(6) Two-Million-Year-Old Stone Tools Found in Chongqing
[CND, 04/06/98] Stone tools found in Chongqing indicate hominids were
living in China some two million years ago, one million years earlier
than the previously estimated by archaeologists, the official Xinhua
news agency said, cited by AFP.
The crude tools were found last November near where several anthropoid
ape and animal bones were found in 1996. The latest discovery supports
the notion that ancestors of modern human being appeared in the Three
Gorges area along the Yangtze River two million years ago. The 1996
findings led scientists from Iowa University, Peking University and the
Chinese Institute of Geology to conclude that a tooth, part of a lower
jawbone and 120 backbones of different animals dated back to that same
period.
As part of the hominid family, Homo Erectus first appeared in the
Ice Age which dated from 1.8 million years ago to 70,000 years ago. The
experts' claim that these newly discovered tools were the earliest
used by human beings is unfounded since the first hominids appeared
between five and one million years ago in Africa and Asia, and they
started making crude pebble tools and hand axes 3.5 million years ago.
(LIU Yanping, Yin De An )