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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.
http://www.mm2000.nu/sphinxpp.html
We have caveman stuff from 30,000 B.C. but we have no evidence of anything resembling civilization from that period. These very early structures do seem to be solstice aligned, an interesting coincidence if that's what it was.
So are you saying that around 15.5k years ago, a new Adam was created. . .or arose. . .or evolved?
http://www.mm2000.nu/sphinxpp.html
I think the article was intended for people familiar with archaelogical politics. What he was saying was lost on me.
Update on Mysterious Deep Water Sonar Images Off Western Cuba http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3b34ba6163f0.htm
I'm sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for an update. Think about the ramifications if this is man made, huh? (Atlantis?)
You said five Adams by which I inferred you were perhaps referring to five collapses of civilization.
Update on Mysterious Deep Water Sonar Images Off Western Cuba http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3b34ba6163f0.htm I'm sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for an update. Think about the ramifications if this is man made, huh? (Atlantis?)
My own guess for Atlantis if it is not a figment of some Egyptian's imagination is the North Sea area during a warm period.
Five 'near extinction' events not, five Adams, lol. (I will go with the five civilization collapses though)
Significent different between "near extinction" and mere civilization collapses. The Mayan civilization, for instance, collapsed but the Mayans did not become extinct.
Yup. Met some cute Mayan girls at Carlos & Charlies in Kozumel one night. They had taken the bus over from Merida just to meet some American guys.
No doubt you questioned them sharply about their old calendar :-)
Further, Africa is about the only place where a extant megafauna still exists. Current thinking about the extinction of pleistocece megafauna in Australia, Eurasia and North AMerica points to the activity of human hunters. The theory is that in those areas, the megafauna evolved without the presence of early human hunters, hence had not evolved defensive fear of them. This resulted in the rapid extermination of all megafaunal species in those areas with the arrival of Human Hunters. Only in Africa, where the megafauna presumably evolved in the presence of developing human hunters, was a defensive fear mechanism towards these creatures evolved.
In addition, the "biological clock" theory used recently by geneticists has come under question with respect to timing. The Biological clock theory assumes that genetic mutations occur at a constant rate over long time intervals. This is a big assumption, as genetic mutations are subject to external environmental factors which may have had significant influence on the rates of evolution.
IF Homo erectus independently evolved over time all over the world to prduce the same new species indepdently everywhere, this would indeed be a zoological miracle. All evidence indicates that evolution occurs in isolated populations of other species. The newly evolved species then moves out into new territory.
Personally, I believe that either (a) Homo erectus and Homo sapiens were really the same species and any difference between them and us is due to temporal and or geographic variation, or Homo sapiens evolved in Africa and moved out into Eurasia, interbreeding with existing populations of Homo erectus already there which had developed geographic variations which in turn created the different modern races of man. I think Human beings, in the arrogance of their species, tend to MAGNIFY the significance of differences between the skeletal remains of pre-modern human populations and modern Europeans.
For instance, I believe if you could take a Neanderthal, give him a bath, shave, haircut and some deoderant and put him in a business suit, he would not really stand out much in a modern city. He would just look like a stocky, strongly built "foreigner" of some kind.
Hillary Mayell
for National Geographic News
November 12, 2001
A renewed assault is being made on the popular idea that the mass extinction of large mammals in North America around 10,500 years ago was the result of human hunting.
The overkill hypothesis was first put forward more than a century ago and has been widely accepted for the past 30 years. But it does not square with the known facts and has become more a faith-based credo than good science, said Donald Grayson, an archaeologist at the University of Washington.
Into Extinction
Woolly mammoths were among 35 groups of large animals that disappeared from the fossil records of North America about 10,000 years ago. What caused the extinctions has been the subject of much debate.
Understanding what caused the extinction has implications for conservation biology.
Grayson, who specializes in vertebrate paleontology and archaeology, argues that a call by some environmentalists to return Ice Age mammals—elephants, camels, llamas, and other large herbivores—to the southwestern United States is based on bad science.
