Abstract:

Starting in the early 20^th century, the human evolution studies in China have experienced more than one hundred years. Since beginning of the 21^st century, impressive advances have been achieved on the human evolution studies in China. Except for discovering abundant hominin fossils, a series of field work and lab studies have been conducted in Paleolithic archaeology, chronology, and ancient DNA and protein, which indicate the human evolution studies in China have become a wide range of multidisciplinary research. Among these advances, the discoveries of hominin fossils and related studies in the past twenty years are most important, which mainly touched the issues of modern human origin and late Middle Pleistocene hominin evolution in East Asia. The discovery of Late Pleistocene hominin fossils in Tianyuandong with AMS ¹⁴C dating put the emergence of early modern human in East Asia 40 kaBP which made the studies of modern human origin in China under more accurate dating frame. The subsequent hominin fossil discoveries from Huanglongdong, Zhirendong, Lunadong and Daoxian from the Late Pleistocene further made the appearing time of the modern humans in China as early as 80 to 120 kaBP. Since 21^st century, the discoveries of the late Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils from Penghu, Xuchang, Hualongdong, Xiahe and Harbin greatly enrich the hominin fossil records in China and provide important information for the research into human evolution in East Asia. During this period, studies on these newly discovered and other late Middle Pleistocene hominin fossils including Dali, Jinniushan, Xujiayao, Maba and Tongzi have been conducted with most impressive finding that the fossil morphology and evolutionary patterns of the late Middle Pleistocene hominins exhibit very complicated diversities. The morphologies of these fossils are characterized by both derived and archaic features. Some of the fossils exhibit similar or even the same morphological features as in modern humans but others still keep more archaic features. Such a finding suggests the transition from archaic to modern morphology occurred as early as 300 kaBP or emergence of modern humans in China may be much earlier than previously believed. The late Middle Pleistocene hominins living in different regions of China do not have the equal contribution to the formation of modern humans. Simply classifying all the hominins of this time period into archaic Homo sapiens cannot accurately reflect the evolutionary patterns of late Middle Pleistocene hominins in China.

As the research of multidisciplinary approaches, the studies of different fields in human evolution have also been conducted in the past twenty years. The present author believes that four studies represent the most important advances in Paleolithic archaeology in China. These studies touched the issues of Middle Pleistocene Acheulean-like stone technology in China, the earliest human occupation in Tibetan Plateau by 40 kaBP to 30 kaBP, the late Middle Pleistocene Levallois stone-tool technology in China and modern human behaviors of ochre processing and tool use in China 40 kaBP. The dating the hominin fossil on the stone tool sites of Xiaochangliang and Majuangou in Nihewan Basin, Shangchen in Lantian updated the opinion of the earliest time for hominin arrival to Northeast Asia and East Asia 1.66 MaBP and 2.13 MaBP respectively. The studies on fossil taphonomy, ancient DNA and ancient protein have also been carried out. A series of new discoveries and understanding have been achieved from these works, and academic explorations on some key issues on the human evolution in China have also been discussed. In this paper, centered on the hominin fossil discovery and research, important advances on the human evolution in China are reviewed and key issues discussed.

Key words: Human evolution, Late Middle Pleistocene, Late Pleistocene, Diversity, Multidisciplinary studies