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15 September 2001, Volume 20 Issue 03

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Three-dimensional morphometric analyses of Hominoid lower molars from Yuanmou of Yunnan Province, China

LIU Wu , ZHENG Liang , Alan Walker

2001, 20(03):  163-177. 

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1 Introduction
Among the four Miocene hominoid sites of Kaiyuan, Lufeng, Yuanmou and Baoshan in Yunnan Province of China, Lufeng and Yuanmou are the richest fossil sites.Yuanmou hominoid was found in 1986. The exvacation and collection in the past years have accumulated a big fossil collection including cranium, maxilla, mandibles and more than 1000 isolated teeth.In the past decade, some colleagues described the morphology of bone and teeth of Yuanmou hominoid. However, till now, the studies of Yuanmou hominoid fossils are not enough in both depth and breadth.The research methods are also limited. Many key problems concerning with fossil traits, variations, the relationship with other Miocene hominoids, phylogenetic status in evolution and the possible role in early hominid origins are not clear. Although the studies of geological dating and paleoenvironment for Yuanmou site are still in progress, it is usually thought that the living period for Yuanmou hominoid are closer to that of Lufengpithecus, indicating that in both geographical distribution and living time, Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus are very similar.The studies of fossil specimens also reveal that the morphological patterns of Yuanmou and Lufeng are very close.From this point, the further studies of Yuanmou hominoid fossils will be important in the relationship of fossil morphology and evolution, and for the study of the role of Asian Miocene hominoids in hominoid evolution.In recent years, EDMA(Euclidean Distance Matrix Analysis) has been gradually used to the fossil studies, especially the 2D and 3D studies of dental traits.The present authors also used this method doing 2D morphometric study of Yuanmou lower molars. In present study, 3D morphometric measurements and EDMA statistical analyses will be used to the lower molars of Yuanmou hominoid, Lufengpithecus, extant great ape and humans.
2 Material and methods
72 Yuanmou hominoid teeth with no wear were chosen in present study for landmark measurements. Lufengpithecus specimens include 10 lower molars. 6 of them are kept in the Provincial Institute of Archaeology, and 4 of them are casts housed in the Peabody Museum of Harward University. Other comparative specimens are the lower molars of chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan and humans housed in Natural History Museum of Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and Filed Museum of Natural History respectively. Table 1 lists the information of the specimens.
In present study, 13 landmarks were used for 3D measurements.Among them, 11 are located on the occlusal surface which are 5 cusp tips and 6 intercusp fissure termini landmarks used by Ungar (1994)on hominoid lower first molar found in Lukeino of Kenya.The authors designed two cervical landmarks.
meatconid(med)
distal groove(dgrv)
entoconid(en)
buccal distal groove(bdgrv)
hypoconulid(hylid)
buccal mesial groove(bmgrv)
hypoconid(hy)
central
fovea(cefo)
proconid(pr)
lingual cerval(lcer)
anterior fovea(anfo)
buccal cerval(bcer)
lingual groove(lgv)
Metconid, entoconid and protoconis were set as measuring plane(X, Y, Z), and metaconid as origin point.MicroScribe-3D system developed by Immersion Human Interface Corporation was used to measure the 13 landmarks for each tooth.3 measurements were taken for each landmark and averaged. The data were analyzed with EDMA programme(version 1.0)coded by Tim Cole.The significant level is 0.1.
3 Results and discussion
The 3D morphometric comparisons of Yuanmou hominoid with Lufengpithecus, extant great ape and humans can provide the following information:
(1)The similaritiies of lower molars between Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus
Among the samples studied here, the 3D morphometric traits of Yuanmou and Lufeng resemble mostly each other.Among the 78 distances composed by 13 landmarks, only 5 distances have significant differences between Yuanmou and Lufeng.These differences are mainly located in cusp and fissure landmarks.Among the five significant differences, except metc-lcer distance which is Yuanmou is bigger than Lufeng, all other distances are bigger in Lufeng than Yuanmou.Compared with orangutan and other extant great apes, the lower molars of Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus have lower crowns.
(2)The lower molar morphologies of both Yuamou and Lufeng are more similar to those of apes than humans
Compared with the lower molars of human and extant great apes, both Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus show very significant differences with humans and closer to apes.Among the 78 land-mark distances compared, significant differences between both Yuanmou and Lufeng,, and humans are 66 and 46 respectively, while the number of significant differences between Yuanmou and orangutan, chimpanzee and gorillas are 30, 32 and 37 respectively.And the same number of differences for Lufeng are 14, 15 and 25 respectively.Viewing from another point, the differences of both Yuanmou and Lufeng with humans are very similar to those between great apes and humans.The number of land-mark distances with significant differences between the three great ape and humans are 57, 56 and 55, which are quite closer to those number between both Yuanmou and Lufeng, and humans.Among the differences each of Lufeng, orangutan, chimpanzee and gorillas with humans, 89.1% -95.7% of them are identical with those between Yuanmou and humans.Figures 2-figures 4 show that among the five lower molar cusps in human, hypoconid is the highest and the heights