As part of ringing in the Chinese New Year, many tiger-themed activities are being held. One exhibit in the Hainan Provincial Museum is typical of this exceptional series.

Modern China includes the habitats of the Siberian and South China tigers. Both are endangered species protected at the national level. Although it is common knowledge that China once had more wild tigers than any other region of the world, it is generally unknown that wild tigers once roamed the forests of Hainan. 

In 1993, during the Luobi Cave dig, archaeologists discovered fossilized South China Tiger bones. Luobi Cave is a karst cave in northeastern Sanya and the oldest excavated paleolithic site on the island. The discovery of tiger bones—some of which bore marks of tool usage—at Luobi is direct proof that wild tigers lived in the mountains and forests of Hainan about 10,000 years ago.

The lower jawbone and teeth of a South China Tiger unearthed during the 1993 Luobi Cave dig. LI TIANPING/HAINAN DAILY

On display in one of the Provincial Museum's second floor exhibition halls, this fossilized jaw bone (measuring 16.5cm × 5.7cm × 2.1cm) is the lower dental bed of an adult tiger.

Hao Si'de, the now 79-year-old former director of the provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, was the leader of the 1992 and 1993 Luobi Cave digs. Carried out by the Hainan Provincial Museum, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, and the Sanya Municipal Museum, these two excavations unearthed fossilized human teeth; a large number of stone tools; the fossilized bones of Asian Elephants and South China Tigers; and, a large number of seashells.

When they were first unearthed, the experts on the scene recognized the bones as felid. Most likely tiger bones, the specific species could not be determined in situ. Afterward, the bones were sent to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology for identification and it was confirmed as a South China Tiger mandible.

Speaking about the Luobi Cave site, Hao explained: "The tools and animal remains unearthed at the Luobi Cave site show that the people who lived there some 10,000 years ago were hunter gatherers who also fished. They not only made tools out of cattle bone and horn, but they also kept the fire for cooking." 

The finds at Luobi in 1992 and 1993 are of importance to the archeological community both as the southernmost example of Upper Paleolithic stone tools and as a method for directly proving the known distribution range of wild tigers in China.

Luobi Cave excavation site. HAINAN PROVINCIAL MUSEUM

Knowing that South China Tigers once roamed Hainan Island about 10,000 years ago leads to the question of how they became extinct. For now, as Hao explained, no tiger fossils have been unearthed at any other archeological site in Hainan. This dearth of information makes it difficult to determine both when and how they arrived on the island and when and why they died out. 

Based on various information, experts speculate that the original population may have initially crossed to the island via a land bridge. 

(In biogeography, a land bridge is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which plants and animals can cross and colonize new lands.)

By comparing the animal fossils unearthed at Luobi with fossils found in modern-day Guangdong and Guangxi, experts found that the animals were generally smaller. This is mainly because of cold temperatures during the end of the Last Glacial Period. At this time sea levels dropped and the Qiongzhou Straits may have become a land bridge by which Asian Elephants, South China Tigers, bears, gibbons, brush-tailed porcupines, and other animals came to Hainan.

"Compared with other tiger subspecies, the South China Tiger is small but agile. Very good at swimming, it potentially could cross the narrow waters between Hainan and the mainland." Hao further explained that, after reaching the island, an overly small breeding population would have slowly died out. 

Over the past ten thousand years, dramatic changes took place. Can you imagine a Hainan covered with forests full of dangerous animals and humans taking what shelter they could find in caves? Whether or not you can, it is true that the paleolithic ancestors of modern people made a home and built a rudimentary civilization to the north of the modern resort city of Sanya.