ARCHAIC HOMO SAPIENS IN THE TROPICS 120KYA? UTILIZING THE TAPHONOMY OF SMALL MAMMAL REMAINS TO DETERMINE THE PALEOECOLOGY OF YAHUAI CAVE IN GUANGXI, CHINA IN THE EARLY LATE PLEISTOCENE

One of the biggest questions of the evolution of modern humans, as they moved out of Africa and into Eurasia, is their ability to adapt to different environments, particularly the tropics. South China is currently situated in a tropical biome and the question remains if early modern humans that ventured into this area were able to penetrate tropical or subtropical forests as they sought out sustenance resources around 100kya.

As a case study, we present Yahuai Cave, Guangxi, China and the small mammal remains excavated from the 53 stratigraphic layers dated to 124kya BP. Yahuai Cave is 100km northwest of Nanning in Long’an County, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Archaic Homo sapiens remains have been found in several contemporaneous sites located near the cave such as Tongtianyan and Mulan cave. Yahuai cave has an inner cave and rock shelter and is made up of more than 100m². It was excavated between 2015 and 2018, by the Guangxi Institute of Cultural Relic Protection and Archaeology. Remains were collected through sieving and flotation methods.

Analyzing small mammal fossils has not been a very utilized method in the paleoecological reconstruction of this region. The successful implementation of this research will support other lines of evidence for the paleoecological reconstruction of the area. This will also promote the preservation of small fossils as it highlights the need for this methodology in future research.

A post-depositional taphonomic analysis of the small mammal postcranial bones was conducted. The analysis included studying variables such as weathering, fragmentation, pits, perforations, color, abrasions, and rounding. A warm, humid, dense forested environment is suggested in analyzing the recorded results. This result supports a previous analysis of the species distribution that suggests the area was a warm, humid, dense forested environment. It is most likely that the area was more humid than the contemporaneous Indochinese peninsula.