1.8 to 1.6 million years ago: Spread of early humans to East Asia
Recent
excavations in the Nihewan Basin of north China by Zhu Rixiang, Rick Potts,
and colleagues record the oldest definite human stone tools and animal
butchery practices in East Asia, about 1.66 million years old. These findings
speak to how rapidly the earliest humans to leave Africa moved to new
regions and adapted to the new environments they faced.
Four archeological layers at the site of Majuangou were dated by precise measurement of the magnetic properties of the sediments. These measurements matched up with well-dated changes in Earth's magnetic field over the past 2 million years. The oldest stone tool layers discovered at Majuangou are 1.55 million, 1.64 million, and 1.66 million years old, based on their position above and beneath the magnetic field transitions.
The earliest record of humans in the Nihewan region is not long after the oldest definite evidence of human ancestors outside of Africa, at the Dmanisi site, Republic of Georgia, dated about 1.75 million years old. The Nihewan finds date to the same time (1.66 million years ago) as the oldest known Asian fossils of Homo erectus, on the island of Java, Indonesia.
Together, these findings imply that early humans spread from Africa to East Asia rapidly, possibly starting during a warm phase. After this lengthy migration, early humans inhabited East Asia from 40°N latitude (Nihewan Basin) to 7°S latitude (Java) - a wide diversity of environments. Populations reaching northern latitudes stayed there for more than half a million years in a moderately oscillating climate. In the Nihewan, those populations lived by a large lake and obtained meat and marrow from horses, deer, and elephants.
New evidence regarding the earliest human presence at high northern latitudes in northeast Asia. Published in Nature (2004), vol. 431, pp. 559-562. By: Rixiang Zhu, Richard Potts, F. Xie, K. A. Hoffman, et al.