of meatconid, entoconid, hypoconulid and proconid are similar.In great apes, hypoconid and hypoconulid are much higher than other cusps.For the 6 intercusp fissure termini landmarks, the depths of anterior fovea, central fovea and lingual groove are similar in great apes, and all of them are significantly deeper than other three landmarks.In human, only anterior fovea and central fovea are deeper than other intercusp fissure termini landmarks with central fovea deeper than anterior fovea.The distances between two cervical landmarks and metaconid is smaller in apes than human indicating the lower crown.The pattern expressions for these traits in Yuanmou and Lufeng lower molars are the same as apes and differ from humans.These results indicate that compared with humans, both Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus share more dental patterns with extant apes, indicating Yuanmou hominoid, Lufengpithecus and extant great apes keep some primitive features.
(3)The differences between Yuanmou and each of the three great apes are similar
In present study, the analyses of 3D metric data of Yuanmou lower molars and those of the three great apes show that the differences between Yuanmou and each of the three great apes in 3D metric patterns of lower molars are very similar.The number of landmark distances with significant differences between Yuanmou and orangutan, chimpanzee and gorillas are 30, 32 and 37 respectively, which are quite closer.Among them, the fewest significant differences were found between Yuanmou and orangutans indicating there seems be further closer relationship between Yuanmou and orangutans.Among the landmark distances with significant differences between Yuanmou and each of the great apes, 11 distances are common shared.For the remained distances, no one can be served as the evidence to support further closer relationship between Yuanmou and any of the great apes.The similar results were also obtained from the comparisons between Lufengpithecus and the three great apes.The comparisons of each of the three great apes show that the number of landmark distances with significant differences are 32, 42 and 31 respectively, which are closer to those between Yuanmou and the three great apes.All these comparisons offer further support for the opinion of closeness between Yuanmou hominoid and great apes in dental traits.
(4)Compared with Yuanmou, fewer differences found between Lufengpithecus and other samples
We found one interesting phenomenon that is:when comparisons were made between both Yuanmou and Lufeng, and others, the number of landmark distances with significant differences between Lufeng and these samples are fewer than those between Yuanmou and the same samples.According to table 5, the landmark distance number between Yuanmou and orangutan, chimpanzee, gorilla and humans are 30, 32, 37 and 66, while the number for Lufeng with the same comparative samples are 14, 15, 25 and 46 respectively.The specimens of Lufengpithecus used in present study are only 10 may be the main reason for the phenomenon.
The Z values for the EDMA analyses between Yuanmou and all other samples in table 6 show that Z value between Yuanmou and Lufeng is the smallest (0.104), the following is that between Yuanmou and orangutans(0.105).The Z values between Yuanmou and other samples are much bigger than these two which further indicate Yuanmou and Lufeng have closer affinity and both of them have closer relationship with orangutans, and are far different form humans.
In the past years, some description and comparisons of Yuanmou hominoid fossilsindicate that the cranial and dental morphologies of Yuanmou fossils resemble those of Lufeng very much, and have obvious differences with the hominoid fossils found in some other parts of the world.Both Yuanmou and Lufeng crania have broad interorbital distance and broad face.But Yuanmou hominoids also show some different morphological features from Lufengpithecus.These feature include:the area between orbits does not depress.The lower third premolar(P3)only has one cusp.According to these findings, Zheng and Zhang proposed the hominoid fossils found in Yuanmou represent a new species within the genus Lufengpithecus.In present study, the comparisons of 3D morphometric patterns of Yuanmou hominoid lower molars with Lufengpithecus and other samples also indicate that Yuanmou hominoids are most close to Lufengpithecus.Contrary to this, the differences between Yuanmou hominoids and extant great apes and humans are much obvious.Compared with extant ape and humans, both Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus show very obvious differences from humans while similar to apes.The two kinds of hominoids found in China and extant apes share many morphometric differences with humans. In comparisons with chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutans respectively, the differences between Yuanmou hominoid and the three great apes are basically similar with more resemblance to orangutans.In previous studies of statistical analysis of metric data of Yuanmou hominoid teeth, and 2D EDMA study of the same Yuanmou sample as the present study also revealed the similar results.These findings indicate that the dental morphologies of Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus are very similar.At present, we are not quite clear the mechanism and evolution significance for these dental similarities.The authors propose that even though the lower molar crown morphometric traits are very similar between Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus from both 2D and 3D analyses, the exact significance of the similarities are still unclear.Also, there are still some differences in both cranial and dental traits between Yuan-mou and Lufeng fossils.So, some more evidences are needed for us to reliably set the phylogenetic relationship between Yuanmou hominoid and Lufengpithecus.

