thought to be so distinct from contemporary western sites that they were incomparable, the former characterised as a simple chopper industry, and the latter as a handaxe industry (the Acheulean). In 1944, American archaeologist Hallam L. Movius drew the "Movius Line" partitioning west from east. As Chinese archaeology progressed through the 1980s, characteristically Acheulean tools were uncovered in China (including Lantian), and the strict Movius Line fell apart. As of 2014, total of 27 stone tool bearing sites from the Early to Middle Pleistocene have been discovered within the vicinity of Chenchiawo and Gongwangling, in addition to two Late Pleistocene sites. In 2018, Zhu and colleagues reported 2.1 million year old stone tools at the Shangchen site on the Loess Plateau, the oldest evidence of humans out of Africa. Only 26 stone tools were excavated at Gongwangling, 20 from adjacent sites, and 10 from Chenchiawo. In total, the Early to Middle Pleistocene assemblage comprise largely heavy-duty tools including choppers, handaxes, picks, cleavers, spheroids, and heavy-duty scrapers made of predominantly local river cobble — quartzite, quartz, greywacke, and igneous pebbles — and more rarely higher quality sandstone, limestone, and chert. Handaxes, cleavers, and picks are characteristic of the Acheulean, which seems to have prevailed for some time in this region even while the west was transitioning to the Middle Stone Age/Middle Paleolithic in the Late Pleistocene. They seem to have preferred the bipolar percussion technique (smashing the core into several flakes with a hammerstone, out of which at least a few should be the correct size and shape), and less frequently used the anvil-chipping technique (hitting the core against an anvil to slowly chip away pieces into a usable edge). See also Shangchen Nanjing Man References External links China Culture Human Timeline (Interactive) – Smithsonian, National Museum of Natural History (August 2016). Paleolithic China Homo erectus Pleistocene mammals of Asia History of Xi'an Fossil taxa described in 1964 1964 archaeological discoveries Subspecies