Research Items

Abstract

QUATERNARY MAN IN CHINA.—An important addition to our knowledge of the distribution of man in the Pleistocene age is made by the researches of MM. Licent and Teilhard de Chardin, of which a preliminary account is given in Vol. 35, Pts. 3-4 of L'Anthropologie. While engaged in examining the quaternary deposits of southern China, they discovered three sites affording evidence of occupation by palaeolithic man. The first is situated in the basin of the Choei-tong-k'eou immediately to the south of the Ordos plateau and to the east of the Yellow River, where was found a sharply defined zone of occupation of about 20 m. in length with a deposit of 50 cm. thickness. Upon it was superimposed a bed of loess about 15 m. deep, and above this the gravels of a pre-neolithic river. No human remains were found, but a quantity of fossil bones of Bos primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, hyæna, and the tooth of, probably, Ovis Ammon. Stone implements were very numerous and of various forms, all being worked on one side only. They were rude in form and rough, in workmanship, this being due to the coarse grain of the material employed. At the same time a few scrapers and points showed that, given suitable material such as flint, man here was capable of fine work. Five hearths were discovered in the neighbourhood within an area of about a square kilometre. The third site was found on the Sjara-osso-gol, a tributary of the Hoang-ho, and has yielded the complete skull of a rhinoceros, and bones of a species of elephant, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Equus, Cervus, Bos primigenius, Hyczna spelœa, etc. The lack of suitable material in this area has affected the character of the stone implements, which, with a few exceptions, are extraordinarily small. Notwithstanding this difference, this site and that at Choei-tong-k'eou may be regarded as contemporary. No traces of industry intermediate in date between this palaeolithic culture and the neolithic have been discovered. Although comparison with European cultures is difficult, these sites may be classed as Mousterian or early Aurignacian.