30
September 2004
A long march
The timing of the earliest habitation and oldest stone technologies in different regions of the world is central to our understanding of human evolution. New magnetostratigraphic data from the Nihewan basin, north China, now provide convincing evidence that humans were present at high latitudes in northeast Asia about 1.7 million years ago, almost contemporaneous with their presence in western Asia. Significant finds include the oldest record of stone-tool processing of animal tissues in east Asia. This suggests that long-distance migrations from Africa to Asia took place, perhaps initiated during a warm climate phase.
New evidence on the earliest human presence
at high northern latitudes in northeast Asia
R. X. ZHU, R. POTTS, F. XIE, K. A. HOFFMAN, C. L.
DENG, C. D. SHI, Y. X. PAN, H. Q. WANG, R. P. SHI, Y. C. WANG, G. H. SHI
& N. Q. WU
Nature 431, 559–562 (2004); doi:10.1038/nature02829
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