Fossil human humerus of late Pleistocene from the Taiwan Straits

CAI Bao-quan

2001, 20(03):  178-185. 

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In 1998, while fishing in the vast area of the Taiwan Straits from 23°30′—25°00′N and 119°20′—120°30′E, the fishermen of Xiangzhi village, Shishi City, Fujian Province salvaged more than five thousand pieces of fossil mammals, an almost complete fossil human humerus, 1 piece of bone artifact and several pieces of animal skeletons with marks of artificial cutting and scraping marks.This paper is a report of study on the fossil human humerus. The human right humerus is highly petritied.It is brown in color and lacks capitulum and troch- lea.The specimen shows no sign of being worn.On the surface of bone there are remains of coral and polychaete attaching to it later.The size and robustness of the bone, the well-developed deltoid tuberosity and greater and lesser tubercles and the completely fusion of the physis with the shaft show that it belongs to a male adult.Based on the length of the humerus after restoration, the stature of the individual is estimated as 170—172 cm.According to the coexistent fossil mammals, it may be determined that this fossil human is late Late Pleistocene and belongs to Late Homo sapiens.For convenience sake, it is referred to as “Straits man”. There are some fossil materials of Late Homo sapiens in China.Among them, however, those who have humeri are only “Ordos man” in Inner Mongolia[ 5], “Jianping man” in Liaoning[ 6] and “Dongs- han man” in Fujian[ 7].There are two pieces of adult male left humeri of “Ordos man” but without description or measurement.Thus comparison is impossible.There remains only 57.9 mm length of the shaft of the right fossil humerus of “Dongshan man”.Therefore it is difficult to make comparison.The common point lies in the similar burying environment.Nevertheless, the extent of the petrification of “Dongshan man” is lower, indicating that the age of “Dongshan man” is later than that of “Straits man”. The comparison of the humerus of “Straits man” with the male humerus of “Jianping man” leads to the conclusion that the extent of petrification of “Jianping man” is lower.The humerus of “Straits man” looks thicker and stronger.And the deltoid tuberosity is well developed.The flexion at mid-shaft is outward and the axes of the upper and lower parts are not on the same line.This is what can not be found in “Jianping man”.The sulcus for the radial nerve of “Straits man” is not so well developed as that of “Jianping man”, and the edges on the internal and external sides are not so sharp as theirs. Outside China, the comparable humeri in the stage is that of “Minatogawa man” of Okinawa and German “Obercassel man” who belongs to Cro-Magnon. A comparison between the right humerus of “Straits man” and the male humerus of “Minatogawa man” shows that they are similar in the angles between head and shaft.Both have well-developed del- toid tuberosity.The flexion at the mid-shaft of the two is outward.The axes of upper and lower parts of the shaft make an angle.The angle of male “Minatogawa man” is 8°( Fig.1, A).The difference lies in the shapes of the cross-section ( Fig.1, B). Comparison between the humerus of “Straits man” and that of “Obercassel man ” shows that they are very much alike.They are similar in the length and thickness as well as the angles between head and shaft.Both have well-developed deltoid tuberosity.The flexion at the mid-shaft of the two is out- ward.The angle made by the upper and lower parts of the shaft of “Obercassel man” is 8.4°( Fig.1, A).The sulci for the radial nerves of both specimens are shallow and flat.The cross-sections of the shaft are similar in both specimens.The subtle difference lies in the fact that the marginal ridges of the humerus of “Straits man” are duller, while those of “Obercassel man” sharper. The above comparison shows that the humeri of “Straits man” and “Obercassel man” are the most alike in shape.Next comes “Minatogawa man”.It is quite different from that of “Jianping man”. The brawy shaft and the larger angle formed by the upper and lower parts of the shaft are considered by the author as representing primitive characters possessed by the humeri found from the Straits, Minatogawa and Obercassel, while the humeri of Jianping, Neolithic sites and modern humans do not have these characters.These facts may suggest the humeri found from the Straits, Minatogawa and Obercassel belonging to the same stage of evolution, while that from Jianping is later.The lower extent of petrification of the Jianping humerus may also verify this suggestion.

