Archaeological Discovery of Xia Chuan Site

The Xia Chuan site discovered in 1970s is a milestone in the history of human evolution.

There are no pottery fragments and ground stone tools in this site. According to radiocarbon dating, the age is about 24,000 years ago to 65,438+600,000 years ago. Xia Chuan culture, represented by hammered stone tools, is divided into two categories: coarse stone tools and small stone tools, among which small stone tools are the main body of Xia Chuan culture. Tiny stone tools are made of flint and have more than 40 kinds of objects, including typical fine stone cores such as cones, columns, wedges and funnels, as well as fine stone leaves, various scrapers, sharp tools, carvers, back cutters, arrows, saws and awls. Many of them are found in similar sites in the late Paleolithic period in northern China, but some of them are rare in other sites. There are many artifacts in the small stone tools of Xia Chuan culture, with fine processing and distinctive features, and the production technology is quite advanced. Back-cutting knife is a typical cultural handicraft in Xia Chuan. Strike one side of the stone piece to make it dull and thick, becoming the back of the knife, and keep the inherent sharp edge of the stone piece as the blade on the other side. Saw is to make several teeth on one or both sides of the stone piece, and some have short handles. The carving is exquisite, the blade front is obvious, and the shape is fixed, which is second to those unearthed in other late Paleolithic sites. Triangular small pointers and flat-bottomed triangular pointers are the most exquisite miniature pointers, which are actually the top products of stone tools technology. A large number of stone core scrapers have been found in Xia Chuan site, which is also a major feature of Xia Chuan cultural microliths. The coarse stone tools are made of sandstone and timely, accounting for about 4.7% of the total stone tools. The types of tools are pointers, scrapers, shredders, stone hammers, grinding discs, etc. Scrapers have a variety of blade-like, oval and straight blades.

From June 8, 2004 to June 8, 2065438, the archaeological excavation team found three fire pits, many grass seeds and some stone tools and fragments in a 5×8 meter square stratum, which provided an important basis for discussing the social characteristics of human behavior at that time and the utilization mode of plant origin.