A 115,000-year-old expedient bone technology at Lingjing, Henan, China.

ABSTRACT: Activities attested since at least 2.6 Myr, such as stone knapping, marrow extraction, and woodworking may have allowed early hominins to recognize the technological potential of discarded skeletal remains and equipped them with a transferable skillset fit for the marginal modification and utilization of bone flakes. Identifying precisely when and where expedient bone tools were used in prehistory nonetheless remains a challenging task owing to the multiple natural and anthropogenic processes that can mimic deliberately knapped bones. Here, we compare a large sample of the faunal remains from Lingjing, a 115 ka-old site from China which has yielded important hominin remains and rich faunal and lithic assemblages, with bone fragments produced by experimentally fracturing Equus caballus long

SUBMITTER: Doyon L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8101957 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature