive Planner: Liu Ping, Liu Jie
Video Producer: Cao Zheng (Some video materials provided by the Publicity Department of Yangyuan County CPC Committee)
"Exploring the Source of Chinese Civilization and Listening to Yan Zhao's Footsteps" Large-scale All-Media Archaeological Series Report on the Archaeology of the NiheWan Ruins Group (II)
Human exploration
Prairie mammoth
Since the Ice Age, whether there are ancient humans living and reproducing in Nihe Bay is the first question that scientists pondered since entering the scientific investigation of Nihe Bay. Finding traces of ancient humans in Mud River Bay has naturally become their dream. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, due to the discovery of Javanese and Beijingers, the theory of the origin of human beings in Asia swept the world, and Western scientific expeditions and expeditions rushed to Asia to try to unveil the mystery of human origins.
When were our ancestors born and where were they born? What kind of tribulations and glories have they experienced? Is Nihe Bay the homeland of eastern human beings, and is it the starting point for the Chinese nation to take the first step? This is the question we are most concerned about and most want to find out.
Mud River Bay Ruins Group
One
Prophecy and controversy
In 1930, the French paleontologist De Rijin and the naturalist Sang Zhihua conducted systematic research on mammal fossils collected in 1925 and 1926, and published the famous monograph "Mammal Fossils of Nihe Bay", which first proposed the possibility of human activities in the early Pleistocene in the Nihewan Basin. "Studies conducted on the Sangan River have so far found no remains of any human activity," they noted. Honestly, we need direct evidence to prove that when the last three-toed horses often came to drink the water of Nihewan Lake, China had humans. "Although there is nothing to prove that the Pleistocene of the Sangan River already belongs to the human Pleistocene, this is not entirely true, and the greatest advantage of the Nihe Bay Layer for prehistory is that it belongs to this critical period." We don't yet know if anyone has lived here, but we do know that humans may exist."
In 1935, De Rijin and the French archaeologist Bruriye published a signed article in the French journal Journal of Anthropology, in which a fierce debate was waged over animal fossils and "rough hand axes" collected in Mud River Bay, with one side questioning and the other affirming. In 1931 and 1935, when he was invited to China to help study the Chinese ape-man stone tools, he also studied the "stone tools" and animal fossils in Nihe Bay. In his article, he said: "According to my in-depth observation of bone material, I found that there are a certain number of antler tips that have been cut off, deer frontal bones that have been trimmed, horn hearts (such as antelopes and horns) that have been arranged and used, and bones that have been made like stones, the same as those of Zhoukou shoppers. In my opinion, there are also very few bone pieces, I think they have been burned, because they appear to be carbonized, with small cracks that have been burned. He concluded: "Personally, it seems to me that during the Nihewan period, there was a kind of person who could make it, the Chinese ape man or other people, which is a fact that has been established." ”
De Rijin euphemistically expressed a negative attitude, saying: "My friend Bruriye argues that the certain ancient crack marks on some bones and the cracks on a piece of granite are difficult to explain by natural effects other than artificial action." I still cannot accept these views, but I should also pay attention to the exceptions in paleolithic materials and the creators of its traces. Pei Wenzhong, a famous Chinese archaeologist, explained: "What De Rijin means is that this material cannot convince him at present, and will be proved by future discoveries and studies." ”
Chinese scholars who have made a clear statement on this controversy are the first to recommend Pei Wenzhong. In 1937, Mr. Pei Wenzhong wrote a special article on Chinese Paleolithic culture, including Nihe Bay. He said that when Professor Bu Riye returned from China, he reported to the French Anthropological Institute that the earliest artefact in China was neither a quartz stone tool made by a Chinese ape man, nor a flint tool at the thirteenth site of Zhoukoudian, but a polyhedral stone that De Rijin had collected in the accumulation of Shagou River lake under the Nihe Bay. According to Bruriye, there are many traces of artificial blows on different sides of the stone. In addition to this simple tool, he believes that, like the Chinese ape-man culture, there are many processed and used bones, as well as some pieces of bone that appear to have been burned. He argues that it is difficult to be sure that human activity existed in such an ancient period. At this time, Mr. Pei Wenzhong's understanding of this stone was still ambiguous.
