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Initial Upper Palaeolithic material culture by 45,000 years ago at Shiyu in northern China

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Abstract

The geographic expansion of Homo sapiens populations into southeastern Europe occurred by ∼47,000 years ago (∼47 ka), marked by Initial Upper Palaeolithic (IUP) technology. H. sapiens was present in western Siberia by ∼45 ka, and IUP industries indicate early entries by ∼50 ka in the Russian Altai and 46–45 ka in northern Mongolia. H. sapiens was in northeastern Asia by ∼40 ka, with a single IUP site in China dating to 43–41 ka. Here we describe an IUP assemblage from Shiyu in northern China, dating to ∼45 ka. Shiyu contains a stone tool assemblage produced by Levallois and Volumetric Blade Reduction methods, the long-distance transfer of obsidian from sources in China and the Russian Far East (800–1,000 km away), increased hunting skills denoted by the selective culling of adult equids and the recovery of tanged and hafted projectile points with evidence of impact fractures, and the presence of a worked bone tool and a shaped graphite disc. Shiyu exhibits a set of advanced cultural behaviours, and together with the recovery of a now-lost human cranial bone, the record supports an expansion of H. sapiens into eastern Asia by about 45 ka.

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Fig. 1: The distribution of hominin fossils and key archaeological sites in northern Eurasia in the middle and later Late Pleistocene.
Fig. 2: Shiyu site overview, stratigraphy and age determinations.
Fig. 3: Bayesian age model for luminescence and radiocarbon ages.
Fig. 4: Shiyu IUP lithic artefacts, graphite disc and bone tool.

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Data availability

All the artefacts referred to in this study are curated in the IVPP, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. The basic measurement data of the lithic artefacts can be found in Supplementary Table 1, and the micro-CT reconstruction of the shaped bone tool is in Supplementary Video 1. All other relevant data are available in the main text or the accompanying supplementary materials. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The CQL code for the Bayesian age model is provided in Supplementary Table 9.

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Acknowledgements

We thank N.-R. Lin (Department of Archaeology of Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University) for assistance with figure preparation. We thank Y.-M. Hou and S.-X. Jiang from the IVPP for help with the micro-CT scan and reconstruction. We thank Y. Cao and D.-J. Wang from the College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, for help with the Raman analysis. Financial support for this research was provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos 41888101, 42071003, 42177424, 41977380, 41977379 and 42072212; S.-X.Y., J.-F.Z., C.-L.D. and K.-L.Z.), the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2020YFC1521500; S.-X.Y.), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 2020074; S.-X.Y.), the International Partnership Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 052GJHZ2022024FN; S.-X.Y., M.P., F.d.E. and A.O.), the Key Research Program of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. IGGCAS-201905; S.-X.Y.), the Major Project of the Key Research Base for Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education (grant no. 22JJD780005; J.-F.Z.), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (grant no. E2E40409X2; Y.-X.Z.), the National Social Science Fund of China (grant nos 20VJXG018 and 21BKG005; W.-G.L.), the Beijing Social Science Fund Project (grant no. 21DTR046; W.-G.L.), Griffith University (S.-X.Y. and M.P.), the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme (SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour—SapienCE, project no. 262618; F.d.E.), the Talents programme of the University of Bordeaux Initiative d’Excellence (grant no. 191022_001; F.d.E.), the Grand Programme de Recherche ‘Human Past’ of the Initiative d’Excellence of the same university, the European Research Council under the Horizon 2020 programme (QUANTA project, contract no. 951388; F.d.E.), Spanish MICIN/Feder (grant no. PID2021-122355NB-C32; A.O.), the Catalan AGAUR (grant no. 2021SGR-01239; A.O.) and the Univ. Rovira i Virgili (grant no. 2021-PFR-URV-126; A.O.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Shi-Xia Yang, Jian-Ping Yue, Yue Zhang, Ke-Liang Zhao, Fa-Xiang Huan, Ya-Mei Hou & Wei-Wen Huang

  2. Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Shi-Xia Yang & Michael Petraglia

  3. MOE Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Jia-Fu Zhang & Li-Ping Zhou

  4. Department of History, Anhui University, Hefei, China

    Jian-Ping Yue

  5. Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Rachel Wood

  6. Institute of Nihewan Archaeology, College of History and Culture, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang, China

    Yu-Jie Guo

  7. Department of Archaeology of Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

    Han Wang

  8. School of Humanities, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Wu-Gan Luo

  9. Department of Biomaterials, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

    Emeline Raguin

  10. College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Yu-Xiu Zhang & Cheng-Long Deng

  11. Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, Taiyuan, China

    Yi-Ren Wang

  12. Shanxi Museum, Taiyuan, China

    Jin-Ming Shi

  13. State Key Laboratory of Lithospheric Evolution, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Bao-Yin Yuan & Cheng-Long Deng

