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Tongtiandong

Typical artifacts of the TMP ("Terminal Middle Paleolithic" ~50–38 ka BP) techno-complex found in the Tongtiandong Cave site of Northwest China (1: Levallois core; 2: Discoid core; 3: Levallois flake; 4,5,6: Levallois points; 7,10,11: Mousterian point; 8,9: Scraper; 1–11).
Location in ChinaShow map of Continental AsiaTongtiandong (Xinjiang)Show map of Xinjiang
Region	Xinjian China
Coordinates	47°00′22″N 85°58′48″E / 47.006093°N 85.980127°E / 47.006093; 85.980127
History
Founded	46,000–44,000 BP cal
Periods	Paleolithic China

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).

Cave

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.

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.

Terminology

• TMP: Terminal Middle Paleolithic (~50–38 ka BP)
• IUP: Initial Upper Paleolithic (~43-32ka BP)

References

1. ^ Zhao, Chao; Wang, Youping; Walden, John P. (3 November 2022). "Diachronic shifts in lithic technological transmission between the eastern Eurasian Steppe and northern China in the Late Pleistocene". PLOS ONE. 17 (11): e0275162. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1775162Z. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275162. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 9632798. PMID 36327263.
2. Betts, Alison; Vicziany, Marika; Jia, Peter Weiming; Castro, Angelo Andrea Di (19 December 2019). The Cultures of Ancient Xinjiang, Western China: Crossroads of the Silk Roads. Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-78969-407-9. "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...
3. "45,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Recovered in China - Archaeology Magazine". Archaeology. 2018.
4. Zhao, Chao; Wang, Youping; Walden, John P. (3 November 2022). "Diachronic shifts in lithic technological transmission between the eastern Eurasian Steppe and northern China in the Late Pleistocene". PLOS ONE. 17 (11): e0275162. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1775162Z. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275162. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 9632798. PMID 36327263. The typical Mousterian techno-complex was long considered absent from China due to a lack of convincing evidence . 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
5. Zhao, Chao; Wang, Youping; Walden, John P. (3 November 2022). "Diachronic shifts in lithic technological transmission between the eastern Eurasian Steppe and northern China in the Late Pleistocene". PLOS ONE. 17 (11): e0275162. Bibcode:2022PLoSO..1775162Z. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0275162. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 9632798. PMID 36327263.  This article incorporates text by Zhao Chao available under the CC BY 4.0 license.

• Archaeological sites in China
• Paleolithic sites in China