In the Gantangqing foundation in the southwest of China, archaeologists have found a diverse collection of wooden tools and dated around 361,000 to 250,000 years. Accordingly, these complex wooden tools come from the middle Pleistocene and are therefore the oldest known evidence of such relics from East Asia. At that time, however, the ancestors of humans did not make the tools for hunting, like early people in Europe at the time, but for digging and processing edible plants, as the team found. This shows that the diet had a great influence on the type and nature of the tools produced by Hominins.
People and their ancestors have been working with wood for about 1.5 million years. The oldest previously known wood tools come from the middle Pleistocene and therefore not from Homo Sapiens, but from previous representatives of the genus Homo. They were found in Africa and western Eurasia – including remarkable spears and throwing rocks from Schöningen in Germany and Clacton in Great Britain, which are 300,000 to 400,000 years old. In Zambia, archaeologists also found interlocking tree trunks, in Israel wooden boards and in Italy tombsticks that are around 780,000, 475,000 and 171,000 years old. In East Asia, people probably also produced tools from organic materials, mostly from the bamboo wood, which is widespread there, according to a common theory of research. But there are only a few archaeological evidence for such bamboo tools from the region.
Oldest wood tools from East Asia
Now researchers around Jian-Hui Liu from the Yunnan Institute for Cultural Monuments and Archeology have found and examined new wooden tools in Chinese Kunming. The site is located in Gantangqing, in the southwest of China, on the edge of the Fuxian lake. The scientists dig a large number of artifacts from the sediment layers there. Among them were several primitive stone, antlers or bones – shaped on the forth wedges, scrapers, drills and knives – and 35 finer crafted wood. Unlike previously assumed, they do not consist of hard bamboo, but mostly made of soft pine wood and partly made of harder wood from beech or other deciduous trees. They were mostly made from branches, sometimes also from tree trunks. Dated the layers of sediment showed that the wooden items embedded therein are around 361,000 to 250,000 years old. They also come from the middle Pleistocene and are also the oldest finds from East Asia, as the team reports.
The relics show tips, edges or handles as well as traces of elaborate carving, smoothing and wear. Side branches were often removed and the surface polished. Wood shavings were also found in Gantangqing. This indicates that the wooden objects there were specifically shaped and manufactured by early people. Among the diverse objects were, for example, several large sticks and smaller pointed tools that could have been used for the one or two-handed ditch in the ground. Four hook -like objects stand out: “They seem to be shaped from the base of a tribe and the tip of a root. The root part was then shaped into a sharp, round edge, which shows signs of wear and could have been used to cut roots,” reports the team. In addition, the researchers found two small diamond -shaped tools, the function of which is still unknown; It may have been a clearer to the holes or to separate root mesh.
Tailor -made tools for a vegetable diet
Liu and his colleagues conclude from these finds “that the hominins in the Middle Pleistocene of East Asia have advanced tool technology as well as cognitive and adaptive skills that are comparable to those of their western counterparts.” Unlike the early people in Europe, which have mostly produced and used their wooden tools for the hunting of large mammals-for example the Schöningen-Speere-but their contemporaries in East Asia mainly developed their tools to dig and process plants. Similar tombsticks were found in Poggetti Vecchi in Italy, but no such variety of smaller grave tools as it appeared in Gantangqing. “This discovery indicates that wood tools could have played an important role in survival and adaptation of the hominins in the central Pleistocene in East Asia,” the researchers write.
Based on the vegetable and animal fossils in the sediments, Liu and his colleagues conclude that early people in Gantangqing once lived in a tropical to subtropical climate. Their surroundings included trees, lianas, shrubs and grasses. The wildlife was dominated by deer types, supplemented by now extinct rhino, tapir and co-trunk species. Ducks, pheasants and other birds also lived in the swamp or sea area around the site. However, since the hominins of this area apparently not or only hunted a little, but mostly fed in plant -based, nuts, fruits and vegetables could have belonged to their menu.
The team found traces of pines, hazelnuts, kiwis, red berries and blackberries, grapes, pumpkin plants and other plants with edible leaves, stems, seeds, roots or tubers. “These could have been recovered with tombsticks and rode tools from the flat water and the muddy deposits of the lake shore,” said the archaeologists. “Our results indicate that the hominins in Gantangqing strategically use the food resources on the lake shore.” To do this, they obviously produced suitable wood tools.
Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), University of Wollongong; Specialist articles: science, DOI: 10.1126/science.adr8540
