1 Introduction The tectono-thermal evolution of the North China Craton (NCC) in Late Archean to Paleoproterozoic times has long been attractive to many researchers (Wan et al., 2000; Zhao et al., 2000, 2002; Guo et al., 2001; Liu et al., 2002; Zhai and Liu 2003; Zhai, 2004; Yu et al., 2004; Kr?ner et al., 2005; Wilde et al., 2005). Zhao et al. (2000, 2002) proposed a tectono-thermo framework for the evolution of the NCCbased on detailed petrological and geochronological data, and they …