A study of raw material exploitation and economy at Zhoukoudian Locality 15

GAO Xing

2001, 20(03):  186-200. 

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The structure of a lithic assemblage and the nature of artifact variability are closely related to several factors, including the availability and quality of raw material, the strategy by which it was procured, the particular activities in which stone tools were made and used, and the role of the sites within a settlement system.This paper presents the results of an analysis of raw material exploitation and their implications for hominid adaptations at Zhoukoudian Loc.15, an important late Middle and early Upper Pleistocene site in North China.
Raw Material Utilized at the Site
Six lithic raw material types are recognized at the site, namely vein quartz, igneous materials, rock crystal, flint, sandstone, and quartzite.The overwhelming majority(95.2% )of the artifacts were made on quartz.Among the minority raw material group, igneous rock is most abundant (204 pieces), followed by crystal (81 pieces).Only 30 pieces on flint, 16 pieces on sandstone, and 2 pieces on quartzite were collected.
Raw Material Distribution, Availability and Quality
Most of the lithic materials exploited at Loc.15 were available in the landscape close to the site. Longgushan and the larger Xishan where the Zhoukoudian complex is situated, are composed of various rock types, including quartzite, limestone, sandstone, and slates.The weathered outcrops at the hills and the riverbeds of the Zhoukou River provided a ready source for hominids to find and select the stone materials they needed for making their tools.A gravel layer in the Zhoukou River Terrace, the so-called “the Lower Gravel”, formed during the Middle Pleistocene, is rich in various kinds of rounded stones and is believed to be one of the principal raw material sources for Zhoukoudian hominids. Nodules of vein quartz, quartzite, igneous rock, and sandstone can be easily encountered in the area; rock crystals have been found in a granite area about 5 km north of the site.A few exotic materials, such as flint and agate, cannot be easily located nearby.However, such materials make up only a tiny proportion of the assemblage, and they were probably procured as small isolated nodules in streambeds around Zhoukoudian. While numerous stones can been easily obtained close to the site, materials with high quality are very scarce in the region.In general, workability of the dominant raw material types at the site, namely vein quartz and rock crystal, is very poor and thus limits the number of usable flakes detached from any one core.Quartz tends to split along structural planes and thus makes it difficult the toolmaker to control the size and shape of the flakes detached from it.
Strategies for Exploiting Different Raw Materials
Quartz is the major material used to produce cores, flakes, and tools.Both direct hammer per- cussion and bipolar flaking were applied to this kind of material.Only 2 hammer percussion cores (flint)were collected for the non-quartz materials; a much smaller proportion of debris was found from these material compared to quartz; and flakes on these non-quartz materials are larger and more regular.These might indicate that most flakes on flint, igneous rocks and sandstone were not produced at the site; they were detached at other spots and the selected materials were then brought to the site. This conclusion is also supported by the result of Minimal Nodule Analysis:non-quartz materials were sorted into minimal groups and refitting was attempted for them.No conjoins were found. Raw material frequencies were also examined for tools by class.More than 93.4% of the re- touched pieces were produced on quartz.This material was used to make all kinds of tools except for cleavers.More than 4% of the tools were produced on igneous material, including burins, chopper- chopping tools, cleavers, notches, and sidescrapers.Fourteen pieces were made on crystal, including burins, nail-shaped scrapers, and sidescrapers; 12 tools, all sidescrapers, were fabricated on flint. The 4 sandstone pieces are chopper-chopping tools.Only 1 retouched piece(a cleaver)was made on quartzite.Such statistics indicate that hominids at the site had the ability to select different materials to produce a variety of implements, but tended overwhelmingly to use quartz.
Consumption of Raw Material
Several measures have been used to assess the extent to which a piece of raw material or raw materials as a whole was consumed.
Core Reduction Extent
Core reduction extent or intensity was examined by the ratio of simple, minimally worked or tested cores to extensively worked cores.In the case of Loc.15 assemblage, the ratio of simple cores (23 pieces)to the combination of discoid (33 pieces)and polyhedral(74 pieces)cores have been used.A ratio of 1∶4.7 means that there are far more extensively consumed cores than minimally worked or test- ed cores.
Raw Material Use Intensity
A major measure of raw material use intensity is the ratio of unmodified flakes to retouched tools. A totally of 530 unretouched whole flakes and flake fragments were collected from Loc.15, and 848 tools retouched on flakes and flake fragments were identifid.The ratio of unmodified flakes-flake frag- ments to retouched flakes-fake fragments is 1∶1.6. There are two possible explanations for the high ratio of unretouched flakes to flake tools.One is that the large number of flake fragments and chunks at the site provided more usable tool blanks than the whole flakes.A total of 685 tools were modified on flake fragments, another 321 pieces were fabri- cated on chunks, compared to only 163 pieces made on whole flakes.The poor quality workability of quartz could explain the scarcity of whole flakes and the abundance of flake fragments and chunks. Some of such fragments might be thin and sharp, and thus were selected by hominids to make tools.A more plausible explanation is that, although many flakes were not retouched, pieces with natural sharp edges might have been used directly as tools, rather than being modified.“Utilized flakes” have been recognized in many Paleolithic sites, both in China and other parts of the Old World.However, it is always difficult to test if a piece of un-retouched flake has been used or not, especially with coarse- grained materials that prevent them from being analyzed for use-wear.Among the flakes from Loc.15, 66 pieces exhibit damage scars.Because those samples were not collected with intention of protecting the edges, use-wear examination on them will not be very meaningful.
