Qilu Evening News•Qilu One Point Reporter Zhang Xiangyang
Did the Chinese ancestors come from Africa?
This has always been a hot topic that people pay attention to.
Paleolithic cave site in Zhengjiegedong, South Zheng, Shaanxi is on the list of the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in the Country" selected this year.
It is a rare cave site in the Paleolithic Site in China, which retains human fossils and rich cultural relics from 100,000 to 15,000 years ago. More than 10,000 human fossils, stone products, burned bones, animal fossils and other relics were unearthed.
provides important archaeological evidence for the early modern people evolving from the local ancient population hypothesis in China and even East Asia.
is called an archaeological project of international significance.
discovered small stone flakes in scabber cave, and the small stone flakes industry is a stone industry that has been popular in North China since the early Paleolithic Age and created by local Chinese Homo erectus .
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[Close-up view of the Scigodo Site]
Who uses what kind of stone tools and bone tools has a one-to-one relationship with his culture.
So the system of scabies small stone slab stone tools is different from the early modern human stone tools technology in Africa and Western Europe .
"What does this mean? First, in China, especially in our Qinling region, there is this small stone slab technology; secondly, the scabies itself, human stone slab technology is also small stone slab technology. That is very likely, this is a conclusion of continuous evolution."
This discovery provides an important archaeological basis for the hypothesis that early modern people in China and even East Asia may have evolved from the ancient people in the local population.
The origin and evolution of human beings are currently hot topics in the academic community.
Currently, there are two main views in the academic community: Afro theory and multi-regional evolution theory.
Get out of Africa theory believes that modern people and Homo erectus belong to different species. Modern people originated in Africa and gradually spread to the world, and replaced ancient humans in other regions. At present, all races on the earth are descendants of an African female ancestor 200,000 years ago, namely the "African Eve Theory";
More than regional evolutionary theory believes that humans around the world today have a continuous evolutionary relationship with the early Homo sapiens who were originally distributed in Europe, Africa and Asia, and even the earlier Homo erectus.
Although the "African Eve Theory" is very popular, many scholars have raised doubts about the "Eve Theory" in the international archaeological and paleoanthropology circles.
The reasons for questioners are mainly focused on the hypothesis that "Eve theory" is based on experimental.
Some scholars pointed out that the "mimochondrial Eve theory" is mainly based on the following two assumptions:
First, human mitochondrial DNA comes from the matriline and does not recombinate. Its polymorphism is only the result of mutation accumulation;
Second, human mitochondrial DNA mutations at a stable rate, which is 2%-4% per 1 million years.
Scholars from the UK have found evidence of the father's mitochondrial DNA entering the fertilized egg and recombination of mitochondrial DNA. This is a subversive blow to the "Eve theory"; another question is whether the mutation rate is constant.
Geneticists from Spain and the United States have found through extensive research on three proteins that the evolution rates of the same genetic site in different lineages can vary greatly.
uses the average evolution rate of fruit flies over the past 60 million years to estimate the time when the three multicellular biological worlds are different. The difference between the largest and smallest data is more than 65 million years.
Foreign molecular biology circles have also studied the 22nd and 1st pair of chromosomes of modern human bodies on various continents in the world, and concluded that the common ancestors of Africans, Asians and Europeans appeared 1.29 million years ago and 1 million years ago.
These time nodes are much earlier than the "200,000 years ago" advocated by the "Eve Theory".
[Sandalone human teeth and skull unearthed from the Paleolithic cave site of Zhengjiangedong, South Zhengzhou (Platform data photo).Xinhua News Agency (Photo provided by China Cultural Relics News Agency)]
The paleoanthropology and archaeological community believe that molecular biology has drawn different time points of the same or even huge differences in common ancestors based on different experimental hypotheses and different experimental samples, which itself proves the unreliability of the experimental conclusions.
According to the theory of Eve in Africa, ancient humans in China have become extinct during the cold climate stage of the last ice age. Modern Chinese people originated from Africa from north to south to eastern Asia, around 40,000 to 6,000 years ago.
From this point of view, the archaeological discoveries of the Central Plains region located in the core area of East Asia during the period of 30,000 to 60,000 years have become the key to understanding the origin of our direct ancestors.
