  Shown within Shanxi  Xujiayao (China) | |
| Location | Hebei and Shanxi, China |
|---|---|
| Region | Nihewan Basin |
| Coordinates | 40°06′02″N113°58′39″E / 40.10056°N 113.97750°E |
| History | |
| Periods | early Late Pleistocene |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1976, [1] 1977, [1] 1979, [1] 2007, [2] 2008 [2] |
Xujiayao, located in the Nihewan Basin in China, is an early Late Pleistocene [3] paleoanthropological site famous for its archaic hominin fossils. [4]
Xujiayao is located on the west bank of the Liyi River, a tributary of the Sanggan River. [5] [2] Xujiayao actually consists of two sites, Locality 73113 and Locality 74093. [6] [2] Locality 73113 is located near Xujiayao village in Yanggao County, Shanxi, [5] while Locality 74093 is located near Houjiayao village in Yangyuan County, Hebei. [2] Most of the fossils and artefacts were found at Locality 74093. [6]
Xujiayao was discovered by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in 1974. [6] IVPP carried out excavations in 1976, 1977, and 1979. [6] Later excavations, in 2007 and 2008, were carried out by the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics. [2]
Twenty hominid fossils were discovered at Xujiayao, consisting of 12 parietal bones, 1 temporal bone, 2 occipital bones, 1 mandibular bone fragment, 1 juvenile maxilla, and 3 isolated teeth. [1] [3]
The fossils remains at Xujiayao are difficult to classify and are of an uncertain taxonomic lineage, possibly representing a distinct hominin lineage. [3]
The Xujiayao fossils are characterized by a mix of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens features. [7] The skulls also have a thick cranial vault, at the upper range of Homo erectus pekinensis . [7] The maxilla exhibits features more typical of modern Homo sapiens. [7]
Dental analysis shows that the Xujiayao hominin appears to retain many archaic features found in hominin fossils, such as Homo pekinensis, from the Early and Middle Pleistocene in East Asia, share more similarities with these earlier East Asian hominins, and share some similarities with Neanderthals. [8] While fossil sample Xujiayao 15 had mostly non-Neanderthal features appearance-wise, a CT scan revealed that the inner ear, surprisingly, was arranged in a way that was typical of Neanderthal inner ears. [9]
One of the fossil samples, Xujiayao 11, had an enlarged parietal foramen (a hole in the skull), an extremely rare abnormality that is found in less than 1 out of 25,000 cases in modern humans. [10] Xujiayao 11 is the oldest hominin fossil to exhibit this abnormality. [10]
In terms of brain capacity, "Researchers reconstructed a complete skull of Xujiayao Man for the first time and estimated that the cranial capacity of the ancient relative of modern humans reached 1,700 cubic centimeters" and "The average brain capacity of modern humans is about 1,400 cc and the normal range is from 1,100 cc to 1,700 cc, " [11]
Around 5000 specimens from twenty-one distinct species are represented at Xujiayao. [12] The large majority of the remains belong to Przewalski's horse and Equus hemionus. [12] The next most common remains belong to Coelodonta, Spirocerus (Xujiayao antelope/Spirocerus hsuchiayaocus and Pei's antelope/Spirocerus peii), Procapra and Gazella. [12] Some red deer, sika deer and pig remains were also found. [12]
The Xujiayao hominin excelled as horse hunters, [2] having regular access to animal protein, primarily coming from equids. [13]
Almost 30,000 lithic, bone and antler artefacts were also unearthed at Xujiayao. [7] Tools found at Xujiayao include scrapers, points, gravers, anvils, chopper and spheroids. [7] [14] Over 50% of the artefacts consist of finished tools. [14] Over 40% of the artefacts consist of scrapers. [14] The artefacts there include the presence of over 1000 stone spheroids, the most of any Paleolithic site in China. [14]
Peking Man is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited the Zhoukoudian cave site in modern northern China during the Chibanian. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudian Cave has since then become the most productive H. erectus site in the world. Peking Man was instrumental in the foundation of Chinese anthropology, and fostered an important dialogue between Western and Eastern science for decades to come. The fossils became the centre of anthropological discussion, and were classified as a direct human ancestor, propping up the Out of Asia hypothesis that humans evolved in Asia.
Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed during the Middle Pleistocene. It was subsumed as a subspecies of H. erectus in 1950 as H. e. heidelbergensis, but towards the end of the century, it was more widely classified as its own species. It is debated whether or not to constrain H. heidelbergensis to only Europe or to also include African and Asian specimens, and this is further confounded by the type specimen being a jawbone, because jawbones feature few diagnostic traits and are generally missing among Middle Pleistocene specimens. Thus, it is debated if some of these specimens could be split off into their own species or a subspecies of H. erectus. Because the classification is so disputed, the Middle Pleistocene is often called the "muddle in the middle".
Herto Man refers to human remains discovered in 1997 from the Upper Herto member of the Bouri Formation in the Afar Triangle, Ethiopia. The remains have been dated as between 154,000 and 160,000 years old. The discovery of Herto Man was especially significant at the time, falling within a long gap in the fossil record between 300 and 100 thousand years ago and representing the oldest dated H. sapiens remains then described.
