台灣大百科全書

The culture is distributed along the southeast coast of the island, the main sites being the Pahsientung, Xiaoma (小馬), and Longdong (龍洞) Cave sites on east coast and the Eluanbi II (鵝鑾鼻Ⅱ) and Longkang (龍坑) sites on the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春半島). Most of the sites are in caves or in the shade of rock.

Based on its chronological and cultural connotations, the Changbin Culture can be divided to early and late stages. Early stages were from the later Paleolithic period and the later Pleistocene Period in geological history. Most of the items unearthed were large stone artifacts including large gravel stone tools and single-bladed cutting tools, all found only in the lowest layers of the Qianyuan (乾元), Hailei (海雷), and Chaoyin (潮音) caves in the Pahsientung site. The later stages, in addition to large stone tools, large amounts of small stone tools made of fine quartz and other materials have been found. These items include single-bladed edged scrapers and pointed tools as well as a small amount of tools made of horns and bone and shell scrapers. The small stone tools may be closely related with the production of bone and horn artifacts. They were found at the Chaoyin cave in the Pahsientung as well as other Changbin Culture sites. Since tools tend to be multi-functional, the technology is still simple and indicates that it supported a small population in a small area. The culture would also need abundant resources to maintain the survival of the small settlements.

The Changbin Pahsientung site was a small village settlement. It was used for gathering and hunting in its early stages and in the later stages was used for extensive fishing and collecting of shellfish and other marine resources. From the Eluanbi Ⅱ site, it is clear that the collection of marine resources was an important part of the Changbin Culture way of life. Overall, the characteristic of the Changbin Culture demonstrates that its production of stone tools followed the East Asian pebble tool production tradition (also known as the cutting device tradition). In the Cailiao River (菜寮溪) bed of Zuozhen (左鎮) Township of Tainan County, Zuozhen Man fossils were unearthed. Some scholars speculate that they could be the forebears of the Changbin Culture.