"Yo! This is a fossilized giant panda tooth! ”
On the afternoon of May 12, at the archaeological excavation site of Hualong Cave in Wangcun Village, Yaodu Town, Dongzhi County, Chizhou City, the red-brown soil that had just been cleared up was piled up into a hill.
Wu Xiujie, a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as the leader of the excavation team, picked up a piece of yellow-brown cement with a bowl mouth, pulled out a small piece the size of a fingernail from the mud.
"With the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, we will carry out the fourth official excavation this year, which will be carried out in two phases, from April to June and from September to November, with an excavation area of about 40 square meters." Wu Xiujie introduced that since 2014, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Anhui Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and the Dongzhi County Culture and Tourism Bureau have formed a joint team to carry out excavation and cleaning of the Hualong Cave site.
This is the first Pleistocene hominiin fossil site found in China after Zhoukoudian that contains abundant evidence of human activities such as human fossils and stone tools.
(Hualong Cave archaeological site.) Photo by Li Bo)
300,000 years ago "East Solstice Girl"
Who are we? Where do we come from? This is a puzzle that humanity has been striving for and constantly exploring.
In 2013, Wu Xiujie went to the Hualong Cave site for the first time, and speculated from the important clues of ancient humans found by scholars in the early stage that it has great archaeological value, and since then she has formed an indissoluble bond with the Hualong Cave site, and has to work in Dongzhi County for several months every year, and participated in previous archaeological excavations.
At present, more than 30 ancient human fossils have been found at the Hualong Cave site, including the only late Middle Pleistocene human fossil found in the mainland so far with a complete face and mandible, about 300,000 years ago, belonging to the ancient type of Homo sapiens, and was named "Dongzhi Man". Many years later, Wu Xiujie still vividly remembers the scene of the discovery of ancient human skull fossils.
"Now, you can see a hole at the excavation site. Previously, this place was a very large rock that could stand about 20 people. We use blasting to blast the stones. A week later, a fossilized skull of an ancient man was found underneath the stone. Wu Xiujie recalled.
(The head of the "East Solstice Girl" restored from the fossilized skull of ancient humans.) Photo by Li Bo)
Today, in the Hualong Cave Ruins Exhibition Hall, about 1 kilometer from the excavation site, this fossilized replica of an ancient human skull is quietly placed in a display case for visitors to see. Yellow cementation wraps around the skull, exposing almost intact eye sockets, most of the frontal bones, and part of the facial bones.
"It has a brain volume of about 1,150 milliliters, and the evolutionary position of the skull is between Homo erectus and modern humans. The skull has a pronounced chin that is a very typical representation of Homo sapiens, but retains some of its original features, such as a very thick brow arch. Wu Xiujie introduced.
In 2021, researchers carried out a sculptural reconstruction of the skull, which clearly and intuitively showed the facial features of the ancient humans who lived in Hualong Cave 300,000 years ago, showing that this is a young individual face similar to modern humans.
Wu Xiujie explained: "We can tell from the order of tooth germination that this individual is about 13 years old; Based on the obvious frontal tubercles in the skull, it is assumed that this individual is presumably a female. The lifespan of ancient humans is generally between 25 and 30 years old, and 13-year-old individuals are relatively mature. ”
This is a 300,000-year-old "Eastbound Girl"! Experts further pointed out that according to a large number of modern human features presented on the ancient human skull in Hualong Cave and the appearance of modern human beings shown by facial reconstruction, this skull represents the earliest facial skeleton form and appearance of modern humans in East Asia. This also suggests that the people who lived in Hualong Cave 300,000 years ago represent the earliest "quasi-modern humans" in East Asia!
A place of life in ancient times
Hold a small shovel in one hand to remove the dirt, and carefully rummage through the "baby" in the other. Suddenly, a small white piece appeared in front of him, and the old man Liu Yunxia was immediately overjoyed.
"This is an animal tooth, this is an animal bone fragment." Liu Yunxia pointed to a few small pieces in the basket and said. A native of Wangcun Village, Yaodu Township, she has been at the archaeological excavation site of Hualong Cave since 2014 to assist the archaeological team in carrying out the initial clean-up work, and is now proficient in finding the remains of paleontology from a pile of soil.