"Overkill proponents have argued that these animals would still be around if people hadn't killed them and that ecological niches still exist for them," said Grayson. "Those niches do not exist. Otherwise the herbivores would still be there."
Grayson points to climate shifts during the late Pleistocene and related changes in weather and vegetation patterns as the likely culprits in the demise of North America's megafauna.
Islands and Continents
The number of large mammals that became extinct in North America at the end of the late Pleistocene, about 10,500 years ago, is staggering. Among some 35 different kinds of animals that disappeared from the fossil record were mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, giant ground sloths, and bears.
A leading proponent of the overkill theory, Paul S. Martin, believes the Ice Age megafauna disappeared not because they lost their food supply but because of human hunting.
The extinction of animals as a result of human colonization in island settings has been well documented and the causes widely agreed on.
New Zealand is offered as a classic example of human impacts on island animal populations. Before it was colonized, New Zealand was home to 11 species of moas, a large flightless bird species weighing from 45 to more than 400 pounds (20 to 200 kilograms). Within a few hundred years after human settlement, moas were extinct.
The wave of extinctions that followed human colonization of New Zealand occurred as a result of several factors. Humans arriving on the islands brought with them rats, dogs, and other non-indigenous animals that competed for food or preyed on native species. Humans hunted the native animals extensively and destroyed much habitat by burning down forests.
A similar pattern of events occurred on other islands around the world. Proponents of the overkill theory argue that the same process—human colonization followed by massive extinction—also occurred in North America.
But Grayson rejects that idea. "The fossil record simply doesn't stand up to the theory, and comparing continents to islands is simply inappropriate," he said.
Arguing Against Overkill
The overkill hypothesis, Grayson says, rests on five tenets: human colonization can lead to the extinction of island species; the Clovis people were the first humans to arrive in North America, around 11,000 years ago; the Clovis people hunted a wide range of large mammals; the extinction of many species of North American megafauna occurred 11,000 years ago; and therefore, Clovis hunting caused those extinctions.
Grayson disputes several of these tenets.
There is no proof, he said, that the late Pleistocene extinctions occurred in conjunction with the arrival of the Clovis people. "Of the 35 genera to have become extinct beginning around 20,000 years ago, only 15 can be shown to have survived beyond 12,000 years ago," Grayson said. "The Clovis peoples didn't arrive until shorty before 11,000 years ago. That leaves 20 [genera] unaccounted for."
There is also no evidence that the Clovis people hunted anything other than mammoths, he said. Although numerous sites where large numbers of mammoths were killed have been uncovered, no similar sites for any other large mammals have been found in North America.
And while there is no evidence of widespread human-caused environmental change similar to that seen on island settings, there is evidence that animal populations in Siberia and Western Europe, as well as North America, were affected during the same period by climate changes and glacial retreat.
Martin, who in 1967 wrote the seminal book proposing the overkill hypothesis, disagrees that climate change could have caused the extensive extinctions.
"The climate had been changing over a million-year period, with swings from cold to warm, and back again—some much more severe than the one that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene," he said. "It doesn't make sense that just one more [climate shift swing] would make all the difference in the world."
Martin holds that the "dreadful syncopation"—humans arrive, animals disappear—seen in the islands of Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Madagascar, and other islands fits with what happened in North America.
He suggests that because humans were responsible for the demise of large animals in the desert southwest, these animals should be reintroduced.
Grayson thinks this is dangerous thinking.
"One of the reasons people have glommed on to the overkill hypothesis is 'green' politics," said Grayson. "It plays to the Judeo-Christian theme that human beings are all-powerful and responsible for negative impacts on the environment.
"The hypothesis made a lot of sense 30 years ago," Grayson said, "but now it can be compared to the empirical record, and it just doesn't hold up."
His work appears in the current issue of the Journal of World Prehistory and an upcoming issue of the Bulletin of the Florida Museum of Natural History.
But thanks for the article anyway, it was interesting and this is assuredly a most interesting subject purely on its own merits.
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