A new study of stone tools from a cave site in China shows that sophisticated “Levallois” tool-making techniques were present in East Asia at a much earlier date than previously thought.
The findings challenge the existing model of the origin and spread of these techniques in East Asia, with implications for theories of the dispersal of modern humans around the world.
The study, by researchers from the University of Wollongong (UOW), University of Washington, Peking University, Chinese Academy of Sciences and China’s Bureau of Cultural Relics Protection, is published online in Nature on 19 November.
Examples of Levallois technology (named after a Paris suburb where tools made with this method were discovered) have been found in Africa and Europe dating back to around 300,000 years ago. Before now, the earliest examples of Levallois techniques in East Asia were dated to 40,000 – 30,000 years ago; the new study places them there as far back as 170,000 years ago. Read more.
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