The Index of Retouch Length
In order to assess the extent of retouch on the blank, an Index of Retouch Length was created for the modified tools.The IRL is simply the ratio of retouch length or edge length to the whole length of the margin at which retouch was located.The margin length was measured only for the part that has the condition or potential to be retouched into working edge.The larger the retouch index, the more com- plete the retouch, thus the more intensively a piece of raw material was modified.Only scrapers were included in this analysis.While some pieces were only minimally or partially retouched, an index mean of 0.89 indicates that for most of the scrapers, a large proportion (almost 90% )of the margin was retouched into workable edge.
The Index of Sharpening
An Index of Sharpening or resharpening was adopted in this study.The IS, calculated as the ratio of the edge thickness to piece thickness at the central ridge, would indicate how close the modifica- tion came to the central ridge and estimate the amount of material removed by primary retouch or re- sharpening from the original blank:the larger the index, the closer the retouch scars moved to the central ridge, and the more complete and extensive the modification carried out.Only scrapers made on flakes were included in this analysis.An index mean of 0.66 indicates that most of them were re- touched to a moderate extent.The majority of the pieces have the index between 0.4 and 0.8. A high IRL and a relatively low IS imply that while hominids at Loc.15 intended to make use of the lateral margin of a piece of blank as much as possible, they did not put much effort to rework their tool edges, a conclusion that is also supported by the fact that the overwhelming majority of the tools exhibit only one retouch layer.A possible explanation is that it was easier and more efficient to pick up a suitable piece of material, make use of its sharp edge or apply primary retouch to its lateral side to make a working edge, than to resharpen the worn edge on a used tool, provided that raw materials or tool-making potentials were abundant at the site.
The Number of Retouched Edges
When tool edge wore out, stone toolmakers might have several options to solve the problem.They could resharpen or rework the worn edge; create another edge or edges on the piece, or they could just abandon it and make a new tool.The selection of certain option(s)was closely related to raw material availability and the cost of getting new materials.The 1, 188 scrapers collected from Loc.15 preserve a total of 1, 313 retouched edgs.The large majority of the pieces (1, 063 pieces)are single-edged tools; The ratio of single-edged pieces to multi-edged ones is 8.5∶1.Such a high ratio means that in general, hominids at the site chose to replace the worn tools with new ones rather than reworking the used pieces. An analysis on the number of retouched edges on different materials reveals that these raw materials were not treated the same way.The ratio of single-edged pieces to multi-edged ones is 9.6∶ 1 for quartz, 3∶1 for crystal, 2.2∶1 for igneous material, and 1.4∶1 for flint, meaning that the non- quartz materials were more extensively consumed than vein quartz, an indication that hominids at the site would favor better quality raw materials when they were available.
Conclusions
From the perspective of raw material economy, the Loc.15 assemblage can be summarized as the follows: Raw material exploited at the site was locally available and was predominantly quartz, and is characterized by high abundance and low quality.The cost of obtaining raw material and using them to produce stone tools was balanced by these two conflicting factors, which in turn had strong effect on the nature of lithic technology at the site. The extent of raw material consumption in general is low, evidenced by the predominance of waste debitage or chunk fragments and the minimal modifications on the retouched pieces. Many flakes were not modified although some could have been utilized directly. Different strategies were involved in dealing with different raw materials.Quartz and rock crystal were processed at the site, and other materials may have been flaked somewhere else and selected materials brought into the cave.The amount of waste quartz and rock crystal is far higher than that for other materials.Quartz and crystal were less extensively consumed than other materials. Several ethnoarchaeological and experimental models developed in the West were applied to the study of raw material exploitation strategies and economy at Loc.15, such as Binford' s model of settlement organization dictating the production of curated or expedient tools, Kuhn' s notion of technological provisioning, Andrefsky' s relationship between raw material abundance-quality and formal-informal tools.The Loc.15 industry has found to fit the pattern of poor quality raw material leading to informal stone tools.The structure and an expedient feature of lithic assemblage at the site might also correlate with a more-or-less stable settlement pattern at the Zhoukoudian complex and the strategy of provisioning site possibly adopted by the Loc.15 hominids.

