East Asia
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The Great Crossroads, one of the twelve divisions of the globe, is centered on Eurasia, with its northernmost extent meeting Northern Oceania and The Atlantic World at the North Pole. This vast region excludes the eastern, western, and southern extremities of the Eurasian landmass, which spans a significant portion of the Earth's surface.
The Ural Mountains, running approximately north to south, serve as the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia, as well as between Russia proper and Siberia.
For the purposes of this framework, The Great Crossroads includes Mongolia; western China, including Xinjiang and the Tibetan Plateau; the northern half of the Indian subcontinent; Afghanistan; the Iranian Plateau; Mesopotamia; eastern Arabia; the northern Levant; northeastern Cyprus; western and southwestern Anatolia; the Caucasus; Eastern Europe; Siberia; the Eastern Balkans; Eastern Scandinavia; the Baltic Sea basin; and Middle Europe.
- The southwestern boundary runs diagonally from south-central Germany, through the eastern Alps, the Balkans, and western Asia, terminating in the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula in the vast desert known as the Rub’ al Khali.
- The southern boundary divides South India from North India, following the generally recognized demarcation that includes the Narmada River, and separates the Indian Ocean-facing southeastern Arabian coast from the Persian Gulf-focused eastern Arabia.
- The southeastern boundary runs diagonally from the Bay of Bengal, following India’s border with Myanmar, marking the division between South Asia and both Southeast Asia and Eastern Asia.
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Homo erectus inhabited what is now China more than a million years ago.
Xiaochangliang, the site of some of the earliest Paleolithic remains in East Asia, located in the Nihewan Basin in Yangyuan County, Hebei, is most famous for the stone tools discovered there, including side and end scrapers, notches, burins, and disc cores.
Although it is generally more difficult to date Asian sites than African sites because Asian sites typically lack volcanic materials that can be dated isotropically, the age of the tools has been magnetostratigraphically dated as 1.36 million years.
This method is more accurate than carbon dating since it uses the data of changes caused by earth's magnetic field.
The archaeological site of Xihoudu in Shanxi Province is the earliest recorded use of fire by Homo erectus, which is dated 1.27 million years ago.
The excavations at Yuanmou and later Lantian show early habitation.
The so-called Peking Man, discovered in 1923-27 at Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, is perhaps the most famous specimen of Homo erectus found in China.
More recently, the finds have been dated from roughly five hundred thousand years ago, although a new 26Al/10Be dating suggests the remains may be as much as six hundred and eighty thousand to seven hundred and eighty thousand years old.
Homo erectus, long settled in sparse communities throughout East Asia, probably becomes extinct in China before 200,000 BCE, evidently replaced by Homo sapiens.
The Moderns are taller, more slender, and less muscular than the Neanderthals, with whom they share—perhaps uneasily—the Earth.
Though their brains are smaller in overall size, they are heavier in the forebrain, a difference that may allow for more abstract thought and the development of complex speech.
Yet, the inner world of the Neanderthals remains a mystery—no one knows the depths of their thoughts or how they truly expressed them.
The descendants of the immigrants to West Asia who had remained in the south (or taken the southern route) had spread generation by generation around the coast of Arabia and the Iranian plateau until they reached India.
One of the groups that had gone north (east Asians were the second group) had ventured inland and radiated to Europe, eventually displacing the Neanderthals.
They had also radiated to India from Central Asia.
The former group headed along the southeast coast of Asia, reaching Australia between fifty-five thousand and thirty thousand years ago, with most estimates placing it about forty-six thousand to forty-one thousand years ago.
Sea level is much lower during this time, and most of Maritime Southeast Asia is one land mass known as the lost continent of Sunda.
The settlers probably continued on the coastal route southeast until they reached the series of straits between Sunda and Sahul, the continental land mass that was made up of present-day Australia and New Guinea.
The widest gaps are on the Weber Line and are at least ninety kilometers wide, indicating that settlers had knowledge of seafaring skills.
Archaic humans such as Homo erectus never reached Australia.
If these dates are correct, Australia was populated up to ten thousand years before Europe.
This is possible because humans avoided the colder regions of the North favoring the warmer tropical regions to which they were adapted given their African homeland.
Another piece of evidence favoring human occupation in Australia is that about forty-six thousand years ago, all large mammals weighing more than one hundred kilograms suddenly became extinct.
The new settlers were likely to be responsible for this extinction.
Many of the animals may have been accustomed to living without predators and become docile and vulnerable to attack (as will occur later in the Americas).
Some settlers cross into Australia, while others may have continued eastwards along the coast of Sunda eventually turning northeast to China and finally reaching Japan, leaving a trail of coastal settlements.
This coastal migration leaves its trail in the mitochondrial haplogroups descended from haplogroup M, and in Y-chromosome haplogroup C.
Thereafter, it may have become necessary to venture inland, possibly bringing modern humans into contact with archaic humans such as H. erectus.
Recent genetic studies suggest that Australia and New Guinea were populated by one single migration from Asia as opposed to several waves.
The land bridge connecting New Guinea and Australia became submerged approximately eight thousand years ago, thus isolating the populations of the two landmasses.