A new paper in Quaternary International discusses the Xiaodong rock shelter in Yunnan, the oldest Hoabinhian site to date. The Hoabinhian technoculture can be found throughout Southeast Asia, and so this discovery in Yunnan suggests the origins and subsequent spread of people using this set of tools into Southeast Asia.

Xiaodong rock shelter. Source: China.org 20151230

The oldest Hoabinhian technocomplex in Asia (43.5 ka) at Xiaodong rockshelter, Yunnan Province, southwest China
Quarternary International, doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.09.080

Oldest Hoabinhian site discovered in SW China
China.org, 30 December 2015

The Hoabinhian is the most representative technocomplex in Southeast Asian prehistory for the later hunter–gatherer period. As a mainland technology based exclusively on seasonal tropical environments, this core-tool culture was previously defined in northern Vietnam in 1932 and characterized originally by its large, flat and long, largely unifacial cobble tools associated with tropical forest fauna. The recent discoveries and dates obtained at Xiaodong rockshelter in Yunnan Province (southwest China) allow us to discuss the origin and the homeland of this singular Asian technocomplex which spread to Southeast Asia during the end of the Late Upper Pleistocene. Here we present the first Chinese Hoabinhian lithic implements in their stratigraphic and chronological context within a rockshelter site, and we address the question of the dispersal of modern humans from South China to Southeast Asia.

News article here.