Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia.
Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Nature. 2019 Jan;565(7737):82-85. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0710-1. Epub 2018 Nov 19.
Levallois approaches are one of the best known variants of prepared-core technologies, and are an important hallmark of stone technologies developed around 300,000 years ago in Africa and west Eurasia. Existing archaeological evidence suggests that the stone technology of east Asian hominins lacked a Levallois component during the late Middle Pleistocene epoch and it is not until the Late Pleistocene (around 40,000-30,000 years ago) that this technology spread into east Asia in association with a dispersal of modern humans. Here we present evidence of Levallois technology from the lithic assemblage of the Guanyindong Cave site in southwest China, dated to approximately 170,000-80,000 years ago. To our knowledge, this is the earliest evidence of Levallois technology in east Asia. Our findings thus challenge the existing model of the origin and spread of Levallois technologies in east Asia and its links to a Late Pleistocene dispersal of modern humans.
勒瓦娄哇技术是预制石核技术中最为人熟知的一种，也是大约 30 万年前在非洲和西欧亚发展起来的石器技术的重要标志。现有的考古证据表明，中更新世晚期东亚古人类的石器技术缺乏勒瓦娄哇技术成分，直到晚更新世（约 4 万至 3 万年前），这种技术才与现代人的扩散一起传入东亚。在这里，我们从中国西南观音洞遗址的石器组合中提供了勒瓦娄哇技术的证据，该遗址的年代约为 17 万至 8 万年前。据我们所知，这是东亚最早的勒瓦娄哇技术证据。因此，我们的发现挑战了东亚勒瓦娄哇技术起源和传播的现有模式，以及其与晚更新世现代人扩散的联系。