Academician Wu Xinzhi of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that in fact, the impact of the ice age on all parts of the world is very different.
The high latitude and high altitude areas in Europe, Asia and North America were indeed covered by large ice caps during the ice age, while the equatorial area had a mild climate. At that time, southern China was a paradise for orangutans, elephants, rhinos and other animals. There are also a large number of elephants, cattle, horses, sheep and pigs living in the eastern region south of the Great Wall and north of the Yangtze River. This is a fact that there are a large number of fossils as evidence.
These animals that can only survive in warm areas can survive, why can't humans survive?
What's more, indigenous people should always be more adaptable to the local environment than distant visitors from Africa and passing through the hot areas of South and Southeast Asia.
The famous anthropologist and professor Zhang Guangzhi of Harvard University Professor Zhang Guangzhi of also pointed out that the theory of African single origin or Eve is obviously problematic. The reorganization of the fossil age of Java humans and the discovery of Mount Taurus bones forced us to re-understand the origin of humans, and there is absolutely no unique origin theory.
The discovery of a series of archaeological sites and fossils also poses challenges to the "African Eve Theory":
The ruins of the old grandma temple in Zhengzhou from 30,000 to 50,000 years ago;
The earliest human activities of the Dadiwan site in Gansu may have begun around 60,000 years ago;
The ruins of Kazuo Pigeon Cave in Liaoning, 50,000 to 70,000 years ago and a batch of cultural relics were unearthed;
Henan Province Xingyang City 100,000 yuan today The loom cave site from the past year; the Liujiang people fossils between 70,000 and 130,000 years; the Xujiayao people fossils from the past year were 125,000 to 105,000 years ago; the "Xuchang people" skull fossils from 125,000 to 105,000 years ago; the human fossils from Dao County, Hunan Province 380,000 to 120,000 years ago; the ancient human fossils from the early Homo sapiens stage 200,000 to 50,000 years ago were also found in the back mountain of Miaohou in Liaoning.
[Under the cave, the accumulation of human teeth and skull residues washed out by sieve]
In addition, the Chinese paleoanthropology community has successively discovered early modern human fossils in Zhoukoudian Paleo Cave, Huanglong Cave in Yunxi, Hubei, and Chongzuo Hiroshima Cave in Guangxi...
These all provide conclusive evidence for further determining the origin of modern Chinese human beings.
For example, through research on ancient human fossils in Dao County, Hunan, it is shown that humans with completely modern morphological characteristics appeared at least 35,000 to 75,000 years earlier than Europe and West Asia.
Archaeologists also found that judging from the 30,000-year-old jade bi and jade artifacts unearthed in the area around the Baikal Lake in southern Siberia, in the high ice age more than 30,000 years ago, ancient humans from the late Paleolithic age were still living and reproducing in high latitudes near the cold zone.
This also shows that even in the harsh environment of the cold ice age, ancient humans can still survive and continue in higher latitude areas.
Then, the survival and continuation of ancient humans in warmer low-latitude areas in China should not be a problem.
From this point of view, the view that "the severe cold 60,000 years ago extincts the Chinese indigenous people" is still a hypothesis that lacks evidence.
Liu Wu, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that there is overwhelming evidence on the fossil record that there were people in China before the arrival of African settlers.
Instead of living in one or two small areas, they thrived and were almost everywhere.
The continuity of ancient humans can also be seen from Chinese Paleolithic culture. Gao Xing, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, pointed out that the context of the development and evolution of Chinese Paleolithic culture from morning to night in 2 million years is clear, and overall it shows a trend from simple to complex, from primitive to progress.
But from most sites and regions, key elements such as stone production technology, types and forms maintain a basic structure, and no major cultural faults or leaps have occurred;
's development and utilization methods of stone resources are also consistent;
's archaeological culture in the large natural geographical units has great convergence and similarity.
These show that the ancient Chinese human groups maintain a large degree of continuity or inertia in their behavior, forming a stable and gradual cultural tradition.
Research from the perspective of ancient human cultural evolution and behavioral patterns shows that ancient humans in China and even East Asia evolve continuously.
, especially in the hinterland of China, Paleolithic culture and the ancient human survival patterns reflected in it are in line with each other, leaving no room for the replacement of foreign people and culture.
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