Human Adaptations and Pleistocene Environments in South China - Wang - 1998

Human adaptations and Pleistocene environments will be discussed in this paper. During the past two decades, there were several hundreds Palaeolithic localities found in South China. These provide more detailed information on the history of human evolution in this region. Pleistocene environments changed through space and time, but they were mainly dominated by tropical or sub-tropical forests except some temporal temperate grasslands in the northern part. Pebble-tool industries existed in river valleys of the eastern plain areas from the late Lower Pleistocene to early Upper Pleistocene. These were replaced by flake industries in the late Upper Pleistocene. Only flake industries were found in cave sites of Western mountain areas. From stone tool industries to settlement patterns, human adaptations in the tropics and sub-tropics of East Asia seem to be more complex than the Bamboo Hypothesis supposed.

Keywords

South China - Human adaptation - Pleistocene environment - Palaeolithic - Human evolution

Full text (PDF)

Export citation

Related articles