The 44th World Heritage Conference was held in Fuzhou in July 2021, and Fujian News Broadcasting Voice of Fujian launched a 100-episode series of reports "Dong Dong Nana Says Cultural Relics". The historical inheritance that stretches for thousands of years, the cultural treasures of the stars, and the eight Fujian celebrities who have been born with heroes and heroes. Let the world know about Fujian, let Fujian go to the world! Min Yun National Tide, listen together!
In September 1999, the Fujian Provincial Museum, the Sanming Municipal Cultural Management Office and the Sanming Municipal Museum jointly formed an excavation team to carry out archaeological excavations of the Sanming Wanshouyan Lingfeng Cave and Chuanfan Cave. This excavation unearthed a stone-shattering result, which made everyone ecstatic, and found important prehistoric relics such as mammal fossils, stone products and stone paving, and advanced the history of ancient human life in Fujian to 185,000 years ago! It was rated as the first of the top ten archaeological discoveries in China in 2000.
A unique stone tool site
Lingfeng Cave belongs to the early Paleolithic ruins, Chuanfan Cave belongs to the late Paleolithic site, spanning the paleolithic early and late three stages in time, a number of cave type sites of different periods are concentrated on the same mountain, which is unique in Fujian and even the entire southeast coastal area. This spatial concentration and time continuation show that the Climate in the Sanming area was warm and there were rich living resources, which was very suitable for the long-term survival and reproduction of ancient humans.
Archaeological work on WanshouYan was first carried out at Lingfeng Cave, which is located on the southwest slope of Wanshou Rock and is 185,000 years old. The cave is stacked in 4 layers, the third layer is a hard light yellow sand clay layer, cleaned out 99 pieces of stone products, including stone cores, stone chips, stone hammers, scrapers, choppers, and even a carving, the raw material is mainly quartz sandstone, the process has a certain primitiveness, not so fine, do not look carefully, may not be able to see that this is a tool.
The sail hole is very rewarding
The sail hole is 30 meters wide, 15 meters high, 50 meters deep, with a total area of more than 2,000 square meters, and more than 400 stone tools have been excavated, and the types will be a little richer, including choppers, scrapers, sharps and pickaxes. There are also many mammal fossils, bats, bamboo rats, macaques, brown bears, wolves, tigers, Chinese rhinos, deer, cattle, as well as fish, turtles and birds. 30,000 years ago, the ancestors' recipes were still quite rich, and there were many dishes in the "Name of the Dish", what steamed bear paws, steamed deer tails, jar pheasants, soft fried birds, dragon and tiger eggs, orangutan lips, humps... Many things that we can't eat now, our ancestors had a blessing in the past.
Interior view of the ruins of the Sail Cave
The most shocking discovery of the Boat Sail Cave is the artificial stone paving of about 120 square meters near the mouth of the cave. At that time, in order to prevent the ground from getting wet, people picked up gravel from the river beach, moved limestone fragments from outside the cave, and laid them inside the cave, and the gravel was filled with coarse sand and covered with hay.
The sail cave also found drainage trenches and pedaling surfaces, the trench is about 8 meters long, the water is introduced into a leaky hole, the stampede surface should be the place where ancient humans often move, these 40,000 years ago very creative decoration projects, indicating that our ancestors had the consciousness of transforming their living environment at that time, and found ways to make their living place full of warm and rich life atmosphere.
Wanshou Rock Ancient Human Stone Paving Ground
Several paleolithic places of presumptuous settlements and makeshift camps made of animal bones have been found internationally, but no stone paving has ever been found. Therefore, the stone paving of the ship sail cave is an unprecedented innovation in the Paleolithic era to transform the living conditions of human beings.
In November 2006, the Wanshouyan Site Museum was officially opened. If you are interested, you can explore how our ancestors lived more than 100,000 years ago.
Producers: Zhao Lin, Ruan Yi
Editor: Sun Shiqing
Announcer: Dong Liang
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