Tongtiandong (Chinese: 通天洞, Tōngtiāndòng) is an archaeological site in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China, just to the south of the Altai mountains. The site had hunter-foraging human activity circa 40,000 BP (the Mousterian cultural layer was radiocarbon dated to approximately 46,000–44,000 BP, calibrated).[1][2][3]
Location in China Tongtiandong (Xinjiang) | |
Region | Xinjian China |
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Coordinates | 47°00′22″N 85°58′48″E / 47.006093°N 85.980127°E |
History | |
Founded | 46,000–44,000 BP cal |
Periods | Paleolithic China |
Until the discovery of Tongtiandong, the typical Mousterian techno-complex had not been identified in China, but the whole reduction sequence of the Mousterian techno-complex has now been identified in Tongtiandong cave.[4]
From Tongtiandong and other sites, a general distributional pattern of different techno-complexes between Mongolia-Siberia and northern China can be established, for the dates between 50,000 and 32,000 cal BP.[1]
"Recent excavations at the cave site of Tongtiandong in the southern Altai have revealed evidence for human activity at around 40 k BP (Yu and He 2017), and one other stratified but undated preBronze Age context is known, from the site...
The typical Mousterian techno-complex was long considered absent from China due to a lack of convincing evidence [59]. However, recent discoveries reveal unequivocal evidence of this techno-complex distributed sporadically across peripheral areas of Northwest and Northeast China. At Tongtiandong Cave in Northwest China, the whole reduction sequence of the Mousterian techno-complex has been identified. This sequence comprised Levallois flake cores, Levallois flakes, points, and denticulates