During the harsh conditions that prevailed in ice age China 146,000 years ago, a remarkable survival strategy was being developed by early humans—something that led to one of the region’s earliest technological revolutions.
In a series of recent discoveries at the Lingjing site in Northern China, archaeologists have unearthed evidence of sophisticated stone tools associated with Homo juluensis, an extinct human relative that inhabited parts of East Asia long ago, and which may even have interacted with ancestors of modern humans.
The findings, reported in the Journal of Human Evolution, have now revealed that stone crafting at the site began nearly 20,000 years earlier than previous estimates, placing these ancient toolmakers amid some of the harshest glacial period conditions, rather than the later warmer climate associated with past evaluations of the site.
The findings add to recent discoveries that have revealed surprising features about ancient archaic humans that thrived during this period, which include not only their unexpected size, but also their understanding of complex stone crafting techniques.
Creativity Driven by Cold
“People often imagine creativity as something that flourishes in good times,” said lead author Yuchao Zhao, the assistant curator of East Asian archaeology at Chicago’s Field Museum, in a statement. “Finding out that these stone tools were made during a harsh ice age tells a different story.
“Hard times can force us to adapt,” Zhao adds.
For more than a decade, archaeologists have undertaken excavations at Lingjing, where everything from animal remains to ancient tools has been uncovered.
Something else that the ancient human presence at this site has revealed is a surprisingly sophisticated ice age lithic industry, where the ancient humans who once thrived here employed a technologically complex manufacturing process for their time.
Evidence of this comes in the form of disc-shaped stone cores, which are deceptively simple in appearance. To craft them, their ancient makers had to carefully work them in ways that produced useful cutting flakes. Some of them were shaped evenly on both sides, while other examples reveal asymmetrical designs where one side served as a striking platform, and the other appears to have been prepared for controlled flake removal.
Therein lies one of the most significant discoveries the recent research has yielded, since it shows that the creators of these ancient tools possessed a clear understanding of the stone’s properties as a three-dimensional material. This allowed them to anticipate how fracture patterns would emerge with the careful placement of strikes along its surface during the stone knapping process.
“This was not casual flake production, but a technology that required planning, precision, and a deep understanding of stone properties and fracture mechanics,” Zhao said, emphasizing the skill required to produce such artifacts.
The significance of the discovery is obvious, according to Zhao and his colleagues, who argue that the skill evidenced by these artifacts challenges long-held ideas about technological development among Middle Pleistocene populations in East Asia, which were believed to have lagged behind those known to have occurred in Africa and Europe.
Lingjing’s True Age Revealed
The new research also revises the timeline for lithic production at Lingjing, with help from an unlikely source: the presence of small crystals composed of calcite, which were preserved within an animal rib bone uncovered during excavations.
Within these crystals are trace amounts of uranium, which over time decay into thorium. By measuring the ratio of the two elements, researchers were able to devise a sort of natural clock, which Zhao says helped them refine the site’s age, extending previous estimates for Lingjing’s age from 126,000 to 146,000 years.
This means that amid the severe climate of the glacial period, Lingjing’s ancient inhabitants were already producing what Zhao and his colleagues say were remarkably sophisticated tools for this period, a discovery that significantly shifts our understanding of ice age technologies in ancient China.
Add to that the fact that these tools are believed to have been crafted by Homo juluensis, an extinct ancient hominin, which is currently a candidate designation for a range of archaic human types, which include the mysterious Denisovans.
Recently, protein analysis revealed that a pair of fossils dredged from the seafloor of the Penghu Channel off the coast of Taiwan belongs to Denisovans, meaning these enigmatic human remains could also be related to the species that had been responsible for the technological revolution unfolding at Lingjing in China 146,000 years ago.
“Even though these tools are just a little bit older than we’d previously thought, the entire story is changed,” Zhao said.
Ancient Technology Driven by Adversity
Overall, the findings point to environmental hardship as a potentially significant factor in what drove adaptations and innovations among ancient human populations. Rather than limiting human potential, the difficult conditions these archaic humans encountered may have significantly helped them by pushing them to experiment with novel survival strategies.
With growing evidence from sites like Lingjing, these efforts to cope with an unforgiving environment may have been what drove the development of complex technological behavior among such early human groups.
“The underlying logic of this system—and the cognitive abilities it reflects—shows important similarities to Middle Paleolithic technologies often associated with Neanderthals in Europe and with human ancestors in Africa,” Zhao says, “suggesting that advanced technological thinking was not limited to western Eurasia.”
“Altogether, this research reveals a much richer story of innovation, intelligence, and human evolution in East Asia,” Zhao adds.
The team’s findings were reported in the recent study, “Earliest centripetal flaking system in eastern Eurasia reveals human behavioral complexity in late Middle Pleistocene China,” which appeared in the Journal of Human Evolution.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.