In 1955, Pei Wenzhong's article "Chinese Paleolithic Culture" was published, and the text of the earliest stone tool chapter found in China did not mention the stone tools of Nihe Bay, but in the annotations, he showed his negative attitude, he said: "From the Sangan River Xiajiagou (Xiashagou), a stone was found, some people say that he was manually struck, but in fact there are only two points that may be traces of the collision of natural forces, so here is omitted. ”
De Rijin's prophecies, as well as his controversy with Buriya, not only made international scholars pay more attention to Nihewan, but also greatly influenced and advanced scientific research here, and people looked forward to the emergence of Nihewan's ancient humans and their culture, and also speculated whether Nihewan was related to human origin.
Two
Myths and legends
The origin of mankind is a major scientific research topic involving nature and humanities, and exploring the origin of mankind and revealing its mysteries is a major event that scientists dream of. Before the rise of modern science, explanations of the human body were either benignly portrayed as beautiful and moving myths, or false hands of God confronted modern science. In different ethnic groups and different regions of the world, there are similar myths and stories, and people before modern civilization, in order to respect their ancestors and look forward to the future, weave into a wonderful myth and express their simple feelings.
China has a long history, a vast territory, and many nationalities, and occupies a place in the development of world social civilization. Myths and legends about the origin of human beings are not uncommon, and the most widely circulated are Pangu's pioneering of the earth and Nüwa's creation of man. This is a naïve view of the origin of mankind in China with the Han Chinese as the central ethnic group.
Westerners believe that man was created by God, who rules over the natural things of the world and man himself. The Old Testament of ancient Judaism has a Genesis chapter that describes the whole process in which God spent 6 days creating the world and humanity. The Creation Doctrine of the Christian Bible also has a similar story of God's creation.
Unlike other regions, Western creationism has slowly become an intellectual tool for maintaining doctrine and political domination, an executioner that stifles scientific progress. In the study of human origins, many scientific forerunners were either sentenced to death or exiled for proposing views different from creationism. In the seventeenth century AD, the famous Italian philosopher Vanini simply said that everything has changed, and human beings have changed, and not forever as they are now, they were accused of debauchery and corruption of youth, and their tongues were cut off by the Catholic Inquisition and burned alive with fire. Lamarck, Darwin and other famous scientists have also been attacked and persecuted to varying degrees.
Myth is a myth, legend or legend, doctrine is also a doctrine, in order to truly understand where human beings come from, and where to go, in the end, we must use the key of modern science to open this lock.
The germination of the geology and biology of the view of natural history slowly paved the way for the study of human origins. In 1749, the French naturalist Boufon, through the study of the history of the formation and evolution of the earth, produced the idea of "uniformitarianism" and wrote a book called "Natural History", which was stifled in the cradle because his views contradicted the creationism. However, Bu feng's "uniformitarian theory" has been appreciated by many scholars, which has promoted the investigation and research of stratigraphy and paleontology to achieve results step by step. The work that had the greatest influence on the formation of Darwin's theory was the Principles of Geology, edited by the geological community Ryle from 1830 to 1833. In this tome, Reil provides evidence of a large number of stratigraphic formations, paleontological fossils, and other crust evolutions, rejecting Juviye's "catastrophic theory" and supporting Bufon's "uniformitarian theory".
The founder of biological evolution is the French naturalist Lamarck, represented by him evolutionists believe that all modern creatures on the earth, including humans, have evolved from ancient organisms, from low to high, from simple to complex. Organisms themselves are attached to their environment, and environmental changes lead to changes in living organisms.
Darwin was the founder of the theory of biological evolution. In 1859, Darwin published the huge book "The Origin of Species", which revealed the objective laws of biological evolution by using evidence from animal tissue embryos, functional morphology, comparative anatomy and other aspects, and believed that natural selection, survival competition, survival of the fittest, genetic variation and other natural laws constitute biological evolution. In this way, the biological world on Earth has changed from inorganic to organic, from single-celled to multi-celled, from low to high biological evolutionary trees. Of course, humans are the highest animals, at the apex of the evolutionary tree. In On the Origin of Species, Darwin devotes little space to discussion, perhaps deliberately avoiding this sensitive topic that could lead to disaster. However, he pointed out that "the theory of evolution will greatly contribute to the elucidation of humanity and its history".