Brief report on the geologico-geophgysical investigation at the Peking Man site of Zhoukoudian

TONG Hao-wen, DONG Wei, XU Qin-qi

2001, 20(03):  201-208. 

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Under the organization of the UNESCO, with the participation of Chinese specialists from IVPP, a mission of geologico-geophysical investigations within the protected area of Peking Man Site aiming at localizing the Quaternary deposits that might hold fossils organized by EDF ( Electricité de France), the work was carried out between September 9 and October 3, 1996.
Methods adopted Geology Systematic surveys of the fracture plans and stratification joints ( strike and dip mea- surements) were realized at different points within the site, in order to carry out a Schmidt chart statis- tical analysis:density evaluations and rosettes.These meaeurements were done at the following locations:around the Upper Cave and Loc.3, more than 300 measurements had been taken.This work is aiming at the understanding of the basic geological structures of the site.
Geophysics The major methods adopted are as follows:microgravity measurements with a measuring pitch of 5 or 2.5m; horizontal electromagnetic measurements of EM 38 type with a measuring pitch of 2.5m; vertical electromagnetic measurements of EM 31 type with a locally measuring pitch go- ing from 2.5m to 5m; magnetic measurements on the less magnetically disturbed profiles with a measurement pitch of 2.5m; vertical and horizontal electromagnetic measurements of EM 34 type on 4 pro- files; electric soundings; electric panels.
Frame work and total points being measured. Investigations were conducted along all the roads and paths within the site numbered as L1, L2, L3, L3A, L3B, L4, L13, L16, and L18 as shown in figure 1; along the tracks cleaned out specially for this investigation, which were numbered as L5, L6, L7, L8, L9, L10, L11, L12, L14, L15, and L17, as shown in figure 1.
639 pointsfor gravity measurements on profiles; 143 pointsfor EMG at Loc.1; 834 points for EM 31; 985 points for EM 38 in horizontal position; 985 points for EM 38 in vertical position; 100 points for EM 34; 176 points for magnetic measurements; 6 electric panels; 4 electric soundings.
Results Geologico-geophysical anomaly Through the investigation, some anomalies in both geology and geophysics had been revealed.The major geological structures ( fracturing ) extend south-east north-west as shown in figure 2.The major geophysical anomalies occurred at the following locations: along the major road, near Loc.4, between Loc.4 and Upper Cave, west to the Upper Cave.The cav- ities 4 and 15 were developed from north-south faults and have the certainty of extending toward the further north.Promising Quaternary deposits Five zones of major anomalies had been summarized as shown in figure 3.
1) Zone 1 Starts from Loc.1 and continues until the access road to the Museum.
2) Zone 2 Starts from Loc.1, passing by the Upper Cave toward the south-west.
3) Zone 3 Located at the west slope of the Dragon hill.
