  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] Wu & Bae (2024) designated the Xujiayao hominin fossils as the holotype of the species Homo juluensis, scientific name of the species translates from Chinese to “Big-headed Human” proposed to also include Pleistocene hominins from the Lingjing (Xuchang), Xiahe and Penghu sites, as well as Denisovans and possibly an individual from the Tam Ngu Hao 2 Cave in Laos. [7]
The fossil remains were recovered from the Xujiayao site. The findings from the site are attributed to the early Late Pleistocene in Marine isotope stages 5 to 4 (MIS 4 begins at 71 thousand years ago and MIS 5 begins at 130 thousand years ago). [8]
The Xujiayao fossils are characterized by a mix of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens features. [9] The skulls also have a thick cranial vault, at the upper range of Homo erectus pekinensis . [9] The maxilla exhibits features more typical of modern Homo sapiens. [9]
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. [10] 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. [11]
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. [12] Xujiayao 11 is the oldest hominin fossil to exhibit this abnormality. [12]
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, " [13]
Around 5000 specimens from twenty-one distinct species are represented at Xujiayao. [14] The large majority of the remains belong to Przewalski's horse and Equus hemionus. [14] The next most common remains belong to Coelodonta, Spirocerus (Xujiayao antelope/Spirocerus hsuchiayaocus and Pei's antelope/Spirocerus peii), Procapra and Gazella. [14] Some red deer, sika deer and pig remains were also found. [14]
The Xujiayao hominin excelled as horse hunters, [2] having regular access to animal protein, primarily coming from equids. [15]
Almost 30,000 lithic, bone and antler artefacts were also unearthed at Xujiayao. [9] Tools found at Xujiayao include scrapers, points, gravers, anvils, chopper and spheroids. [9] [16] Over 50% of the artefacts consist of finished tools. [16] Over 40% of the artefacts consist of scrapers. [16] The artefacts there include the presence of over 1000 stone spheroids, the most of any Paleolithic site in China. [16]
Peking Man is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited what is now northern China during the Middle Pleistocene. Its fossils have been found in a cave some 47 km (29 mi) southwest of Beijing, known as the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and Zhoukoudian has since 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. Peking Man became the centre of anthropological discussion, and was classified as a direct human ancestor, propping up the Out of Asia theory that humans evolved in Asia.
Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human which existed from around 600,000 to 300,000 years ago, during the Middle Pleistocene. Homo heidelbergensis was widely considered the most recent common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals, but this view has been increasingly disputed since the late 2010s.
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.
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.
Ceprano Man, Argil, and Ceprano Calvarium, is a Middle Pleistocene archaic human fossil, a single skull cap (calvarium), accidentally unearthed in a highway construction project in 1994 near Ceprano in the Province of Frosinone, Italy. It was initially considered Homo cepranensis, Homo erectus, or possibly Homo antecessor; but in recent studies, most regard it either as a form of Homo heidelbergensis sharing affinities with African forms, or an early morph of Neanderthal.
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.
Archaic humans is a broad category denoting all species of the genus Homo that are not Homo sapiens, which are sometimes also called Homo sapiens sapiens, in which case the singular use of sapiens has been applied to some archaic humans as well. Among the earliest modern human remains are those from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, Florisbad in South Africa (259 ka), Omo-Kibish I in southern Ethiopia, and Apidima Cave in Southern Greece. 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 town of Tlet Ighoud in Youssoufia Province, 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 1961. 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.
Nanjing Man is a specimen of Homo erectus found in China. Large fragments of one male and one female skull and a molar tooth were discovered in 1993 in Hulu Cave on the Tangshan (汤山) hills in Jiangning District, Nanjing. The specimens were found in the Hulu limestone cave at a depth of 60–97 cm by Liu Luhong, a local worker. Dating the fossils yielded an estimated age of 580,000 to 620,000 years old.
The multiregional hypothesis, multiregional evolution (MRE), or polycentric hypothesis, is a scientific model that provides an alternative explanation to the more widely accepted "Out of Africa" model of monogenesis for the pattern of human evolution.
The Denisovans or Denisova hominins 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.
Penghu 1 is a fossil jaw (mandible) belonging to an extinct hominin species of the genus Homo. It was collected from seafloor sediments of the Penghu Channel off the coast of Taiwan, dating to sometime in the Middle Pleistocene or Late Pleistocene. The precise classification of the mandible is disputed. Some believe it to be the fossil of a H. erectus, an archaic H. sapiens or possibly a Denisovan.
Zhiren Cave is a karstic cave in the Mulan Mountains that overlooks the Hejiang River in Chongzuo, Guangxi, China. Zhiren Cave is an early Late Pleistocene site that has yielded the fossil remains of possibly anatomically modern humans with some mixed archaic human features.
Apidima Cave is a complex of five caves located on the western shore of Mani Peninsula in southern Greece. A systematic investigation of the cave has yielded Neanderthal and Homo sapiens fossils from the Palaeolithic era.
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.