THE FEATURES AND ENVIRONMENT OF THE LONGYA CAVE SITE IN LUONAN, SHAANXI, CHINA
陕西洛南龙牙洞遗址的特征和环境

Longya Cave is located in Luonan County, Shaanxi Province, China. itsgeographic coordinate is 34°8' N and 110°10' E. It is composed of two caves at thesame level and a 30m distance. Depending on a human molar and a few mammalianfossils, Xue1] determined that the age of the cave depositS is the early MiddlePleistocene (or little earner).From the cave deposits of about 1.3m thick, over 30 species of fossil mammalsand birds are excoated. The mammalian fossils mainly are isolated teeth, including 9orders, 25 families, 35 genera and 36 species. Among them, Sciurotamias of. teilhardi,Belomys parapearsoni, Niviventer of. preconfucianus, Allophaiomys pliocaenius, Ursusof. etruscus, and Equus sanmeniensis, are characteristic and common species in theEarly Pleistocene; Callosciurus of. erythraeus, Hyaena sinensis, and Cervus grayiappeared in the late Early Pleistocene and became extinct in the end of the MiddlePleistocene, only one (or two) is relict species of the Neogene; and nearly no speciesappeared in the Middle Pleistocene even more the Late Pleistocene. In the LongyaCave fauna, 25.7% of the assemblage lived in the Palearctic, and 31.4% in theOriental. It was a transitional fauna betWeen the south and north of China in theQuaternary as the Gongwangling fauna from Lantian. According to the ecologicalfeatures of the Longya Cave fauna, Sciurotamias, Rhizomys, Niviventer, Tamiops,Callosciurus, mastodonts, Stegodon, Ailuropoda, and Ursus are forest species; Hystrix,Aeretes, Martes, and Cervus are shrub species, Eospalax,Cricetinae, Ochotona, Equus,and Bubalus are grassland species; as well as Rhinoceros, Bubalus,Rusa, andHydopotes are riparian species. It indicates that the environment of the Longya Cavefauna lived in a warm and humid with the dense forest, shrub and grassland.Over 2 000 Pieces of stone artifacts were found from the North Cave of Longya.They were made of mainly quartzose sandstone, metamorphic quartzite and vein quartz.Among the stone artifacts, there are abundant flake ones with the common features ofthe Paleolithic cultUre in northern China. However, the chopping tools from this caveare large pebble ones, which is similar to the Paleolithic characteristics from theLiangshan Site on the upper reaches of Hanjiang River. Because the Longya CaveSite is located in a transitional district of south and north China, stone artifacts isalso influenced by the south and north cultures.To sum up, Longya Cave is a Paleolithic site with abundant remains in QinlingMountain area. Several conclusions can be obtained as follows.(1) Longya Cave is the most south human site in the Huanghe River valley.Because the special situation of this district not only the Longya Cave faunaaccompanying the Luonan Homo erectus has an obvious transitional characteristic, butthe cultural remains from this site are also influenced by the south culture of China.(2) The Longya Cave fauna has many features which are similar to that of theGongwangling fauna from Lantian, Shaanx