According to the rules for the preservation of ancient human specimen resources, the skull fossils unearthed at the Hualong Cave site were named "Hualong Cave No. 6". As the excavation progressed, fragmentary fossils of ancient human individuals were found at the site. Today, the number of ancient human individuals has reached the number 13, which means that there were more than 10 individuals living at the Hualong Cave site.
"It's a native place to live!" Wu Xiujie introduced that in addition to ancient human fossils, more than 100 stone tools made and used by ancient humans were also found at the Hualong Cave site, a large number of bone fragments with artificial cutting and smashing marks, more than 40 kinds of vertebrate fossils, and more than 20 kinds of small mammal fossils.
(The site of Hualong Cave is located at the southern foot of Meiyuan Mountain, about 0.5 kilometers east of the Pangwang Village Group of Wangcun Village, Yaodu Town, County.) Photo by Li Bo)
After sorting and identification, experts have determined that the fauna of Hualong Cave includes Oriental saber-toothed elephants, giant tapirs, giant pandas, Gu's large-fronted cattle, wild boars, macaques, brown bears, hyenas, muntjacs, etc. Some animal bones unearthed in Hualong Cave show unnatural fractures, and a large number of animal bones have traces of cutting, chopping, and shattering on the surface. Experts theorize that this may be evidence that ancient humans slaughtered food animals.
This is a restoration of ancient times: 300,000 years ago, a group of ancient humans lived in the cave in the dense jungle and herds of animals near Hualong Cave, they used simple tools made of stones to hunt animals, and then brought back to the cave to eat flesh and bed, knock bones and suck the marrow. This group of ancient humans migrated or evolved, but a large number of animal remains, stone tools and rare human bones were buried underground.
"At the moment we are excavating a very small area. As you can see, there are still a lot of cementation on both sides of the hole where the ancient human skull was found, and there must be a large number of fossils in it, and we look forward to more significant discoveries in the future. Wu Xiujie said wistfully.
Cultural wealth that cannot be taken away
Last year, the exhibition "Hometown of the East: A Million-Year History of Mankind in the Land of China" was exhibited at the National Museum of China, which tells the story of millions of years of activities from apes to humans with rich and detailed materials, and vividly presents the million-year history of mankind in the land of China.
The fossils of ancient human skulls unearthed from the Hualong Cave site are exhibited in the form of objects and pictures, highlighting that the Yangtze River Basin in Anhui Province is an important area for the origin and evolution of human beings, and providing scientific evidence for the million-year human history of China.
Due to its important scientific value in paleoanthropology, Paleolithic archaeology, paleontology and Quaternary geology, the Hualong Cave site entered the final evaluation list of the top ten new archaeological discoveries in China in 2015, and the human skull fossils found were rated as "Top Ten Advances in Chinese Paleontology in 2019". In 2019, the Hualong Cave site was announced by the State Council as the eighth batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
(Archaeological Exhibition of Hualong Cave Ruins.) Photo by Li Bo)
How to present the fruitful archaeological results to the general audience and further exert the value of public education? Dongzhi County rebuilt the site of the original new middle school into the Hualong Cave Ruins Exhibition Hall, and successively built the exhibition building, the expert building, and the popular science building.
Walking into the Chen Building, pictures and fossils not only show the archaeological achievements of Hualong Cave, but also popularize the scientific knowledge of ancient human evolution to the general audience.
"Our county has set up a leading group for the protection of Hualong Cave ruins, and set up a Hualong Cave Ruins Management Office in the County Bureau of Culture and Tourism to strengthen the institutional operation and daily management of Hualong Cave Ruins. At the same time, the "Hualong Cave Site Protection Plan (2021-2035)" was compiled to standardize the protection, development and utilization of the Hualong Cave site. The relevant person in charge of the Dongzhi County Culture and Tourism Bureau introduced.
In 2021, Dongzhi County signed a cooperation agreement with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to jointly build a scientific research and popularization base for the Hualong Cave site, and the construction of the Hualong Cave Ancient Human Science Popularization Center has been preliminarily completed.
Wu Xiujie said: "We look forward to building a popular science base for archaeological tours and research tours, and leaving a cultural wealth that cannot be taken away for Dongzhi." ”