Late Pleistocene representative sites in North China and their indication of evolutionary human behavior Ya-Mei Hou a, * , Shi-Xia Yang a, b , Wei Dong c , Jia-Fu Zhang d , Yang Liu a, b a Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100044 Beijing, China b Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100049 Beijing, China c Key Laboratory of Evolutionary Systematics of Vertebrates,，Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100044, Beijing, China d MOE Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Department of Geography, College of Urban and, Environmental Sciences, Peking University, 100871 Beijing, China article info Article history: Available online 28 March 2012 abstract As in many other regions of the world, the Late Pleistocene in China underwent rhythmic changes of climate, which caused some obvious changes in mammalian fauna, natural landscape and human cultural adaptations. This paper is a brief introduction of four representative Late Pleistocene sites in North China, which are dated at periods between Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and demonstrated common or particular features from geographic and geological aspects, archaeological and environ- mental characters, and chronological position. A large transformation happened, reflected by culture remains, showing that environmental changes profoundly influenced human behaviour and inspired new forms of culture appearance. This indicates the clear existence of Middle Palaeolithic at least in North China, which became a foreshadowing for the coming Upper Palaeolithic. Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Compared to the classical Middle and Upper Palaeolithic culture sequence in Europe, Late Pleistocene lithic materials in China seem to lack a clear divisional criterion for Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Geological sediments and climate change show that the Late Pleistocene is a new stage, and has a corresponding mark on sedimentation and mammalian faunas, particularly in North China. In the perspective of archaeology, North China refers to the area north of the Qinling Mountains. After the Lower Pleistocene “Nihewan fauna” and the Middle Pleistocene “Zhoukoudian fauna” (Black et al., 1933), the Late Pleistocene is characterised by the “Salawusu Fauna” (Dong et al. 2010). In North China, besides the cave deposits, well-developed fluvial-lacustrine deposits were developed in all periods of the Pleistocene. Extensively distributed and thick loess deposits existed in Pleistocene time. The Wucheng Loess, Lishi Loess, and Malan Loess, with interspersed palaeosols, respectively indicate Lower, Middle, and Late Pleistocene (Liu and Ding, 1984). All these are fundamental conditions to build up a general chronological sequence for Chinese Palaeolithic culture. What is further needed is to recognize more precisely those culture features with more details for constructing a clear culture sequence for each period. This paper considers four representative Palae- olithic sites of Late Pleistocene in North China, presenting their culture content along with new emerging culture phenomena, accompanied by evidence of environmental change and some reliable new dating. 2. Representative sites of Late Pleistocene in North China In North China, a series of Late Pleistocene sites between Middle and Upper Paleolithic displays transitional characters of the period (Huang and Hou, 1998). Some old culture elements remain in the lithic industry. Meanwhile, the appearance of bone tools indicates evolutionary human behaviour under a background of climate change from warmer to relatively colder conditions. The four sites in this paper illustrate the culture visage and characters of this time. The four sites are dated 70.0e20.0 ka (Table 1), all belonging to the Late Pleistocene. These sites all consist of fluvial-lacustrine forma- tions, although the cave site of Xiaogushan contains sediment from an outside fluvial source. Geographically, Salawusu represents the environment of the Inner Mongolian Plateau, Shiyu represents the Loess Plateau, Xiagushan in Liaodong Peninsula represents the most southern environment of the Northeast region, and Yanjia- gang represents the Northeast Songnen Plain (Fig. 1). 2.1. Salawusu Salawusu site (37  10 0 59 00 N, 108  10 0 58 00 E; Fig. 2) was discovered in the early last century (Licent and Teihard de Chardin,1925) in the * Corresponding author. E-mail address: houyamei@ivpp.ac.cn (Y.-M. Hou). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Quaternary International journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quaint 1040-6182/$ e see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2012.03.035 Quaternary International 295 (2013) 183e190