Mass spectrometric U-series dating of New Cave at Zhoukoudian, China

We report here mass spectrometric U-series dates on calcite samples from New Cave, one of the Zhoukoudian localities. The lowermost sub-layer of the capping flowstone dates to ca. 120 ka, implying the absence of Late Pleistocene cultural deposits within the cave. The second flowstone layer was formed between 248 and 269 ka, marking possibly the minimum age of the hominid fossil. Three samples taken from the lowest accessible strata date to ca. 300 ka, suggesting an even greater antiquity for the cultural horizon at the bottom of the depositional sequence. The new age assignment, from previously estimated early Late Pleistocene to late Middle Pleistocene makes New Cave broadly contemporaneous with the uppermost strata of the Peking Man site. This is in line not only with the observation that the previously established chronological sequence for Chinese Middle-Late Pleistocene sites may have been underestimated as a whole but also with the hypothesis that human occupation of the Zhoukoudian sites has been more or less continuous over hundreds of thousand years. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.