Abstract
EVIDENCE of the presence of palaeolithic man is reported from an island in southern Japan. The discovery, it is stated by Science Service (Washington, D.C.), was made by Prof. Shigeyasu Tokunaga, geologist of Waseda University, who while exploring the Island of Itoe in the Loochoo group, found numerous fossil bones of deer, which bore marks of having been worked by human hands. The deer from which the bones were derived has long been extinct, having died out in the neolithic age. Numerous teeth, antlers and bones of the same species of deer of the same age, which Prof. Tokunaga dates at anything from 30,000 to 70,000 years ago, were found in a cave. If the bones in question have in fact been worked by man, this is the first evidence of palaeolithic man to be found in Japan.
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Early Man in Japan. Nature 139, 502–503 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139502d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139502d0