Elephants in ancient China Elephants in ancient China The existence of elephants in ancient China is attested both by archaeological evidence and by depictions in Chinese artwork. Long thought to belong to an extinct subspecies of Asian elephants, named "Elephas maximus rubridens", they lived in Central and Southern China before the 14th century BC. They once occurred as far north as Anyang, Henan in northern China. The elephant is mentioned in the earliest received texts, including the "Shijing", "Liji", and "Zuozhuan." The oracle bone script and bronzeware script glyphs for elephant are pictographic depictions of an animal with a long trunk. Their modern descendant
Cerutti Mastodon site Cerutti Mastodon site The Cerutti Mastodon site is a paleontological and possible archeological site located in San Diego County, California. In 2017, researchers announced that broken mastodon bones at the site had been dated to around 130,700 years ago. Since the bones were found with cobblestones displaying use-wear and impact marks among the otherwise fine-grain sands, intentional breakage of the bones by hominins using the stones has been suggested by the researchers. If this is so, then some form of "Homo" may have been present in the Americas at an extremely early age. The Cerutti Mastodon site (SDNHM locality 3767)