Red Deer Cave people

Long ago, people lived in caves in China.

They lived in places like Red Deer Cave. They ate big deer there.

This is how they got their name.

Scientists found old bones in these caves. The bones had a strange look. Some parts looked like us. Other parts looked very old.

Some experts thought they were a new kind of person. They thought the people lived alone in the mountains. This kept them separate from others.

Other experts looked at DNA. This is a tiny code inside us. The code showed they were modern humans. They were related to people in Asia.

We are still learning about them. Every new bone tells a story. It is a big mystery!

Long ago, people lived in caves in China.

They lived in places like Red Deer Cave. They ate large deer there. This is how they got their name.

In 1979, a man named Li Changqing found old bones. He found them in a cave in Guangxi. Later, bones were found in Red Deer Cave too.

These bones belong to a group called the Red Deer Cave people. They lived between 17,830 and 11,500 years ago.

The bones look very unusual. They have a mix of old and new traits. Some parts look like very old humans. Other parts look like modern humans. For a long time, scientists had many ideas. Some thought they were a new species. Others thought they were a mix of two groups.

In 2022, scientists studied DNA. DNA is a tiny code inside all living things. The study suggested they were modern humans. They were related to people in East Asia. Other bones from Longlin Cave show a different group. We are still learning more about these people.

The Red Deer Cave people were a group of humans who lived a very long time ago.

They lived in Southwest China in places like Red Deer Cave and Longlin Cave. We know they lived between about 17,830 and 11,500 years ago. They got their name because scientists found evidence that they cooked large deer.

These people are very important to study. They help us understand how different kinds of humans lived and changed. Their remains tell a story about the deep past of Asia.

Scientists look at many different parts of the body to learn about them. The bones show a mix of old and new features. For example, they had flat faces and broad noses. They also had large teeth and thick skull bones.

Some of their bones, like the femur, look very much like much older humans. Their body size was also quite small. These unique traits make them a big mystery for researchers today.

Finding these people took many years of hard work. In 1979, a geologist named Li Changqing found human remains in a cave.

He found them in Longlin County in the Guangxi Province. Later, in 1989, more bones were found in Red Deer Cave near Mengzi City. It was not until 2008 that scientists like Darren Curnoe and Ji Xueping began to truly understand them. They used special tools to date the bones and describe the fossils.

There are many different ideas about who these people were. Some researchers thought they might be a brand new species of human. Others thought they were a mix of modern humans and an older group called Denisovans.

In 2022, a study of DNA suggested they were actually modern humans. This study said they were related to people in East Asia and even the Americas. However, other scientists have questioned these DNA results. The debate about their identity is still going on.

Learning about these people helps us see how humans spread across the world. Some think they lived in the mountains to stay separate from others. The high mountains and deep valleys of China could act like a wall. This might have kept their unique way of living for a long time. Just like the people who live in our world today, they were part of a changing history. Every new bone found helps us piece the puzzle together.

The Red Deer Cave people were a prehistoric population of humans living in Southwest China.

They are known from fossil remains found in Red Deer Cave and Longlin Cave. These sites are located in the Yunnan and Guangxi Provinces. The people lived during the Late Pleistocene epoch.

Dating shows they lived between approximately 17,830 and 11,500 years ago. They received their name because evidence shows they cooked large deer in the Red Deer Cave. These fossils are famous because they show a mix of modern and archaic features. This mix makes them a major subject of study in paleoanthropology.

Researchers study the anatomy of these fossils to understand their biological identity. The skull and jawbones show several distinctive traits. For example, they had flat faces and broad noses. They also possessed a jutting jaw without a chin. Their molars were quite large, and they had prominent brow ridges.

The skull bones were also quite thick. Their brain size was considered moderate. Some features, like the placement of the mental foramina, differ from modern humans. The mental foramina are small holes in the lower jawbone. In these specimens, the holes were located much lower than in modern people.

Other skeletal parts, such as the femur, provide more clues. The femur is the thigh bone in the leg.

The Red Deer Cave femur is considered very archaic. It has a narrow midshaft diameter, which might mean the individual was short. The subtrochanteric region is the area just below the lesser trochanter on the femur. In these fossils, this region is circular in cross-section. This shape reduces resistance to axial loads, which are straight-down forces. These specific bone traits resemble much older human lineages from the Lower Pleistocene.

The discovery of these remains happened in several stages. In 1979, a petroleum geologist named Li Changqing found human remains in Longlin County.

He found them inside a block of fine-grained sediments. This block also contained animal fossils, charcoal, and burnt clay. In 1989, excavations took place at the Red Deer Cave near Mengzi City. The true significance of these finds emerged in 2008. Scientists Darren Curnoe and Ji Xueping began describing these collections. They used uranium–thorium dating to determine the age of the charcoal remnants. This process helped prove the people lived much more recently than their physical traits suggested.

Because of their unusual appearance, scientists have debated their classification. In 2013, researchers hypothesized they might be a new species. In 2015, they suggested the group might be a hybrid population. This theory proposed they were a mix of modern humans and an unknown archaic species. Some even thought they might be related to the Denisovans. Denisovans are a poorly known group of ancient humans in Asia. Another idea was that they were a long-separated lineage from an early dispersal out of Africa. Some researchers believe they stayed isolated in the mountains and deep valleys of Southwest China.

Recent genetic studies have added new layers to this mystery. In 2022, a partial genome sequence was reported for the Mengzi Ren specimen.

This study suggested they were anatomically modern humans. The DNA showed they were related to contemporary populations in East and Southeast Asia. It also suggested a connection to Indigenous peoples of the Americas. However, this DNA sequence faced scientific scrutiny. Some researchers worried the sample might have been contaminated by modern human DNA. A follow-up response in 2025 attempted to refute these concerns.

Different lineages have also been identified within these cave sites. The remains from Longlin Cave belong to a distinct group called the Longlin lineage. This lineage is different from the Mengzi Ren specimen. The Longlin lineage appears to be a mix of a Basal Asian lineage and a southern East Asian lineage. This group may not have contributed ancestry to modern populations. However, a 9,000-year-old specimen from Dushan Cave showed about 17% ancestry from this Longlin lineage. These findings help scientists map the complex movement of ancient people across Asia.