This paper reports the recent discovery of 176 stone artifacts, including two handaxes (bifacial large cutting tools), which are preserved in the laterized sediments of terrace 4 of the Youjiang River at the Nanbanshan locality of the Damei site in the Bose basin, south China. Their characteristics are similar to Paleolithic stone artifacts discovered from other sites in this basin. The handaxes, picks and other stone artifacts are associated with 155 tektite pieces found in the same horizontal layer. These fresh, unabraded and sharp-edged tektites were buried immediately after the airfall event. This provides fur- ther evidence that the Bose stone artifacts and the tektites were deposited simultaneously around 0.8 Ma. More stone artifacts were also unearthed above the tektite layer, indicating that early humans in the area survived the event.
Two hominid teeth recovered in Mohui cave are morphologically distinguished from Australopithecus in Af-rica, but close to Homo erectus in China. These teeth are therefore provisionally assigned to Homo erectus. The associ-ated mammalian fauna include Gigantopithecus blacki, Nes-toritherium sp., Sus xiaozhu, Sus peii and Ailuropoda microta, which are typical early Pleistocene taxa in South China. The general characteristics of the Mohui faunal assemblage are similar to the Longgupo site, which is dated to 2 Ma, imply-ing a contemporaneity for the two sites. To date, compared with the discoveries in Africa, far fewer early Pleistocene hominid fossils have been recovered in Asia, and there are intensive controversies concerning their stratigraphic prove-nience and typological and temporal positions. The hominid fossils from Mohui cave, with their reliable biostratigraphic positions and distinct typological features, provide important evidence regarding the issue of early human origins and evo-lution.
WANG WeiRichard PottsHOU YameiCHEN YunfaWU HuayingYUAN BaoyinHUANG Weiwen