  14. Institut Català de Palaeoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA), Tarragona, Spain

    Andreu Ollé

  15. Dept. d’Història i Història de l’Art, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Andreu Ollé

  16. Université de Bordeaux, PACEA UMR 5199, CNRS, Pessac, France

    Alain Queffelec & Francesco d’Errico

  17. Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Francesco d’Errico

  18. School of Social Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Michael Petraglia

  19. Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA

    Michael Petraglia

Authors
  1. Shi-Xia Yang
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  2. Jia-Fu Zhang
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  3. Jian-Ping Yue
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  4. Rachel Wood
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  5. Yu-Jie Guo
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  6. Han Wang
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  7. Wu-Gan Luo
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  8. Yue Zhang
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  9. Emeline Raguin
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  10. Ke-Liang Zhao
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  11. Yu-Xiu Zhang
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  12. Fa-Xiang Huan
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  13. Ya-Mei Hou
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  14. Wei-Wen Huang
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  15. Yi-Ren Wang
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  16. Jin-Ming Shi
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  17. Bao-Yin Yuan
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  18. Andreu Ollé
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  19. Alain Queffelec
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  20. Li-Ping Zhou
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  21. Cheng-Long Deng
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  22. Francesco d’Errico
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  23. Michael Petraglia
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Contributions

S.-X.Y., J.-F.Z., C.-L.D., F.d.E. and M.P. obtained funding and initiated the project. S.-X.Y., J.-F.Z., Y.-J.G., W.-W.H., J.-M.S., B.-Y.Y. and Y.-R.W. conducted the fieldwork and site sampling. J.-F.Z., R.W., Y.-J.G., L.-P.Z., K.-L.Z. and C.-L.D. conducted the stratigraphic, dating and palaeoenvironmental studies. W.-G.L. and Y.-X.Z. analysed the source of the raw materials. S.-X.Y., J.-P.Y., H.W., F.-X.H., Y.-R.W., Y.-M.H., M.P. and A.O. analysed the stone artefacts. Y.Z. conducted the zooarchaeological analysis. F.d.E. and A.Q. analysed the stone disc. F.d.E. and E.R. analysed the bone tool. S.-X.Y., J.-F.Z., F.d.E. and M.P. wrote the main text and supplementary materials with specialist contributions from the other authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Shi-Xia Yang, Jia-Fu Zhang, Francesco d’Errico or Michael Petraglia.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Comparison of the radiocarbon dates of the IUP sites in 2 Altai (Russia), Mongolia and North China.

The ages (n = 55) of some IUP sites in the Altai and in northern Mongolia, such as Denisova, Kara-Bom, and Tolbor 16 are similar to or older than Shiyu (with the modeled age of 44.8 ± 1.2 ka). The sites in southern Mongolia are relatively younger; the oldest samples are from Layers 7 and 9 of the Orkhon 7 site, with radiocarbon ages of 43.5 ± 1.2 and 43.4 ± 1.0 cal ka BP. For the Shuidonggou (SDG) Locality 1 site, only three samples from cultural layers were radiocarbon determined, with ages of 20.2 ± 0.6, 29.8 ± 1.6 and 41.2 ± 0.2 cal ka BP, respectively, which are younger than Shiyu. Therefore, we deduced that Shiyu is the oldest IUP site in China, even compared with the IUP sites in south Mongolia, based on radiocarbon dates. Shiyu is the oldest IUP site in China, even compared with the IUP sites in south Mongolia, based on radiocarbon dates.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Location of Shiyu in the Nihewan Basin.

a, location of Shiyu and other key Palaeolithic sites dated to marine isotope stage (MIS) 3 (DEM with a resolution of 12.5 m was downloaded from https://search.asf.alaska.edu). b and c, geographic position of Shiyu and surrounding landscapes (map in panel b is made by DEM data with a resolution of 5 m from https://search.asf.alaska.edu).

Extended Data Fig. 3 The cut-marked bones and radiocarbon dating results.

a, 22SY-44 (OxA-43265), shaft fragment of a large-sized animal (most probably Equus sp.) with a set of cut marks oriented obliquely to the long axis of the bone (photoed by authors); b, 22SY-143 (Ox-43266), shaft fragment of a large-sized animal with series of cut marks parallel to the long axis; c, 22sy-282 (Ox-43267-22sy-282), bone fragment of a large-sized animal with cut marks perpendicular to the long axis; d, The radiocarbon ages obtained on the three cut-marked bones from the Shiyu site.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Scatterplot of Rb, Sr, and Zr measurements for the Shiyu obsidian artefacts and obsidian sources across Eastern Asia.

