Volta
Culturec. 40,000 years ago

Modern humans in East Asia

Modern humans lived in northern China (Tianyuan Cave) about 40,000 years ago, and from about that time an Upper Palaeolithic culture of blades and tanged points spread across Korea and the Japanese islands.

Upper Palaeolithic tanged points from Korea, National Museum of Korea
Upper Palaeolithic tanged points from Korea, National Museum of Korea

Ismoon ( talk ) 20:36, 8 June 2018 (UTC) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

Bones about 40,000 years old from Tianyuan Cave, south-west of Beijing, are among the oldest modern humans in East Asia. Genetically this person belongs to the branch that leads to today’s East Asians and Native Americans.

Archaic humans had lived on the Korean Peninsula hundreds of thousands of years earlier, leaving stone tools such as the hand axes of Jeongok-ri. From about 40,000 years ago long blades and tanged points for hafting appear at sites such as Suyanggae in Danyang, taken as the trace of modern humans arriving. In Japan sites suddenly multiply from about 38,000 years ago — reached by boat, since the sea remained even in the ice age.

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The map in c. 40,000 years ago

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Places
Tianyuan Cave, Suyanggae, Jeongok-ri Site, Yeoncheon

Before and after

Earlier
c. 45,000 years ago Modern humans in Europe
Later
c. 16,000 years ago First peoples of the Americas

Themes that include this event

  • The Human Journeyc. 300,000 years ago – 1300

    How modern humans, who appeared in Africa some 300,000 years ago, left Africa, met the Neanderthals, crossed the sea to Australia and the ice-age Bering land bridge to the Americas, and finally reached the remotest islands of the Pacific