Prehistoric Asia
[2] This species, whose name means "upright man", is believed to have lived in East and Southeast Asia from 1.8 million to 40,000 years ago.
Bones of animals found near the human remains included short-necked giraffes, ostriches, ancient rhinoceroses from Africa and saber-toothed cats and wolves from Eurasia.
[7] Fossils representing 40 Homo erectus individuals, known as Peking Man, were found near Beijing at Zhoukoudian that date to about 400,000 years ago.
[10][11] Near Nazareth, remains of skeletons, including a double grave of a mother and child, dating to about 93,000 years ago were found in a Jebel Qafzeh cave.
Included among the remains was a skeleton of another species which was not Homo sapiens; it had a "distinct and undivided browridge that is continuous across the eye sockets" and other discrepancies.
Humans migrated into inland Asia, likely by following herds of bison and mammoth and arrived in southern Siberia by about 43,000 years ago and some people moved south or east from there.
As compared to earlier hominids, Homo sapiens had larger brains and used more complex tools, including, blades, awls, and microliths out of antlers, bones and ivory.
[15] Above China is North Asia, in which Siberia,[16] and Russian Far East are extensive geographical regions which has been part of Russia since the seventeenth century.
Central Asia is the core region of the Asian continent and stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north.
It is also sometimes referred to as Middle Asia, and, colloquially, "the 'stans" (as the six countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of")[20] and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent.
East Asia, for the purpose of this discussion, includes the prehistoric regions of China, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Korea.
[25] Skeletal remains of about 45 individuals, known collectively as Peking Man were found in a limestone cave in Yunnan province at Zhoukoudian.
They date from 400,000 to 600,000 years ago and some researchers believe that evidence of hearths and artifacts means that they controlled fire, although this is challenged by other archaeologists.
About 800 miles west of this site, near Xi'an in the Shaanxi province are remains of a hominid who lived earlier than Peking Man.
[25] Between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago, humans lived in various places in China, such as Guanyindong[26] in Guizhou, where they made Levallois stone artefacts.
[25] Starting about 5000 BCE humans lived in Yellow River valley settlements where they farmed, fished, raised pigs and dogs for food, and grew millet and rice.
They had superior farming and ceramic making techniques to that of the Yangshao people and had ritualistic burial practices and worshiped their ancestors.
The earliest evidence of human habitation dates back 50,000 years or more,[29] when the Taiwan Strait was exposed by lower sea levels as a land bridge.
It, however, constitutes the greatest segment of the Korean past and is the major object of study in the disciplines of archaeology, geology, and palaeontology.
At 1.4 million years, Ubeidiya in the northern Jordan River Valley is the earliest Homo erectus site in the Levant.
[33] The rich Sangiran Formation in Central Java (Indonesia) has yielded the earliest evidence of hominin presence in Southeast Asia.
