EVIDENCE FOR EARLY MAN''S ACTIVITIES FROM THE LATERITIC BEDS OF SOUTH CHINA
南方砖红壤层的早期人类活动信息

In recent years,a number of the sites yielding the pebble-tool industry have beea recognizedin the river valleys of South China.They are mainly distributed in the following three areas:1) northern area,the basin of the upper reaches of Hanshui River;2) central area,the basinsof the mid-lower reaches of Changjiang River and Hanshui River;3) southern area,theBose basin of the upper reaches of Youjiang River,one of the tributaries of the ZhujiangRiver.The pebble-tool industries from South China are characterized by the “heavy-duty tools”including choppers,picks,handaxes,cleavers,spheroids,scrapers,stone hammers,etc.,whichwere made of cobbles and fashioned by hard-hammer technique.Technologically and typo-logically,these industries are not only similar to Africa's pebble-tool industries such as theOldowan culture in many aspects,but also may belong to the same technological tradition ofthe industries yielding handaxes at sites such as Lantian,Sanmenxia and Dingcun located inthe Fen-Wei Graben on the northern slope of the Qinling Range.Two complete human skullswhich may be classified as Homo erectus and a mammalian fauna associated with a pebble-tool industry were found at the upper reaches of Hanshui River.The fauna may be consideredto be slightly earlier than the one of general Middle Pleistocene Ailuropoda-Stegodon Fauna be-cause of the presence of Hyaena licenti.The pebble-tool industries of South China are all derived from laterite,a characteristicand extensively developed sediments of Quaternary age.This formation consists of a thick basalgravel and a thick bed of reticular mottled brick-red clay.Geologists generally believe thatthe lateritic beds of South China belong to the same age because they are amazingly similar phy-siographically and lithologically.They also believe that these beds are comparable with theNihewan lacustrine beds (Lower Pleistocene) or the Zhoukoudian cave accumulation (Mid-dle Pleistocene).The results of paleomagnetic and radiomaterial dating carried out recentlytend to support the former inference.Following the sedimentary cycle of the lateritic beds,aperiod of lateritization has been identified in South China.