Ancient China’s 146k-year-old tools reveal a deep ice-age tech leap
Archaeologists at Lingjing, China, uncovered 146,000-year-old disc-shaped stone cores that show advanced knapping and 3D understanding of stone properties, linked to Homo juluensis and suggesting Denisovan-related interactions. This extends East Asia’s ice-age tech by about 20,000 years and challenges the idea that complex lithic technology arose later in Africa/Europe, with dating refined using uranium-thorium dating of calcite within a bone.