4) Zone 4 This sector comprises Loc.4 and it' s extensions toward the north.
5) Zone 5 This sector comprises Loc.15 and it' s surroundings.
Because Zone 1 and Zone 5 were disturbed too much by man during the road construction and the quar- rying, so these two anomaly areas are not so reliable.Finally, the only promising areas of Quaternary deposits are Zones 2, 3, 4.

The sexing of Chinese Han clavicles with fisher's linear discriminant functions

ZHANG Ji-zong, TIAN Xue-me

2001, 20(03):  209-216. 

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This paper reported the method of sex estimation with Chinese Han clavicles. The sample consisted of 279 pairs of Chinese clavicles of known sex ( male 241, female 38). The age range is from 17 to 78 years. The discriminant functions are shown in the Chinese text. The measurements are as fol- lows: Maximum length of clavicle( X1 ), height of the clavicular curvature( X2 ), height of the aoromian curvature ( X3 ), length of the chord of the clavicular shaft( X4 ), height of the clavicle at mid -point (X5 ), sagittal diameter of the clavicle at mid -point( X6 ), circumference of the clavicle at mid -point (X7 ). The correct sexual discriminant is 81.7% -90.7% by Fisher' s discriminant function analysis. The methods is very useful for sex estimation in forensic anthropology.

Studies on 13 morphological traits or daur, Ewenki and Oroqen nationalities

LI Yong-lan , ZHENG Lian-bin , LU Shun-hua, HAN Zai-zhu, LI Yu-ling

2001, 20(03):  217-223. 

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Thirteen morphological traits of 3 samples including 485 persons of Daur nationality, 322 of Ewenki and 100 of Oroqen were investigated in Hulunbeier Alliance of Inner Mongolia. The results revealed are as follows: (1) For the morphological traits, there was a comparatively remote relation between Ewenki and Daur nationalities. (2) Sexual differences were not shown in the most of the morphological traits but occurred in different extents in a few traits among the 3 nationalities. (3) Most of the 13 traits shown difference between 3 ethnic groups.

Survey and analysis of the physical development for Zhuang students in Bose region

WU Rong-min, HUANG Shi-ning, PU Hong-qin , PANG Zu-yin

2001, 20(03):  224-228. 

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4800 Zhuang students in the Bose region of Guangxi at the age from 7 to 18 years were investigated. The measurements include stature, sitting height, body weight, chest circumference, shoulder breadth and pelvic breadth. All data are analyzed by the programs of medical statistics (POMS), and comparisons are made between the students in urban area and rural area, Zhuang stu- dents in 1998 and in 1980, Zhuang students and Han students of the whole country, Zhuang students and Mongolian students, Zhuang students and other minority nationalities, Zhuang students and Japa- nese students.

Stratigraphy and TL dating of Paleolithic sites in the Luonan Basin, southern Shannxi, China

WANG She-jiang , HUANG Pei-hua

2001, 20(03):  229-237. 