Huxley was a staunch Darwinist who played an important role with great success in the struggle of religious forces to extinguish evolution. In 1863, Huxley's magnum opus, The Place of Man in Nature, was published, and through the analysis of rich and detailed anatomical material, he found evidence that the difference between humans and apes was smaller than the difference between apes and monkeys, indicating that humans evolved from apes, and apes were close relatives of humans. In 1871, Darwin published the book "The Origin and Sexual Selection of Man", using the basic laws of his theory of biological evolution to argue the relationship between humans and animals, pointing out that human beings originated from a series of ancestors, as long as one of the links is removed, there will be no human beings themselves, and the closest relatives of humans are apes, and scientific conclusions support Huxley's "co-ancestral theory of apes".
Where did humanity originate? Darwin made a bold speculation: "It is possible that there were several kinds of apes in Africa that were closely related to today's gorillas and chimpanzees and were long extinct; and since these two species of orangutans are now the closest relatives of man, Africa seems to be more likely to be the original home of our early ancestors than on other continents." Just as he said, in a very desolate period, man, the wonder of the universe and the glory of the universe, finally stepped out. And the place where humanity took its first steps was fixed in Africa by Darwin.
Three
Bucket to star shift
Further physical evidence of where humans came from is the fossils of ancient humans and their culture. Because their conclusions are mainly supported by circumstantial evidence such as comparative anatomy and histology and embryology. In fact, Darwin had noticed this at that time and was expecting the discovery of human fossils to confirm it.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Darwin's theory of biological evolution and human evolution had been widely accepted by society, and the study of human origins became a common concern. Although Darwin speculated that Africa may have been the origin of human beings, the early discoveries of ancient human fossils and stone tools did not appear in Africa, but in the land of Europe, where modern science was developed. So is it possible that humans originated in Europe? Through decades of research and discussion by scientists, it has been proved that the early materials discovered in Europe, either near Asia or adjacent to Africa, ultimately have no reason to explain that human beings went from Europe to the world.
The origin of human beings is neither Africa nor Europe, is it in Asia? At the critical moment of confusion and wandering, scientists' eyes began to focus on Asia, and the "Central Asian Theory" of human origin became popular.
As early as 1911, the American scholar Matthew first proposed that Asia should be the origin of human beings, Professor Ospen further delineated the origin of human beings as Central Asia, and after inspecting the Mongolian Plateau in 1923, he made an expedition report on the Mongolian Plateau as the Paradise of Eden in Beijing, believing that it was the place where human beings originated. Professor Gripp, who has been working in China for a long time, also predicts that ancient human fossils will be found in the ancient strata of the Mongolian Plateau and Xinjiang. At this time, the "Central Asia Theory" of human origin was based on geological, environmental, and climatic research results, rather than the excavation of ancient human fossil materials. At this moment, the people of Beijing have not yet appeared, and although the Javanese have been discovered and named, they are still in the stage of debate and have not been accepted by the scientific community. The theory of the origin of mankind in Central Asia was all the rage as soon as it was proposed, prompting many Western scientific expeditions and expeditions to gather in Asia to explore the mystery of human origin. The Central Asian expedition team of the Natural History Museum in New York, USA, set out from Zhangjiakou and conducted scientific investigations on the Mongolian Plateau and Xinjiang for nearly 10 years. Mud River Bay was also discovered in this larger context.
