中国科学院古脊椎动物与古人类研究所机构知识库

The Qinglongquan site, China, includes materials from the Neolithic Qujialing (3000-2600 bc) and Shijiahe (2600-2200 bc) periods, and lies within the Sui-Zao Corridor that connects the Nanyang Basin in the north and the Hanjiang River Plain in the south. Previous research suggested a dietary shift from rice-based to millet-based agriculture between the Qujialing and Shijiehe periods at this site. The reason for this dietary shift is still unclear, and it is possible because of immigration into the region by people who already had a mainly C-4-millet-based diet (i.e. from Northern China). In this study, we examine the carbon (C-13) and nitrogen (N-15) results and present sulfur (S-34) isotope analyses of human (n=27) and animal (n=36) samples to test the hypothesis of whether this dietary shift was due to migration. The S-34 values of the Qujialing humans ranged from 5.5 parts per thousand to 8.1 parts per thousand [average 6.5 parts per thousand +/- 1.0 (n=7)], and the S-34 values of the Shijiahe humans ranged from 4.1 parts per thousand to 7.4 parts per thousand [average 5.8 parts per thousand +/- 0.9 (n=18)]. Because these values overlapped and were similar to the animal S-34 results [4.3 parts per thousand to 8.8 parts per thousand, average of 6.6 +/- 1.3 parts per thousand (n=31)], no evidence of migration was found for the humans with the different diets at the Qinglongquan site. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.