In archaeology, a repeated claim has held that while early humans in Africa and Western Europe rapidly advanced stone tool technology from about 300,000 to 50,000 years ago, East Asia stuck with relatively simple methods for a long time and did not see complex tools until about 40,000 years ago. A new site has been found that could change this conventional view.
An international team including the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Griffith University in Australia excavated 2,601 stone artifacts in Xigou, Henan Province, central China, believed to have been made by people between about 160,000 and 72,000 years ago. The findings were published on the 28th in Nature Communications.
According to the researchers, people at the time went beyond simply breaking stones for use and produced small, sharp stone pieces for a variety of tasks. These pieces work well like blades and are useful for processing meat and working wood and hides.
They also identified tools in which the stone core was pre-shaped to obtain desired flakes, or the edges of tools were retouched to enhance performance. Simply put, many tools were not just roughly broken stones, but instruments designed and refined for their intended purposes.
They also found the oldest evidence of composite tools in East Asia. Composite tools combine a stone piece with a handle, which can transmit force more stably, reduce hand injuries, and improve work efficiency compared with bare stone pieces. The field therefore views attaching handles as an important milestone in technological evolution. That is because producing them requires planning what kind of blade is needed beyond simple flaking, precisely shaping the piece to fit a handle, and understanding that performance improves when the two are joined.
Jian-Ping Yue of the Chinese Academy of Sciences said, "The presence of hafted stone tools suggests that early humans living around Xigou had a high degree of behavioral flexibility and creativity."
By analyzing microscopic wear on tool surfaces, the team inferred they were used to cut or shape plant materials such as wood or reeds. This suggests that, beyond hunting tools, the scope of everyday labor, including processing, manufacturing, and gathering, may have been quite broad.
The researchers said, "The period when the excavated stone tools were used overlaps with a time in China when the coexistence of humans with large brains has been proposed," and added, "The technological strategies seen in the stone tools likely played an important role in how human ancestors adapted to their environment."
References
Nature Communications (2026), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67601-y