Stirring find in Xuchang


www.chinaview.cn 2008-01-28 09:36:35 Print

BEIJING, Jan. 28 -- The unexpected scientific wonders lurking just beneath the soil have always been a subject of deep fascination.

Where are we from? What are the origins of modern man? Paleo-anthropologists have been tangling with such questions for a long time.

  Digs in Xuchang, Henan province, have yielded significant archaeological finds and may offer clues to some of science's biggest questions. Paleo-anthropologists have uncovered the skull fossils of a Hominid, that roamed the Earth 80,000-100,000 years ago.
The find is expected to represent an important missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the history of modern man in China.

The paleo-anthropologists called the Hominid "Xuchang man".

Prior to this discovery, scientists had found Hominid fossils in many parts of China - Wushan of Chongqing, Lantian of Shaanxi province, Jinniu of Liaoning and Shandingdong of Beijing - dating back 10,000 to 2 million years ago. These fossils have presented a picture of the evolution of man, helping to flesh out a void in the record 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.

More important, the arrival of Xuchang man will pose a challenge to one of the prevailing theories regarding the origins of modern man in China.

The "out of Africa" hypothesis contends that anatomically modern man first arose in eastern Africa about 150,000 years ago, then radiated outwards until the species eventually conquered the planet.

The discovery at Xuchang supports the theory that modern Chinese man originated in what is present-day Chinese territory rather than Africa.

There are still scientists who insist on the multi-regional evolution model, which holds that modern man descended from several indigenous archaic human populations in the Old World, such as the Neanderthals, who resided in Europe, or from the so-called Java man, or Peking man in Asia.

The oldest human fossils found in China so far are those of the 1.7-million-year old Yuanmou Hominid. All ancient human fossils unearthed in China share a common morphology: shovel-shaped fore-teeth, a rectangular eye pit and a flat face, which indicate that ancient man living in China evolved continuously along an uninterrupted evolutionary chain for 1.7 million years.

The Xuchang man helps support the multi-regional theory.

Extraordinary archaeological discoveries are critical to maintaining our national identity as well as the history of our ancient civilization.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn)


Editor: Han Lin