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The Huashilang Longyadong Cave site along with open-air sites of Paleolithic were identified for the first time, and then excavated and investigated during 1995-1999 in the Luonan Basin, Luonan county, Shaanxi province, China.More than 2 000 stone artifacts were collected from the 50 open-air sites and about 20 species animal fossils along with 65000 artifacts were excavated from the Longyadong cave. This paper provides a preliminary study of site formation of lithic-stratigraphy in their geological context as well as results of TL dating.
Supported by relationship of the 8 strata, three cultural periods were divided in the Longyadong cave site.In the first period, humans lived in the river bank; In the second period, they lived in the cave and on the terrace, the climate was dry and cold; The third period was a main deposit time in the Longyadong cave site, most artifacts and ash layers were identified in this period, the climate was warm and moist.After that time, no hominid remains were identified.
The five samples of the TL dates (three from the cave site and the other two from the Zhoupo open-air site 95LP07)place the site into the middle to late period of the Middle Pleistocene (Q2 2—3). The three samples in the Longyadong cave site were collected from the third middle period of the inner cave and the upper layer of the outer cave.The two TL dates from inner cave are 356.6 ±17.8ka and 273.9 ±13.7ka respectively, and another from the outer cave is 210.5 ±10.5ka.It is suggested that the early hominids left this site about 250ka ago because no cultural remains were found both in the inner cave and the upper layer of the slope deposits of the outer cave.The other two samples from upper layer of the Zhoupo site are 251.05 ±12.5ka and 182.8 ±9.1ka respectively.
Compared the TL dates with the stratigraphic data of Zhou-koudian Peking Man site, loess depos- its in the Shaanxi Luochuan, the red earth in Anhui and deep-sea records, the dates of the sites we are dealing with in this article are in range of about 500-250 ka, which is in the same timeframe of Zhoukoudian Peking Man site.Therefore, culturally the sites can be suggested to be Early Paleolithic.

U-serings dating of Hominid site Ganqian at Tubo,Liiujiang, Guangxi in South China

SHEN Guan-jun , WANG Wei , WANG Qian , PAN Ya-juan

2001, 20(03):  238-244. 

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Ganqian Cave, located at Tubo District, Liujiang County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region is one of the numerous anthropologic cave sites in southern China.From the cave infilling a to- tal of 17 hominid fossil teeth have been collected, 5 of them in situ by the excavators and others by amateurs.The associated mammalian fossils represent 22 species, all common members of the Late Pleistocene Ailuropoda-Stegodon fauna.
230Th/234U dating has been carried out on intercalated calcite samples.The capping and the 2nd flowstone layers are dated to ca.94 and 220 ka respectively.The fossil-bearing deposits are bracketed by the two flowstone layers and should therefore be of an age between 94 and 220 ka.The parallel 230Th/234U and 227Th/230Th dating on two mammal fossil teeth gave age results ranging from 85 to 139 ka, which evidence the stratigraphic order between the capping flowstone and the underlying fossiliferous layer and hence lend support to the age assignment of older than ca.100 ka to the hominid fossil teeth.
The Tubo hominid fossils have been widely accepted by Chinese paleoanthropologists as represent- atives of late Homo sapiens. If so the aforementioned dates imply a presence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens in southern China much earlier than previously thought. U-series dating has also been performed on neighboring Liujiang and Bailiandong hominid sites, the results indicating also an early presence of modern humans in the region.Taken together, the appearance of modern humans in East Asia and in Levant and Africa may be quasi-contemporaneous, a scenario in line with the hypothesis for morphological and cultural continuity in human evolution in China.
However, as the Tubo hominids are represented only through isolated teeth, their exact phylogenetic position can hardly be confirmed. Even if the Tubo hominids should be classified to Early Homo sapiens, the results of this paper imply that more than 100 ka ago, inhabitants in southern China bear distinctive features of modern morphology. So China should not be a retarded area in human evolution where all the previous populations were replaced.Further studies on Ganqian cave as well as on other paleoanthropological sites in southwestern China are warranted for important evidence regarding the origin and evolution of modern human species in East Asia may be found.