Archaeology: Tool story

Establishing dates for habitation associated with the earliest stone tools in Asia is notoriously difficult, due to the scarcity of suitable isotopic material. The construction of a long and detailed magnetostratigraphic record for the Nihewan Basin puts dating in this significant region on a firm footing — and answers the long-awaited question of when Homo erectus reached northern China. An age of 1.36 million years for the Xiaochangliang site is obtained, making it the oldest known stone assemblage of recognizable Palaeolithic stone tools in east Asia and suggesting that human populations of the time were able to adept to extreme climate conditions.

Earliest presence of humans in northeast Asia
R. X. ZHU, K. A. HOFFMAN, R. POTTS, C. L. DENG, Y. X. PAN, B. GUO, C. D. SHI, Z. T. GUO, B. Y. YUAN, Y. M. HOU & W. W. HUANG
Nature 413, 413-417 (27 September 2001)
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27 September 2001 table of contents