In 1929, the discovery of the first skull of the Beijingers shocked the world, and then a succession of new materials were unearthed to impress the academic community. The discovery and research of the Beijingers not only provides solid and credible physical evidence for the Asian theory of human origin, but also saves the Javanese from the safe and becomes another ironclad evidence. Javanese discovery researcher Dubwa, a young scientist influenced by wallace's view of the ancestral habitat of humans in the tropics, came to the East Indies as a Dutch military medic, excavated a human skull in Java in 1891, and unearthed human femurs and teeth in 1892, and named them "Javan Erect Ape Man". Since its publication, Javanese have been the focus of debate, with cynicism and even personal attacks from the academic community and the church. Despite extensive publicity and explanation in Europe, Dubwa did not calm down, and the skull was locked in his safe for decades. Until The excavation of ancient human fossils in Zhoukoudian, its morphology is similar to that of the Javanese, indicating that they belong to the same "Homo erectus stage". Those who questioned Dubwa and Javanese were self-defeating.
In 1959, archaeologists discovered an almost complete skull and a calf bone of an ancient ape in the Oduve Gorge in Tanzania, the 1.75 million-year-old Industry of Oduve and the 1.75 million-year-old Species of Australopithecus Boucha. Since then, a large number of ancient apes, homotopians, Homo erectus and stone tool materials have been discovered, making it the richest and most complete evolutionary sequence of human fossils in the world. Stone tools made and used by humans have also been divided into different technological models, with the oldest stone artifacts coming from strata dating back 2.6 million years.
Archaeological material in Africa will naturally lead academics to recognize that Africa may have been the place where humans took their first steps, and that humans originated in Africa. Scientists speculate that around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus began to move out of Africa and into Europe and Asia. Thus, 100 years after Darwin speculated that humans originated in Africa, the theory of human origin in Africa has regained widespread acceptance in academia.
Four
The Path of Discovery
The people living on the earth today are divided into four major races: yellow, white, black and brown, which are distributed all over the world. They and their ancestors are called modern humans, commonly referred to as late Homo sapiens at the highest stage of human evolution. So, where do modern humans come from?
With regard to the study of the origins of modern man, people are confronted with a long period of time and seriously mutilated and lost evidence, like a blind man touching an elephant, or even observing things in the dark of night.
Geneticists have concluded based on the number and rate of mitochondrial DNA mutations in black people that the common ancestor of modern humans is an old lady who lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago, known as "Eve", and her descendants lived in Africa for tens of thousands of years, leaving Africa and coming to Europe and Asia about 130,000 years ago. When they arrived in the new territory, they completely and completely replaced the ancient humans who lived in situ. This is the "substitution theory" of modern human origins calculated from modern genetic data, also known as the "Eve theory".
Before the advent of this theory, scientists, including China, had proposed a "multi-regional evolutionary theory" in the study of modern human origins. Contrary to the "Eve theory", this theory holds that the four major human races in the world are closely related to local ancient humans, and their ancestors are mostly ancient humans living in the local area, mainly from the region rather than African immigrants. For example, modern humans in East Asia and China originated from ancient humans in China, and the ancestors of indigenous Australians came from Java, Indonesia. This doctrine is not calculated, but concluded through the study of the physical characteristics of ancient humans everywhere. Therefore, the "multi-regional evolutionary theory" is closer to the actual situation in various places.
The paleoanthroptic fossil data in China is the cornerstone of the establishment of the "multi-regional evolutionary theory". In 2015, the journal Nature published new data and research results on the discovery of 47 modern human teeth by Chinese scholars in Daoxian County, Hunan Province. The tooth fossils of the Daoxian people have the basic characteristics of late Homo sapiens, that is, modern humans, dating from 80,000 to 120,000 years ago, although it cannot be completely ruled out that it is not from Africa, but it is more likely that it evolved from local paleoanthropologists.
The data in Nihewan supports the "multi-regional evolutionary theory" from another perspective, that is, the tools used by humans and their manufacturing techniques. In Nihewan, the stone tool processing technology of ancient humans has been passed down from generation to generation for two million years, and has always adhered to its own cultural tradition, that is, the small stone tool cultural tradition. Until the emergence of fine stone tool technology around 30,000 years ago, in addition to the improvement of the technical level, it still maintained its own style, and did not see any similar technical models similar to those of Africa and Europe. In other words, african cultural factors are not seen in Mud River Bay. In short, the archaeological data of Nihewan supports the "multi-regional evolutionary theory", while the "Eve theory" is difficult to justify. (Xie Fei)
(Except for the byline, the pictures are all courtesy of Visual China)