Homo is a genus of great ape that emerged from the genus Australopithecus and encompasses the extant species Homo sapiens and a number of extinct species classified as either ancestral or closely related to modern humans. These include Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. The oldest member of the genus is Homo habilis, with records of just over 2 million years ago. Homo, together with the genus Paranthropus, is probably most closely related to the species Australopithecus africanus within Australopithecus. The closest living relatives of Homo are of the genus Pan, with the ancestors of Pan and Homo estimated to have diverged around 5.7-11 million years ago during the Late Miocene.
Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence and cultural evidence.
Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site (周口店北京人遗址), also romanized as Choukoutien, is a cave system in suburban Fangshan District, Beijing. It has yielded many archaeological discoveries, including one of the first specimens of Homo erectus, dubbed Peking Man, and a fine assemblage of bones of the giant short-faced hyena Pachycrocuta brevirostris.
Homo rhodesiensis is the species name proposed by Arthur Smith Woodward (1921) to classify Kabwe 1, a Middle Stone Age fossil recovered from Broken Hill mine in Kabwe, Northern Rhodesia. In 2020, the skull was dated to 324,000 to 274,000 years ago. Other similar older specimens also exist.
The Steinheim skull is a fossilized skull of a Homo neanderthalensis or Homo heidelbergensis found on 24 July 1933 near Steinheim an der Murr, Germany.
Maba Man is a pre-modern hominin whose remains were discovered in 1958 in caves near the town called Maba, near Shaoguan city in the northern part of Guangdong province, China.
Human taxonomy is the classification of the human species within zoological taxonomy. The systematic genus, Homo, is designed to include both anatomically modern humans and extinct varieties of archaic humans. Current humans have been designated as subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, differentiated, according to some, from the direct ancestor, Homo sapiens idaltu.
Archaic humans is a broad category denoting all species of the genus Homo that are not Homo sapiens. Among the earliest modern human remains are those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka), and Omo-Kibish I in southern Ethiopia. Some examples of archaic humans include H. antecessor (1200–770 ka), H. bodoensis (1200–300 ka), H. heidelbergensis (600–200 ka), Neanderthals, H. rhodesiensis (300–125 ka) and Denisovans.
He County or Hexian is a county in the east of Anhui Province, China, under the jurisdiction of Ma'anshan. It has a population of 650,000 and an area of 1,412 square kilometres (545 sq mi). The government of He County is located in Liyang Town.
Dali man is the remains of a late Homo erectus or archaic Homo sapiens who lived in the late-mid Pleistocene epoch. The remains comprise a complete fossilized skull, which was discovered by Liu Shuntang in 1978 in Dali County, Shaanxi Province, China.
Jebel Irhoud or Adrar n Ighoud, is an archaeological site located just north of the locality known as Tlet Ighoud, approximately 50 km (30 mi) south-east of the city of Safi in Morocco. It is noted for the hominin fossils that have been found there since the discovery of the site in 1960. Originally thought to be Neanderthals, the specimens have since been assigned to Homo sapiens and, as reported in 2017, have been dated to roughly 300,000 years ago.
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The Denisovans or Denisova hominins(di-NEE-sə-və) are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that ranged across Asia during the Lower and Middle Paleolithic, and lived, based on current evidence, from 285 to 25 thousand years ago. Denisovans are known from few physical remains; consequently, most of what is known about them comes from DNA evidence. No formal species name has been established pending more complete fossil material.
The Ndutu skull is the partial cranium of a hominin that has been assigned variously to late Homo erectus, Homo rhodesiensis, and early Homo sapiens, from the Middle Pleistocene, found at Lake Ndutu in northern Tanzania.
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Homo longi is an extinct species of archaic human identified from a nearly complete skull, nicknamed 'Dragon Man', from Harbin on the Northeast China Plain, dating to at minimum 146,000 years ago during the Middle Pleistocene. The skull was discovered in 1933 along the Songhua River while the Dongjiang Bridge was under construction for the Manchukuo National Railway. Due to a tumultuous wartime atmosphere, it was hidden and only brought to paleoanthropologists in 2018. H. longi has been hypothesized to be the same species as the Denisovans, but this cannot be confirmed without genetic testing.
The Hualongdong people are extinct humans that lived in eastern China around 300,000 years ago during the late Middle Pleistocene. Discovered by a research team led by Xiujie Wu and Liu Wu, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, from the Hualong Cave in Dongzhi County at Anhui Province in 2006, they are known from about 30 fossils that belong to 16 individuals. The first analysis of the skull fragments collected in 2006 suggested that they could be members of Homo erectus. For some of the specimens, their exact position as a human species is not known. More complete fossils found in 2015 indicate that they cannot be directly assigned to any Homo species as they also exhibit archaic human features. They are the first humans in Asia to have both archaic and modern human features. They are likely a distinct species that form a separate branch in the human family tree.