China may have been leading the Stone Age technological race by producing sophisticated stone tools for cutting, drilling and sawing as early as 160,000 years ago, according to a new study.

An international team of scientists said the discovery of a handled tool, the earliest evidence of compound tools in East Asia, has reshaped our understanding of human evolution in the region.

The researchers said the discovery shows that Chinese hominins were far more inventive and adaptable than previously thought, challenging the widely held belief that “the technology of East Asian hominins lacked signs of innovation and sophistication” during the late Middle Pleistocene.

Researchers from institutions in Australia, China, Norway, Spain and the United States published their findings Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications.

“Early records, such as the Xigou evidence, challenge this dominant paradigm and show that humans in mid- to late-Pleistocene China had the cognitive and technological capabilities to produce a complex and diverse material culture compatible with humans in Africa and other parts of Eurasia,” the research team wrote.

Xigou is an archaeological site discovered in 2017 and excavated from 2019 to 2021, located in central China’s Henan province. It is located at the southern end of the Qinling Mountains, along the river that flows into the Danjiangkou Reservoir, Asia’s largest man-made freshwater lake.