Panxian Dadong et le Levallois chinois

Abstract

The immense cave of Dadong is located in the southernmost part of China in Guizhou Province. Opening to the east, it contains typically cryoclastic deposits alternating with soliflucted clays in a several meters’ thick sequence. Several excavation seasons have been conducted by Chinese colleagues since 1991 and a series of dates was obtained by an international team. The material presented here comes from a chronological phase between 300 and 130 ka, a period equivalent to the Middle Pleistocene, represented here by rich evidence of technological activities and abundant fauna, the stegodon in particular. In southern China, many sites show the same methods as at Dadong-Panxian, essentially core reduction to obtain large Levallois flakes. These sites, found across the south, all apply a very elaborate method to extremely hard stone, primarily basalt. The massiveness of the tools corresponds to the concept of the tools themselves, more violent even than the stones. The human mind that was able to organize these different phases in a precise and effective order arises universally, it overcomes all of the mechanical constraints of stone and imposes its laws on it. This technological unit so impresses the modern observer that it has often been interpreted as the result of waves of migration with limited diffusion. However, such systematic emergence manifests only spiritual capacities, also distributed globally. Somewhat like inventing the bow or the hammer, the mechanical constraints “carry” humanity toward similar material formulas. The availability of raw materials remains an adjustable material element, but without causing the essential structure that went into its use. Thus, the Levallois method is found in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (Admiralty Islands), in Africa (the Victoria West industry) and even in South. Like the invention of writing or agriculture, no cultural link connects these regions; the method develops spontaneously and convergently from the human mind, adapted to new constraints. The Chinese Levallois thus does not belong to a diffusion mode, but to several emergences, penetrated by the human mind in the constraints introduced between the mechanical laws of stone and the entirely universal intentions of humans to seek effectiveness and freedom.