Abstract: This paper provides an overview about microblade studies in China and prehistoric cultural relationships between Northeastern Asia and North America. The latest chronological data suggest that the Altai Mountains posses the oldest microblades, while Oregon in the United States yields the most recent date of AD 1000. Early generation of archaeologists favored culturehistorical approach, focusing on classification and description, and used diffusionism to explain the spread of microblade technology. Inspired by Japanese colleagues, Chinese scholars began to employ dynamic approach or techno-typology to reconstruct microblade reduction sequences, and nominated several techniques for wedge-shaped cores as well as non-wedge-shaped cores. Then, processual approach was introduced into China during the 2010s. Functional-adaptive perspective has been used to examine microblade industries during the Last Ice Age. On the basis of a critical thinking of methodology and research objectives, especially of the origin of microblade technology in NE Asia, this paper proposes a new concept called “microbladebased communities” (by the second author), trying to provide us with a frame to explore social organization, information exchange, as well as innovation and transmission of knowledge among these communities to cope with harsh environment and resource shortage. It may give us new insights into why microblade was invented and why it spread so fast on a vast subcontinental scale. This new perspective may improve our understanding about cultural meanings and technological advantage in prehistoric arctic and subarctic adaptation.

Key words: microblade technology; origin; spread; methodology; rethinking; microblade-based communities