LONGGUPO
LOCATION
Cave site some 20 km S of the Yangtze River, near the
village of Miao-yu and the eastern border of Sichuan
Province, China.
DISCOVERY
Discovered 1984, excavated in 1985-1988 by a team
from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and
Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Beijing, and Chongqing
National Museum.
MATERIAL
Fragment of mandible with two teeth; upper incisor.
DATING AND STRATIGRAPHIC CONTEXT
Cave deposit containing a fairly extensive fauna that
suggests a late Pliocene to earliest Pleistocene age
(Huang et al., 1995). Normal magnetism in the layers
(7 and 8) containing the hominids has been inter-
preted to indicate the Olduvai event (approx. 2.0-1.8
Ma). ESR dating of higher strata has yielded dates
between about 750 Ka and 1 Ma (Huang et al.,
1995); but Chen et al. (2001) have pointed out diffi-
culties with these dates, and favor an age for the
hominid-bearing sediments lying within the Olduvai
Event of ca. 1.8 Ma.ARCHAEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
Two andesitic-porphyritic cores from Longgupo are
said to show the characteristics of crude (mode 1)artifacts, and were interpreted as manuports by Huang
et al. (1995) on the basis of their remoteness from the
nearest source of such rock. However, not all archaeol-
ogists are yet in entire agreement on the history of
these objects, although more potential artifacts (mostly
in limestone) have subsequently been discovered.PREVIOUS DESCRIPTIONS AND ANALYSES
An initial description of the Longgupo fragment led to
its being assigned to a new subspecies of Homo erectus,
H. e. wushanensis (Huang et al., 1991). However,
Huang et al. (1995) revised this assignment, declaring
that the mandible and teeth showed a “more primitive”
morphology than seen in Homo erectus. They compared
the fossils instead to “representatives of East African
Early Pleistocene Homo, including H. ergaster and
H. habilis” (p. 276). Schwartz and Tattersall (1996)
have pointed to certain difficulties with this interpreta-
tion, as have Wang and Tobias (2000).MORPHOLOGY
L mandibular corpus fragment with very worn P2 and
Ml; inferior part of corpus missing. Also isolated RI1.
Mandibular corpus would have been tall s/i, narrow
m/l; not much wider than Ml. Outer wall slightly con-
cave; inner wall convex; the two surfaces parallel and
smooth. Seen from above, bone appears to be expand-
ing outward posteriorly (thus corpus would have been
thicker along molar series, starting at M2). Anterior
root of ramus must have arisen behind M1 (no trace of
it in preserved bone). P2 has two long, robust roots that435