Yuanmou people, because the place of discovery is on a hill northwest of Shangnabang Village in Yuanmou County, Yunnan, was named "Yuanmou Zhiliren", known in English as sculpture: Homo erectus Yuan mouensis, commonly known as "Yuanmou people". The word "Yuanmou" comes from the Dai language and means "horse".
Metamount
At the beginning of 1965, in order to cooperate with the construction of the Panzhihua area of Sichuan and the Chengkun Railway, the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences sent Zhao Guoguang, Qian Fang, Pu Qingyu and other scholars to study the new tectonic movement in southwest China, and chose the Yuanmou Basin as the research focus. In early April, scholars began work near the village of Nabang and found many fossils and geological phenomena. On May 1, Qian Fang and others went to the northwest of Shangnabang Village to look for fossils, which had been washed away by rain for a long time, and the fine sand and clay soil were mostly washed away, and it was easy to dig out fossils. At about 5 p.m., Qian Fang found two fossils of suspected human teeth, more than ten centimeters apart. A crown of teeth is exposed to the surface, and the roots of the teeth are in the soil. The other is all in the soil. Also unearthed were the Yunnan horse tooth fossils, rodent mandibles, and other fossil fragments. The next day, the scholars came to the site to continue excavations, trying to find fossil materials from other ancient apes, but did not harvest. In September, after completing a field expedition, the scholars brought the fossil teeth back to Beijing for expert identification.
Fossil teeth
In February 1972, after the identification of Hu Chengzhi of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, this discovery was published, and according to the place where the fossil was found, it was named "Homo erectus, a new subspecies of Yuan", referred to as "Yuanmou Homo erectus". Hu Chengzhi published an article entitled "Fossil Ape Man's Teeth Discovered by Yuanmou in Yunnan" in the First Issue of geological journal in 1973. Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily and others also reported on this.
From October to December 1973, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences used archaeological methods to conduct large-scale systematic excavations of the small hill where the fossils of Yuanmou people are located. The excavations produced detailed stratigraphic profiles of the site and found artificially made stone tools and charcoal chips, mammal fossils, mollusk fossils and pollen fossils in the nearby strata, but no new human fossils were found. This excavation determined the sedimentary nature of the stratum in which the fossils of Yuanmou man were located, and based on the sediment situation of the formation and the fossils of associated animals, it was claimed that the age of Yuanmou man was located in the Early Pleistocene.
In 1973 and 1974, Qian Fang and others went to the Yuanmou Basin again to investigate and collected ancient geomagnetic specimens of the Yuanmou Group. On July 25, 1976, the absolute geological age of paleomagnetism was determined to be about 1.7 million years ago. (Controversy that followed)
In 1983, Du Yaoxi of the China History Museum made a periodic summary of the historical status of the Yuanmou people, believing that the Yuanmou people had a special status in the transition stage from southern apes to Homo erectus in the early stage of human society; the Yuanmou people provided important clues for the formation of the yellow race; the stone tool culture of the Yuanmou people was unique, and the time to learn to use fire was relatively early. In short, the study of Early Chinese History is of great significance.