As an important birthplace of China's ancient civilization, people have found many Paleolithic human settlement sites in the Yellow River Basin. Among them, the most representative is the "Lantian Ape Man Ruins".
In fact, there are two ruins of the Lantian Ape Man, namely: Gongwangling in the south of Bahe In Lantian County, Shaanxi Province, and Chenjiawo Village near the town of Qihu in Lantian County. These two places are surrounded by mountains and rivers, and the scenery is pleasant. The superior natural conditions are very suitable for ancient humans to thrive here.
In 1959, Zeng Heqing of the Department of Geology found a good section of the Cenozoic era in Lantian. In the same year, Professor Liu Dongsheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences divided the Tertiary strata of Lantian Drainage Lake Town and the suburbs of Xi'an City.
Four years later, in 1963, a field team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted preliminary excavations in Chenjiawo Village, north of The Town of Tihu, and found some stone tools and animal fossils, and later found a suspicious mammal tooth in the fossil pile of the county medicinal materials company.
Later, during the secondary excavation of Chen Jiawo, a complete fossil of the human mandible of the female ancient human being was found, some animal fossils, and many stone tools.
According to the identification, the Chenjiawo ape man is about 500,000 years old, and the Gongwangling ape man is about 800,000 years old. These ape-men belong to the same type, and according to international practice, they are named homo erectus blue field subspecies, commonly known as blue field ape man.
With the discovery of the "Lantian Ape Man", it immediately attracted attention at home and abroad, which not only proved the pluralism of human origins, but also enriched the physical data of "the origin of human beings in Asia".
In February 1982, the "Lantian Ape Man Site" was approved by the state as the "second batch of national key cultural relics protection units".
The fossil mandible of an elderly female ape excavated from ChenJiawo has a thick and strong jaw, and the protrusions and joint spines of the lip-surface joint are very obvious; the bi-abdominal muscle fossa is located under the mandible, and the height of the joint part is very different from the height of the frontal hole, and the anterior inclination angle and the white dentition angle are relatively small. It can be seen that compared with the Beijing ape man, the two are still very similar, but the former is more primitive.
Compared with the elderly female apes in Chen Jiawo, the fossil skulls of middle-aged female apes found on Gongwangling are more primitive. The ruins of Gongwangling are located at the western end of the north slope of Gongwangling Village, 17 kilometers southeast of Lantian County.
Fossils of ape skulls unearthed here include a complete frontal bone, most of the parietal bone, most of the left nasal bone, most of the right temporal bone, the base of the nose of the right nasal bone, and most of the right maxilla, and attached to the body part of the left maxilla, the second and third molars, and the frontal process.
A upper left second molar excavated in the wild on 23 May 1964 was attached to the left maxilla, and the skull, nose bone, maxilla and teeth were all individuals with thick teeth and short crowns. Of course, the wear and tear of the teeth is also more severe than that of modern peers, and the age of the Blue Field Ape Man can be estimated to be about thirty years old.
However, its brain capacity is only about 780ml. Although it is larger than the maximum brain capacity of the species of apes that live today, it is smaller than the brain capacity of Peking apes (about 800ml) and smaller than the brain capacity of modern humans (about 1400ml). It can be seen that it can only be called a kind of human being that has recently left the ancient ape.
At the same time as the Lantian ape human fossils, there are more than 40 kinds of animal fossils, mainly including: Lantian golden snub-nosed monkey, compound-toothed pika, weasel, black hamster, ji rat, South China porcupine, oriental saber-toothed elephant, saber-toothed tiger, updated cheetah, mutant wolf, Li's wild boar, hairy-crowned deer, Gongwangling bighorn deer, short-horned lily cow, iguana and so on. These species are generally in the Middle Pleistocene, perhaps slightly earlier than the fauna at the Zhoukoudian Chinese ape-man site.
However, many of these animals belong to the tropics. This indirectly proves that the area where the Chenjiawozi site and the Gongwangling site are located belonged to the warm and humid climate in ancient times. Forests and grasslands are dense, and plant roots provide sufficient food for apes; there are many animals that can also be used by apes to hunt for meat; and abundant river water can also be used for apes to drink.
In short, this area is very suitable for the Lantian people in the primitive society, living a group life.
As a judge who distinguishes man from apes, tools are indispensable, and the tools used by Lantian apes are mainly made rough stone tools. There are mainly the following stone tools:
Large tip. Similar to the isosceles triangle, it is made of a flattened, long reddish-brown quartzite boulder. The posterior part is thick and blunt, and the forward thickness gradually thins, forming a slightly flattened tip. One-way machining is performed on both sides of the edge, the left side is limited to the front half, and the edge edge is straighter. The right edge of the blade is tortuous. The processed side has multiple large stone scars; the posterior part is rounded and blunt, the back is raised, and the gravel surface is preserved.
adze. One side is flattened and the other is curved, and its cutting edge is similar to that of a stone axe.
Stone balls. It was roughly made, but many were found in the site, which is speculated to be a hunting tool.
Disc holder. It is generally made of thick stones, with a gravel surface on one side and traces of reciprocal impact on the other sides.
Chopper. A tool for chopping things in the shape of large plates, small to medium polygons, and small choppers.
Scraper. Generally made of stone chips or crushed stone blocks, the form is: straight edge, convex blade, concave blade and compound blade four kinds, the role is to peel animal skins and scrape wooden sticks.
The raw materials for the manufacture of stone tools by the Lantian Ape Man are basically derived from quartzite, veined quartz, quartz sandstone and gravel. Due to the low level of technology, most of the stone chips are irregular, and some are directly used after the first step of processing, and the technique is very rough.
The discovery of Lantian ape man not only expanded the distribution range of ancient humans in the world, but also provided valuable information for the study of paleoanthropology, paleontology, paleobotany, quaternary stratigraphy and geology, and strengthened people's understanding that Shaanxi is one of the cradles of Chinese national culture.