The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

J Hum Evol. 2008 Oct 6.[Epub ahead of print]

Early evidence of the genus Homo in East Asia.

Zhu RX, Potts R, Pan YX, Yao HT, Lü LQ, Zhao X, Gao X, Chen LW,
Gao F, Deng CL.

Paleomagnetism and Geochronology Laboratory (SKL-LE), Institute of
Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029,
China.

The timing and route of the earliest dispersal from Africa to
Eastern Asia are contentious topics in the study of early human
evolution because Asian hominin fossil sites with precise age
constraints are very limited. Here we report new high-resolution
magnetostratigraphi c results that place stringent age controls on
excavated hominin incisors and stone tools from the Yuanmou Basin,
southwest China.

The hominin-bearing layer resides in a reverse polarity magnetozone
just above the upper boundary of the Olduvai subchron, yielding an
estimated age of 1.7Ma.

The finding represents the age of the earliest documented presence of
Homo, with affinities to Homo erectus, in mainland East Asia. This
age estimate is roughly the same as for H. erectus in island
Southeast Asia and immediately prior to the oldest archaeological
evidence in northeast Asia.

Mammalian fauna and pollen obtained directly from the hominin site
indicate that the Yuanmou hominins lived in a varied habitat of open
vegetation with patches of bushland and forest on an alluvial fan
close to a lake or swamp. The age and location are consistent with a
rapid southern migration route of initial hominin populations into
Eastern Asia.