Northeast Culture (Agricultural and Pastoral Civilization in the White Mountains and Black Waters)

Author: Compiled by: Xu Bingkun, Sun Shoudao
Publisher:
Publication Date: 1998-12-01
Features: The 1 in the book excerpt means (cow extinction).
1. The Paleolithic remains in Northeast China: On the vast land of "vast white mountains and long black waters," when did human traces first appear? Where were their earliest habitats?
The Jinlongshan Man of Northeast China: In 1984, in a cave at Jinlongshan in Yong'an Township, Yingkou, near the Bohai Sea, a nearly complete male skull and body skeleton were discovered. It dates back 280,000 years and was named "Jinlongshan Man." This is the oldest and most complete human fossil found in Northeast China to date. Accompanying the Jinlongshan Man fossil were polished stone tools, bone tools, burnt bones, and ashes, which indicate that it belongs to the early cultural remains of the Paleolithic era in Northeast China. Additionally, a large number of animal fossils were unearthed, such as saber-toothed tigers, (Meng's rhinoceros), sika deer, Sanmen River horses, and giant beavers, totaling over seventy species, many of which are extinct ancient genera. Among them, animals like deer, rhinoceroses, and bears were once prey for the Jinlongshan people.
Further excavation into the seventh and eighth layers of the cave revealed traces of the Jinlongshan people living in caves, dismembering animals, roasting them around fires, and even gnawing on bones for marrow. On the exposed living surfaces of tens of square meters in each layer, there were scattered animal bones that had been burnt after eating, fragments of broken limbs, and ashes from dozens of bonfires. These layers accumulated over millennia, forming thick cultural strata that date far beyond 300,000 years. This site is truly like an unwritten history book left behind by nature. Each layer of cultural accumulation is like a page, recording the changes in nature over these tens of thousands of years, the evolution of ancient life, and especially the cave-dwelling, wild ancestors. Without a doubt, this is another rare and significant discovery since the discovery of the Peking Man fossils and caves in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, in 1929.
Similar early Paleolithic cave sites, like Jinlongshan, have also been found in Liao Dong Mountains, specifically at Miaohoushan in Benxi, though slightly later, dating back about 140,000 years. Mid-Paleolithic sites include the Gezi Cave in Shuiquan Township, Kailuo County, Liaoning West, which dates back about 50,000 to 100,000 years. Over 300 polished stone tools were unearthed here, similar to those found at Zhoukoudian and the 15th site in Beijing, leading some scholars to believe it may be a branch of the Peking Man culture that spread to Northeast China.
The northern migration of Northeastern ancestors: The Paleolithic cultural remains of early and mid-Paleolithic eras in Northeast China have only been found in three locations so far, scattered like morning stars, and limited to the southern part of Northeast China. However, from another perspective, this may indicate that early ancient humans in Northeast China were primarily active in the Bohai Rim region. They then expanded northward and eastward, spreading from the Liao River to the Yalu River, from the Songhua River to the Heilong River, across the vast, remote, and gradually colder black land. Clearly, this historical process is also closely related to the cyclical changes of climate, especially the arrival of ice ages.
As the cold-loving mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses gradually moved northward, primitive hunters followed, possibly even crossing the Arctic Circle and the Alaska Mountains to enter the "New World" of America. For Northeast China, if one examines the map carefully, the geographical locations of nearly 30 Paleolithic late period human fossils and cultural relics dating back 50,000 to 10,000 years in Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces reveal this process.