Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UMR 5199 -PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac CEDEX, France.
Départment d'anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
PLoS One. 2018 Mar 12;13(3):e0194318. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194318. eCollection 2018.
Most Chinese lithic industries dated between 300,000 and 40,000 are characterized by the absence of Levallois debitage, the persistence of core-and-flake knapping, the rarity of prepared cores, their reduction with direct hard hammer percussion, and the rarity of retouched flakes. Here we report the discovery of seven bone soft hammers at the early hominin Lingjing site (Xuchang County, Henan) dated to 125,000-105,000. These artefacts represent the first instance of the use of bone as raw material to modify stone tools found at an East Asian early Late Pleistocene site. Three types of soft hammers are identified. The first consists of large bone flakes resulting from butchery of large herbivores that were utilized as such for expedient stone tools retouching or resharpening. The second involved the fracture of weathered bone from medium size herbivores to obtain elongated splinters shaped by percussion into sub-rectangular artefacts. Traces observed on these objects indicate intensive and possibly recurrent utilization, which implies their curation over time. The last consists of antler, occasionally used. Lingjing bone tools complement what we know about archaic hominin cultural adaptations in East Asia and highlight behavioural consistencies that could not be inferred from other cultural proxies. This discovery provides a new dimension to the debate surrounding the existence of the Middle Palaeolithic in the region. The attribution of East Asian sites to the Middle Palaeolithic assumes that cultural traits such as the Levallois method represent evolutionary hallmarks applicable to regions of the world different from those in which they were originally found. Here, we promote an approach that consists in identifying, possibly from different categories of material culture, the original features of each regional cultural trajectory and understanding the behavioural and cognitive implications they may have had for past hominin populations.
大多数年代在 30 万至 4 万年之间的中国石器工业的特点是没有勒瓦娄哇技术的石片，核心-片石器技术的持续存在，预制石核的稀有，用直接硬锤打击的石核减材技术，以及缺少琢背的石片。在这里，我们报告了在早期人类灵井遗址（河南省许昌县）发现的七件骨制软锤，其年代在 12.5 万至 10.5 万年前。这些人工制品代表了在东亚晚更新世遗址中首次发现使用骨作为原材料来改造石器的实例。鉴定出了三种类型的软锤。第一种由大型草食动物的屠宰骨片组成，这些骨片被用作简便的石器修边或再磨锐工具。第二种涉及风化的中型草食动物骨骼的断裂，以获得通过敲击形成亚矩形的细长碎片。在这些物体上观察到的痕迹表明了它们的高强度和可能的反复使用，这意味着它们随着时间的推移而被保存。最后一种是鹿角，偶尔使用。灵井骨器补充了我们对东亚古人类文化适应的了解，并强调了不能从其他文化代理推断出的行为一致性。这一发现为围绕该地区中石器时代存在的争论提供了一个新的维度。将东亚遗址归因于中石器时代的假设是，文化特征，如勒瓦娄哇技术，代表了适用于与最初发现它们的地区不同的世界区域的进化标志。在这里，我们提倡一种方法，即从可能属于不同类别的物质文化中，确定每个区域文化轨迹的原始特征，并理解它们对过去人类群体可能产生的行为和认知影响。
