{"id":548952,"date":"2026-01-28T10:31:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T10:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/548952\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T10:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T10:31:19","slug":"composite-tool-find-puts-china-at-centre-of-tech-revolution-up-to-160000-years-ago-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/548952\/","title":{"rendered":"Composite tool find puts China at centre of tech revolution up to 160,000 years ago: paper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">China may have led a Stone Age technological race as early as 160,000 years ago, by crafting sophisticated stone tools for cutting, piercing and sawing, according to a new study.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">An international team of scientists said the discovery of hafted tools \u2013 the earliest evidence for composite tools in eastern Asia \u2013 had reshaped the understanding of human evolution in the region.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">They said the find showed that hominins in China were much more inventive and adaptable than previously thought, challenging the widely held belief that \u201chominin technologies in eastern Asia lack signs of innovation and sophistication\u201d in the later part of the Middle Pleistocene.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The researchers from institutions in Australia, China, Norway, Spain and the United States published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cEarlier records, such as the evidence from Xigou, challenge this dominant paradigm and show that hominins in China from the Middle to Late Pleistocene possessed the cognitive and technical abilities to produce complex and diversified items of material culture, compatible with their counterparts from other regions of Africa and Eurasia,\u201d the team wrote.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tanged borer from Xigou. Photo: Jian-Ping Yue, IVPP\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/982e1ab4-7279-4b4b-8a48-29b413fdd1be_0521ae1f.jpg\" title=\"Tanged borer from Xigou. Photo: Jian-Ping Yue, IVPP\"\/>Tanged borer from Xigou. Photo: Jian-Ping Yue, IVPP<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Xigou, an archaeological site discovered in 2017 and excavated from 2019 to 2021, is in the central Chinese province of Henan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China may have led a Stone Age technological race as early as 160,000 years ago, by crafting sophisticated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":548953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7779,3774,4740,9710,74,241133,234733,106969,241132,241135,241134,63724,9189,241131,159,67,132,68,241136],"class_list":{"0":"post-548952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-africa","9":"tag-asia","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-beijing","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-danjiangkou-reservoir","14":"tag-eastern-asia","15":"tag-eurasia","16":"tag-henan","17":"tag-homo-juluensis","18":"tag-homo-longi","19":"tag-homo-sapiens","20":"tag-nature-communications","21":"tag-qinling-mountain-range","22":"tag-science","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-xigou"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115972268660105184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}