China News Service, Beijing, September 9 (Reporter Sun Zifa) The paleoecology and human adaptation team led by Academician Chen Fahu of the Tibetan Plateau Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Chinese and foreign collaborators, recently conducted a multidisciplinary comprehensive study of the Bat Cave site in Heqing, Yunnan, and systematically revealed for the first time the physical shape, technological behavior and survival strategies of the Denisovans (Den people) in southern China.
This important discovery of the Bat Cave site in Yunnan not only fills the long-term gap in the fossil and archaeological records of the Denisovans in southwest China, but also transforms the history of Denisovan activities in southern East Asia from genetic clues into rich archaeological evidence, providing key information for the study of the technological behavior and survival patterns of the Denisovans in East Asia.
This important result of international multidisciplinary research was completed by the Tibetan Plateau Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in collaboration with the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing Normal University, Peking University, University of Science and Technology of China, and researchers from Australia, France, Spain, Italy, and Denmark. The relevant paper was published online in the international academic journal Nature on the night of September 9, Beijing time.
According to the research team, as an important member of the East Asian sauropod lineage, the discovery of Denisovans has profoundly rewritten the cognitive framework on the evolution of ancient humans in East Asia. However, compared with the rapid accumulation of genetic evidence, limited by the scarcity of human fossils and archaeological remains, the physical characteristics, technical behaviors and survival strategies of this ancient group of people are still poorly understood, which has become a blank area in archeology and paleoanthropology that urgently needs breakthroughs.
The Bat Cave ruins are located in the Heqing Basin in Yunnan on the southeastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, at an altitude of 2,370 meters. The site was excavated in 2019, revealing a total of 6.6 meters of stratigraphic accumulation, of which the cultural layer is about 2.3 meters thick and contains 10 layers, ranging from about 190,000 to 70,000 years ago. The 9th and 7th layers of unearthed human fossils date from about 167,000 to 134,000 years ago. Pollen analysis shows that ancient humans lived in a forest or forest-steppe environment dominated by coniferous forests.
A total of 7 ancient human fossils (4 teeth, 2 parietal bone fragments, and 1 proximal radius bone) were unearthed at the site. Paleoproteomic analysis identified 3 bones and 2 tooth fossils as belonging to Denisovans. Among them, the tooth morphology has both primitive traits and derived characteristics of late Homo, and is both similar and different from the Baishiya Cave specimens in Xiahe, Gansu, suggesting that there may be morphological diversity within the Denisovans that occurred over time and geographical distribution - the Bat Cave Denisovans may be a new regional type in the Homo genus branch that is different from the Baishiya Cave people.
More than 1,300 stone artifacts and a large number of animal remains were unearthed from the Bat Cave site. Systematic analysis shows that its stone tool technology has remained stable for a long time in long-sequence stratigraphic records. It is mainly based on expedient flaking and processing technology, supplemented by a small amount of organized centripetal flaking technology. It shows flexible technological behavior that is both expedient and organized, as well as a highly pragmatic adaptive survival strategy.
In addition to stone products, zooarchaeological research has also identified various types of bone products such as repair tools, bone wedges, expedient tools, etc. The technology and type combination are similar to the Neanderthal bone tool industry in the Middle Paleolithic Age, reflecting that the processing of bone products is an important part of the ancient human behavior system at this stage, and has important indicative significance for the study of archaeological remains of the same period in East Asia.
The animal remains at the site are dominated by Cervids and Bovidae, and the age structure of their death is dominated by individuals in their prime, indicating the targeted and professional hunting behavior of ancient humans for high-quality medium and large ungulate animal resources. Marks of cutting and knocking are widely distributed on the surface of animal bones, indicating that the rich accumulation of bones in the site mainly originated from ancient human hunting, slaughtering and consumption activities.
Based on the above archaeological evidence, the research team pointed out that ancient humans in southern China, represented by the Denisovans of the Bat Cave, had formed a stable survival model that effectively adapted to the local resource environment through specialized hunting and high-intensity utilization of animal resources.
They believe that the Batcave site has established a direct connection between Denisovans and archaeological remains for the first time in southern East Asia, transforming previously isolated fossil records into a survival picture with multi-dimensional information such as technology, behavior and ecology.
The ultra-long cultural sequence of the Bat Cave site spanning more than 100,000 years shows that the Denisovans have experienced a long-term evolution and adaptation process on the southeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau, and their lifestyle has remained stable under climate fluctuations from glacial to interglacial periods. This site complements the Baishiya Karst Cave site in Xiahe, located in the northeastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and together provides valuable material for understanding the technological, cultural and environmental adaptation strategies of people from different regions of the Dragon Man branch in East Asia.
The research team said that from a broader geographical perspective, the Batcave site is located in the key zone between genetic clues in Siberia, the Tibetan Plateau, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, and has become an important node connecting the Denisovan records in northern and southern East Asia. The significant findings of this study also provide important archaeological basis for understanding the relatively high proportion of Denisovan genetic contributions among modern Southeast Asian and Oceanian populations.
