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The Lantian fossil hominid cranium from Southern Shensi Province, China, provides the earliest record of Homo erectus in northern east Asia, and is morphologically the most primitive specimen in the entire world. Importantly, the Kungwangling Lantian cranium (calvarium plus face), with associated stone tools in good geologic and paleontological context, is demonstrably both earlier and more primitive than the Choukoutien I remains. Faunal and palynological evidence support a mid‐Mosbachium equivalent age (some 700,000 years). These facts are not recognized in the original Chinese reports. The Chenchiawo Lantian mandible, like the Choukoutien I remains, is attributable to the Holstein‐equivalent in China (some 300,000 years ago), and therefore should no longer be temporally associated with the Kungwangling Lantian cranium. However, that the mandible may be morphologically associated with either calls attention to the relative independence of the mandible in human evolution. A comparative study of some modern Mongoloid populations in which very large mandibles may or may not be associated with a scaphoid keel or sagittal elevation depending upon the size and shape of the cranium demonstrates the relative autonomy of the mandible. Continuing selection pressure for a masticatory complex with large jaws provides another point of continuity between East Asian fossil and modern Mongoloid hunting populations such as Eskimos and Aleuts. A number of morphological features of the cranium, especially vault thickness, cranial capacity and reinforcement system, conform to expectation and confirm a general trend of reduction in vault thickness and reinforcement system with increase in cranial capacity over time within the single human species.

SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA is a vast, extremely continental territory, some 2,400,000 km2 in all, consisting of the arid Turan depression and a portion of the Central Asiatic highlands including the Pamir-Alai and Tien Shan ranges. It includes Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kirgiziya, and southern Kazahstan; the northern portions of Afghanistan also fall naturally into this area. The eastern, mountainous part has been studied much more thoroughly than the western deserts. We wish to present here a brief summary of the major results of the last 25 years of Paleolithic research in Soviet Central Asia, with special attention to the most important problems archaeologists are facing there. This is by no means a comprehensive review of the literature or a lengthy analysis of data.2 Rather, it is an attempt to communicate some of the most significant features of the Soviet Central Asian Paleolithic, something which has not been done since Movius's 1 This paper is the result of extended collaboration between the authors from May through November 1977 in Tadzhikistan. Davis's visit to the Soviet Union was part of a program of exchanges between the National Academy of Science, U.S.A., and the Academv of Sciences, U.S.S.R. We wish to thank both institutions for making our cooperative work possible. 2 We are preparing a joint monograph which will include a considerable amount of new data, a critical review of the literature, and many illustrations.