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Human activity during the late Pleistocene in the Lop Nur region, northwest China: Evidence from a buried stone artifact

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Abstract

The Lop Nur region, in the east part of Tarim Basin, was an important transportation junction between west and east, north and south Eurasia. However, previous studies on prehistoric human activity have concentrated mostly on the Bronze Age, whereas that during the Stone Age remains largely unresearched. Here, we present a new direct evidence of human activity in the late Pleistocene, recorded on a grinding stone buried in a lacustrine sediment section of the Lop Nur region. The grain size distribution of the sediment section indicates that the site was probably in the center of a lake with weak hydrodynamic environment. Therefore, the stone artifact can only be carried to here by people instead of river and it was never move as soon as left here. Results of radiocarbon dating, the evident stratigraphic relations between the stone artifact and the sedimentary formation, indicate that the human activity could extend to approximately 13 ka BP. Furthermore, the results of starch-grain and use-wear analyses suggest that ancient humans gathered seeds of Triticeae, roots, and tubers and used the grinding stone to simply process selected plant as plant foodstuffs during this period. It implies that the environmental conditions in the river delta of the Lop Nur were inhabitable during the late Pleistocene.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Ma Zhikun, Jiang Baoming, Wang Weiwei, Wang Can, Huan Xiujia and Shao Konglan for their guidance and assistance during the starch grains analysis. Gao xing, Chen Fuyou, and Zhang Xiaoling are thanked for assistance with the use-wear analyses, and thanks Cui Yousheng and Ren Hui for helping in field investigation and drawing. This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2014FY210500) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41372187).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Kangkang Li, Xiaoguang Qin, Bing Xu, Lei Zhang & Jiaqi Liu

  2. CAS Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Beijing, 100044, China

    Kangkang Li & Xiaoguang Qin

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Kangkang Li, Bing Xu & Jiaqi Liu

  4. Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Xiaoyan Yang

  5. Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, 830011, China

    Guijin Mu, Yongchong Lin & Wen Li

  6. School of Archaeology, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, China

    Dong Wei & Chunxue Wang

  7. Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology, Urumqi, 830011, China

    Yong Wu & Xiaohong Tian

  8. Bureau of Cultural Heritage of Ruoqiang County, Ruoqiang, 841800, China

    Yinxin Jiao

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  1. Kangkang Li
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Li, K., Qin, X., Yang, X. et al. Human activity during the late Pleistocene in the Lop Nur region, northwest China: Evidence from a buried stone artifact. Sci. China Earth Sci. 61, 1659–1668 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-017-9257-3

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