Posted on 11/12/2001 5:20:19 AM PST by blam
Archaeological Discovery in N. China Challenges Theory on Origin of Man
Xinhuanet 2001-11-09 16:32:39
SHIJIAZHUANG, November 9 (Xinhuanet)
The latest archaeological discovery at the Old Stone Age ruins in Yangyuan County, north China's Hebei Province, proves that human activities began in east Asia some 2 million years ago, archaeological sources said. Chinese archaeologists unearthed more than 800 stone tools and animal skeletons left over by the ancients at historical ruins in a stratum dating back around 2 million years.
Xie Fei, a research fellow with the Hebei Provincial Relics Research Institute, said that the latest discovery at the Majuangou ruins in the Nihewan Basin proves that the date of the early stage human activities in east Asia is very close to the time of similar ruins discovered in Africa.
Xie, who has conducted archaeological research at Nihewan for 18 years, said that it is a question that deserves discussion among international archaeological circles: whether human beings migrated to east Asia at a fast speed at an early stage, or there was another origin place of man in the world.
Palaeoanthropology materials so far available show that the humans originated from Africa, and the earliest Old Stone Age ruins so far unearthed in the world are located in Ethiopia, dating back some 2.33 million years.
For a long period of time, many scientists believed that it was impossible for east Asia to have human activities some 2 million years ago.
Xie and his colleagues conducted a month-long excavation at the Majuangou ruins from September to October, and unearthed a great number of stone cores, flakes, hammers and scrapers, and bones of elephants, deer, horses and other animals.
More than 100 kilometers from Beijing, the over 9,000-square- kilometer Nihewan basin has very thick deposits of rivers, lakes and yellow earth, which contain rich fossils of mammals and animals of other species. It has been a key excavation area of early man in east Asia since the 1920s.
Chinese scientists have discovered a non-stop list of ruins of the Old Stone Age belonging to the Pleistocene epoch at the basin.
The Majuangou site is divided into three cultural layers. The latest excavation was carried out in the third layer that was discovered in the spring of last year.
Archaeologists said that the ruins unearthed were of a site where the ancient people were preparing food, adding that marks of strikes by stone tools and scrapers were found on most of the animal bones discovered at the site, and a firestone scraper was found on a rib of an animal skeleton.
The excavated stone tools prove that the manufacturers were highly capable of distinguishing stone materials and very skilled at processing stone tools, archaeologist Xie said. The ruins reveal that this group of ancient people had reached a high level, Xie added.
Early this year, Zhu Rixiang, a research fellow with the geological research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), determined that the Xiaochangliang ruins at Nihewan Basin date back 1.36 million years, thus shifting back the known date of the ancients' activities in China by 360,000 years.
Zhu spent three years studying the date of the Xiaochangliang ruins.
The third layer of the Majuangou ruins, where the latest archaeological excavation was conducted, is more than 30 meters lower than the Xiaochangliang ruins. Judging from the comparison between the ancient geomagnetic dating materials and rock formation, researcher Wei Qi, of the ancient vertebrate and the ancients research institute under the CAS, said that the third layer of the Majuangou ruins is at least 1.9 million years old and possibly even more than 2 million years in age.
Beijing University professor Lu Zun'e, who made an on-the-spot investigation at the excavation site, confirmed that the date of the latest unearthed ruins is earlier than the date of the Xiaochangliang ruins.
Based on the latest discovery, archaeologist Xie Fei concluded that more earlier human activities might have existed in the Nihewan Basin.
Next year, Chinese archaeologists will make further and large scale excavations at the Majuangou ruins and other ruins in the Nihewan Basin, according to Xie. End item.
Just a hunch, if you replace "education" with "propaganda", you may have a point.
Regarding evolution of man, looking at your grandparents, parents and yourself is just "too little time". But, throwing your bones in the desert, along with all your siblings for ten thousand years, we may have something to talk about...
Or there's the other possibility that they are BOTH WRONG!
There are a lot of 'out of China' Chinese scientists. They are the same ones who hid (for years) the 6k year old Caucasian mummies found in the Tarim Basin, China.
I've never heard of the 'both wrong' theory. Who is the author of that theory? Is he published?
Does lead one to think we are missing" something some where, huh? The Sumerians arose shortly after the end of the Last Ice Age, I have some suspicions about that. Also, there is some evidence that the Indus Valley civilizations may predate the Sumerians.
Of course, the argument raised by the modern Monogenesists that seeks to trivialize racial differences on the basis of a common human ancestor 150,000 years ago, is absurd on its face. Whether or not the races of man developed immediately before the historic period, or at a vastly earlier period; races are clearly works in progress. One can demonstrate profound changes in types of ability and definable traits from selective breeding patterns in a very few generations. So the argument--relied upon by Clinton and the like, in their recitation of how few genetic factors actually control our differences--is absolutely meaningless.
Men have clearly been racially different for longer than Beagles have been different from Foxes or Wolves, or whatever their nearest cousins may be; and the human differences are just as profound. That doesn't put anyone down. It is simply an acknowledgement of how unique we all are.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Outside the realm of science, the Falun Gong are taught by their Master that the earth has been subjected to more than eighty cycles of catastrophic destruction followed by rebirth among the surviving human beings and other creatures.
Jews and Christians accept Noah's Flood as such an event, and I do not doubt that there is more to the story. There have been those among Jewish and Christian theologians who believed and taught that there was a pre-Adamic civilization (or civilizations) that were destroyed.
I agree. However, foxes are closer related to cats than to dogs. DNA indicates that dogs have been domesticated at least four different times and in all cases from wolves.
I lean very heavily in that direction.
It is painful to read our liberal rags in search of articles such as yours. Thanks for saving me from the pain of having to go to "the media" in search of information.
The problem, other than the usual and obvious problem of circularity inherent in dating strata from fossils and then dating fossils from strata, is that the people making these claims for timeframes are the same people who tell us that dinosaurs lived 70 million years ago, and that is now KNOWN to be BS:
I have a strong suspicion that if the DNA of many a redhead were mapped, some scientists would find themselves revising their theory that Neanderthals died out and did not intermarry.
Redheads 'are neanderthal'
BY A CORRESPONDENT
RED hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, scientists believe.
Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford say that the so-called “ginger gene” which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100,000 years old.
They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200,000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago.
Rosalind Harding, the research team leader, said: “The gene is certainly older than 50,000 years and it could be as old as 100,000 years.
“An explanation is that it comes from Neanderthals.” It is estimated that at least 10 per cent of Scots have red hair and a further 40 per cent carry the gene responsible, which could account for their once fearsome reputation as fighters.
Neanderthals have been characterised as migrant hunters and violent cannibals who probably ate most of their meat raw. They were taller and stockier than Homo sapiens, but with shorter limbs, bigger faces and noses, receding chins and low foreheads.
The two species overlapped for a period of time and the Oxford research appears to suggests that they must have successfully interbred for the “ginger gene” to survive. Neanderthals became extinct about 28,000 years ago, the last dying out in southern Spain and southwest France.
(I believe that we are Neanderthal, we are them. We did not die out)
That leaves three possibilities, none of which resemble evolution in any way, shape, or manner:
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