Paleolithic China

1 Origins: The Discoveries of Archaeology

Paleolithic China

1,000,000 - 12,000 BP
Several excavations of Homo erectus, with the first being the caves in the limestone hills near Zhoukoudian.

They were hunter-fisher-gatherers and used fire to illuminate their cave and to cook their meat, 70 percent of which consisted of deer, although bones of the leopard, bear, saber-toothed tiger, hyena, elephant, rhinoceros, camel, water buffalo, boar, and horse were also found. There were no burials or complete skeletons in the cave, but some skulls were bashed in, which suggest that Peking Man was a small-time cannibal or at least a head-hunter who savored brains. All in all, says K. C. Chang (1986), the Peking Man fossils were "paleoanthropology's greatest catch.

Chipped stone tools and human fossils from between 400,000 and 200,000 years BP (during the Lower or Early Paleolithic)

Homo sapiens - 200,000 and 50,000 years BP (the Middle Paleolithic period)

Homo sapiens sapiens - 50,000 to 12,000 years BP (the Upper or Late Paleolithic period)

...was widely dispersed in half a dozen or more local cultures throughout China. They were usually situated at points where mountains descended into plains and hunting could be combined with fishing and gathering. Judging by the stone tools left behind, these cultural regions had common features but also distinctive local characteristics even at this early time. Sites included the middle Yellow River valley, the Ordos region, the loess plateau of Shaanxi province, and the western edge of the North China plain - for example, the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian seems to have served at this late time as a burial place. Seven shulls were found there, all battered. Archaeologist like K. C. Chang have concluded that Old Stone Age man in China was not a mere chipper of rocks; basic ideas of kinship, authority, religion, and art that can still be found in China today were already developing in these early cultures.