Xiaochangliang () is the site of some of the earliest
paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
remains in
East Asia
East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea ...
, located in the Nihewan (泥河灣) Basin in
Yangyuan County,
Hebei
Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, and ...
, China, most famous for the
stone tools
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Ag ...
discovered there.
Stone tools
The tool forms discovered include
side and end scrapers, notches,
burins, and disc cores. Although it is generally more difficult to date Asian sites than African sites because Asian sites typically lack volcanic materials that can be dated isotropically, the age of the tools has been
magnetostratigraphically dated as 1.36 million years. This method hinges upon dated
reversals in the
Earth's magnetic field
Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. The magneti ...
.
Research
The site was first discovered by the Scottish geologist
George Barbour in 1923. He was amazed when he saw the ancient sediments from the lake. Although he guessed wrong about how old they were and found basically nothing, Barbour invited Pere Licent and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, two of the most brilliant prehistoric archaeologists of that time, for a visit.
Licent and Chardin not only pushed the sediment's age to over a million years but also found, among many things, a flint tool. It was the oldest stone tool found at the time - so old, in fact, that even Chardin himself had suspicions about its authenticity. Barbour invited French archaeologists
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin ( (); 1 May 1881 – 10 April 1955) was a French Jesuit priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian, philosopher and teacher. He was Darwinian in outlook and the author of several influential theological and philo ...
and
Émile Licent
Émile Licent (1876–1952; with the adopted Chinese name, 桑志华, while he was working in China) was a French Jesuit trained as a natural historian. He spent more than twenty-five years researching in Tianjin. His expeditions spread across vari ...
. In 1935 Teilhard found a stone (flint) tool and determined the age of the site to be over a million years – it was the oldest artefact then known. Many scientists, including Teilhard, debated whether this tool might not be naturally formed.
The discovery by
Pei Wenzhong
PEI or Pei may refer to:
Places
*Matecaña International Airport, Pereira, Colombia, IATA code PEI
* Pei County (沛县), Jiangsu, China
*Pei Commandery (沛郡), a commandery in Chinese history
*Prince Edward Island, a province of Canada
*Pei, ...
of
Peking Man
Peking Man (''Homo erectus pekinensis'') is a subspecies of '' H. erectus'' which inhabited the Zhoukoudian Cave of northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudian Cave has s ...
hundreds of kilometers to the south (followed by wars and revolution) distracted the attention of the world's scientific community. However, from 1972 to 1978 more than 2000 pieces of stone tools were discovered, together with some bone tools, which confirmed Xiaochangliang (or
Nihewan) as a paleolithic site.
In the basin, Archaeologists have identified 40 "million year old sites".
In 1982, Wei Qi(衛奇), then 44, found a huge hominid settlement at Donggutuo(東谷坨) Village. He took samples to Pei, whose Peking Man was not half as old. "He said nothing," said Wei. "But I guess he had accepted it." Pei died of a heart attack a few days later.
Notes
Further reading
*
External links
*
Pleistocene magnetochronology of the fauna and Paleolithic sites in the Nihewan Basin: Significance for environmental and hominin evolution in North China, 2013.
{{Prehistoric Asia
Paleolithic sites in China
Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Hebei
Yangyuan County