a-c, comparison of trace element (Rb, Sr, and Zr) content for four obsidian artefacts from Shiyu with volcanic glass sources in China and Far East Siberia71,72. d, the four obsidian lithics from Shiyu. Comparison of trace elements (Rb, Sr, and Zr) for four obsidian artefacts from Shiyu and volcanic glass sources in northeast China and Far East Siberia indicate that the source of artefact SY-315 is located in the Changbai Mountain, Northeast China. Artefacts SY-56, SY-316. SY-226 derive from Gladkaya, Far East Siberia. The Shiyu specimens markedly differ from samples in Tibet (NE Obsidian A, B, C and SW Obsidian A, B.)72. The ‘A1, A2, A3 source of Changbai Mountain’ set consists of data from 27, 18, 14 specimens respectively; the ‘Russian basaltic and Gladkaya’ set consists of data from 82 and 22 specimens respectively; the ‘Jiutai, Laoheishan and Jingpohu’ set consists of data from 7, 14 and 11 specimens respectively; the ‘NE Obsidian A, NE Obsidian B, NE Obsidian C, SW Obsidian A and SW Obsidian B’ set consists of data from 9, 1, 3, 28 and 7 specimens respectively. The reference data are from 13 different areas from within and external to China, with 243 specimens forming the background data.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 5 Tool types and lithic byproducts from Shiyu.

a, products from Levallois and blade reduction sequences. 1, 2, 4, Levallois points with well prepared platforms, or ‘chapeau de gendarme’ platforms; 3, Levallois flake (side flake from a Levallois core); 5, crested blade; 6, 7, broken blades; b, tools. 1-4, tanged tools; 5-6, broken tanged tools; 7, notch; 8, borer; 9, 12, denticulates; 10-11, scrapers.

Extended Data Fig. 6 20SY-362, a used Levallois point (46.23×28.83×9.93 mm).

a-b, detail of the distal edge damage: step-hinge termination on the ventral face with opposing initiation on the tip (5X, 10X) burin-like fracture. c, hafting scar from binding contact around the haft limit on the ventral right medial edge (50X). d, bright spots at the end of step-hinge of the distal edge damage. e-g, hafting bright spot on the ventral right and left proximal edge. h-i, hafting bright spot on the ventral right and left proximal edges (100X).

Extended Data Fig. 7 SY20-02, Tanged tool made on chert flake (43.15×26.58×8.81 mm).

a-c, isolated micro-scarring interpreted as binding scars, around the haft limit on the ventral right medial edge (20X, 30X). d, hafting bright spot on the dorsal medial ridge (50X). e, hafting bright spot on the proximal edge (100X). f, g, invasive soft animal mater polish covering the tool edge (50X).

Extended Data Fig. 8 Technological analysis and Raman analysis of the Shiyu disc.

a, Raman spectrum (RAM292) of the disc surface showing bands typical of graphite. b, positioning, in red, of quantitative values extracted from the RAM292 spectrum within a metamorphic gradient (modified from Fig. 8 of Beyssac)36, indicating that the carbon material used for the production of the disc was submitted to a medium to high degree of metamorphism. c, drawing summarising results of the disc analysis: 1, areas covered by labels and varnish; 2, areas abraded on a grindstone and smoothed by use wear and curatorial handling; 3, facet abraded on a grindstone; 4, fractures developed following clivage planes of the raw material; 5, surface of the perforation; 6, unmodified surface; 7, striations left by grinding indicating the direction of the grinding motion. d, microscopic analysis of the Shiyu disc.1-4, close-up view of the perforation and surrounding areas with location of the micrographs presentedNotice the blunt shiny appearance of the perforation and the palimpsest of randomly oriented striations of different size and length covering the surface, interpreted as resulting from wear and curatorial handling.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Bone tool from Shiyu.

a–c, Photograph, 3D model and drawing of different aspects of a bone tool shaped by knapping. Patterns in c identify flake scars (I), spiral fracture (II), unmodified cortical bone (III), and (IV) limits between these areas. Scale = 1 cm. d, Correlation between the length of Shiyu diaphyesal fragments bearing spiral fractures and the number of flake scars occurring on them compared with the artefact interpreted as bone tool highlights the object stands out for its small size and very large number of flake scars. e, Perspective rendering of the bone tool showing the segmented vascular canals (red). f, g, The two planes correspond to the transverse section (red: f) and the longitudinal section (green: g) of the bone tool. Most of the vascular canals are longitudinally oriented as shown by their circularity when viewed in cross section. Radial anastomoses can be observed in the two sections and appear elongated in transverse section (f) and round in the longitudinal plane (g) (white arrows). The longitudinal vascular canals are organized in circular row and circumferential lamellae are discernible in the subperiosteal region (below the red dotted line in f). Secondary osteons delimited by a cement line are scarce and in less mineralized areas (f and g, arrowheads). The CT images also reveal the presence of diagenetic alteration such as microcracks and inclusion of denser (brighter) particles lying mainly inside the bone empty spaces, namely the vascular canals (blue arrows).

Extended Data Table 1 Optical and radiocarbon age estimates
Full size table

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Information sections A–I.

Reporting Summary

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Supplementary Video 1

Micro-CT images of the shaped bone tool.

Supplementary Table 1

Basic measurements and raw material types of the lithic assemblage.

Source data

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4

Statistical source data.

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Yang, SX., Zhang, JF., Yue, JP. et al. Initial Upper Palaeolithic material culture by 45,000 years ago at Shiyu in northern China. Nat Ecol Evol 8, 552–563 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-023-02294-4

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