When did the Yuanmou people learn to use tools?

The Yuanmou people will only use simple tools: stones and branches.

Because the Yuanmou people are supposed to belong to the Paleolithic Age, modern archaeology has found that they generally use relatively simple stone grinding tools, will use the hammering method to manufacture and repair stone tools, will make scrapers and pointed tools, and the size of the tools is not large, mostly quartzite materials, and will also use fire.

Yuanmou Man, scientific name Yuanmou Homo erectus or Yuanmou Ape Man, because the location of discovery is in the northwest hill of Shangnabang Village, Yuanmou County, Yunnan.

It was named after the post.

There are different views in the academic community on the geological age and absolute age of the Yuanmou Man fossils. One opinion is that it belongs to the late Early Pleistocene, dating according to paleogeomagnetism (see archaeochronology), which is about 1.7 million years ago; Another view is that in the Middle Pleistocene, because the paleomagnetic age should not be more than 730,000 years old, i.e. it may be 500,000 600,000 years old or later.

However, in recent years, with the discovery of "reticulated laterite", more and more experts and scholars are more inclined to the 1.7 million year theory.

The Yuanmou people lived in the Paleolithic Age, not the Neolithic Age, two or three million years ago.

The Yuanmou people, the cave people, and the Beijing people all lived in the Paleolithic Age.

Named after the place where the fossils were found, it is the subspecies of Homo erectus, referred to as "Homo erectus or Homo erectus", commonly known as "Homo erectus". The geological age of Yuanmou Man belongs to the Middle Pleistocene to the Late Pleistocene, and according to the paleomagnetic date, the age is 1.7 million years ago.

Since then, a small number of stone objects, a large number of charcoal chips, and mammal fossils have been excavated in the same layer at the same site. 17 stone tools have been unearthed, of which 7 have been unearthed in the stratum and 10 have been collected on the surface.

These stone tools have clear traces of artificiality, and the shape of the tools is not large, with stone cores, pointed tools and scrapers. Although they and the fossilized teeth do not live on the same level, they are roughly the same horizon and not far away, so they should be tools made and used by the Yuanmou people.

There are two types of scrapers. One is a two-edged scraper, made of stone chips, which, judging from the traces of manual processing on the stone tools, may have been repaired by smashing. The second is a double-edged scraper, which is made of small stones, with processing marks on three sides, slightly rectangular, and should be processed in the opposite direction.

The third is the end edge scraper, which is also made of small stones and is also made of compound machining.

Yuanmou people tool.

The teeth of the Yuanmou people are large and thick, the lip surface is relatively flat, and the pattern of the tongue surface is very complex. Compared with the incisors of Yuanmou Man and Peking Man, there are some similarities in the size, stoutness, and complexity of the incisors. However, there are also obvious differences between the two, such as the end of the crown of the Yuanmou people is extended and wider, and the base is relatively constricted and slightly triangular.

The crown of the Peking Man is slightly rectangular. Researchers have thus confirmed that Homo erectus should be a new subspecies of Homo erectus. Therefore, it was named after Yuanmou County, where this fossil source was found, and it was named Homo erectus Yuanmou new subspecies (homo

erectus

Yuanmoensis), referred to as Yuanmou Homo erectus, commonly known as Yuanmou Man.

After an in-depth study of the two incisors, it was found that Yuanmou people had a well-developed spade-shaped tongue fossa. The spade-shaped tongue socket is characteristic of the modern race. That is to say, this characteristic of the Yuanmou people gives us a research topic for the origin of a human race.

Later, further research on the tooth morphology of Yuanmou Man, especially through comparative studies with great apes, giant apes, Australopithecus, Peking Man, and Homo sapiens, concluded that Yuanmou Man was closer to Australopithecus and Peking Man. Compared with the teeth of Homo pekingensis, the difference between the teeth of Yuanmou and Peking Man is quite obvious, and the degree of difference is even greater than that of Australopithecus. Due to the fact that they lived much earlier than the Peking Man, according to the complex situation indicated by the existing Homo erectus data, it is proposed to use the upper middle incisors of Yuanmou Man as a representative of the early type of Homo erectus that has been discovered in southern China so far.

The morphological differences with Peking Man reflect the characteristics that they may have had in transition from the slender type of Australopithecus to Homo erectus.

The tooth morphology of Yuanmou Man shows the primitiveness and antiquity of Yuanmou Man, which is the earliest human fossil material found in China so far. It is not surprising that the Yuanmou Man fossils came from the Yunnan region, which was within the range of early human activity.