Chapter 3 An investigation record of paleohumans in the Yuanmou Basin①

① Originally published in "Fossil" magazine, No. 2, 1974. Zhang Yongxing also participated in the writing of this article. This is a documentary of the scientific investigation of paleoanthropology in Yuanmou Basin, Yunnan Province and the excavation of the "Yuanmou Man" fossil origin in 1973.During the scientific practice of studying ancient humans, the stone tools manufactured and used by "Yuanmou Man", the remains of fire use, and the microlithic artifacts of the Mesolithic Age were discovered for the first time. The car left Kunming and headed northwest, and soon passed through the mountains.Although it has entered the early winter season, but here is still a vibrant early autumn scenery.All around, the mountains overlap, and the sun shines golden light on the high and steep mountains in the distance.The steep hillsides are covered with lush forests, and there are fertile basins in the mountains - "Bazi", where many ethnic minorities live together.Under the leadership of the party, the vast number of poor and lower-middle peasants have carried forward their enthusiasm. They learned from Dazhai, wielding silver hoes, splitting mountains and filling ditches, building terraces, and digging canals.The barren mountains and wild mountains in the past have now become Huaguo Mountains, adorning the earth like flowers and brocades.

Cars sometimes enter the limestone area. Due to the long-term dissolution of the carbonic acid-rich river water and groundwater, another unique natural landscape has emerged. The strange peaks and caves are enchanting and varied... Cars run on the flat mountain road from time to time, and tall and straight eucalyptus trees pass by the roadside. We, a team of ancient human scientific investigations, are heading for Yuanmou Basin. This is the Yuanmou Basin The car climbed up the top of Matou Mountain and turned to the left, and the Yuanmou Basin appeared in front of us: the land is flat and picturesque, and the terraced fields between the hills are layered. This is the world-famous and representative early Pleistocene standard in southern my country. Place.

Yuanmou Basin is located in the northern part of Yunnan Province. It is the lowest basin on the Central Yunnan Plateau. It is 1,100 meters above sea level. It is about 30 kilometers long from north to south and 7 kilometers wide from east to west. The Jinsha River and its branch Longchuan River run through the whole area.The western edge of the basin is composed of ancient Precambrian metamorphic rock series, with an altitude of about 1400 meters, while the eastern part is composed of Mesozoic Jurassic and Cretaceous purple-red sandstones, commonly known as "Dongshan", with the highest altitude reaching 2700 meters rice.

The Cenozoic strata in the basin are mainly distributed in the piedmont area on the east bank of the Longchuan River, forming five large "beams" - hills, extending to the central and western parts of the basin.As far back as the beginning of the Quaternary, there was a large lake here. Later, due to changes in the earth's crust and many glacial activities, it formed the current general trend of mountains and rivers.Since the Cenozoic strata in the Yuanmou Basin, especially the Lower Pleistocene (Yuanmou Formation) strata are well developed and well exposed, and there are quite a variety of vertebrate fossils preserved in the strata, it has attracted the attention of scientists for a long time. And conducted some investigations and studies.After liberation, under the cordial care of the Party and Chairman Mao, the research work of paleoanthropology has developed rapidly, and many new materials have been discovered here one after another.Especially in 1965, young geologists Qian Fang and Pu Qingyu from the Institute of Geomechanics of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences found the teeth of "Homo erectus" (commonly known as "ape man") on a hill in the northwest of Shangnabeng Village. After the fossils were discovered, scientific investigations in the Yuanmou Basin were carried out on a larger scale.Now, we are here again full of revolutionary pride, following the work of the previous two years, we are going to further unravel the mysteries of ancient human history.

The car drove into the basin along the Panshan Road, and it became hotter and hotter as it went down. The climate here is a typical subtropical continental climate (the annual average temperature is about 22°C, and the highest can reach 42°C). "Yuanmou Man" Knows How to Use Stone Tools Among a group of low hills, there is a mountain bag with a height of about 4 meters and surrounded by gullies. Seven years ago, Qian Fang and others discovered two deeply petrified human incisor fossils in its brown clay layer. Their morphological characteristics are basically similar to the incisors of Homo erectus in Beijing.This is the first Homo erectus fossil discovered in southern my country.At the same time, some animal fossils were also found.After research, it is believed that the stratum where Homo erectus tooth fossils are produced may be the upper part of the Lower Pleistocene (about 1 million years ago), that is to say, Yuanmou Man may be the earliest Homo erectus fossils found in my country so far.

Our excavation this time was carried out with the strong support of the local party organization and poor and lower-middle peasants. The county leading agency supported the excavation machinery, and the excavation team was nearly 50 people.Scientists, workers, and members of the people's communes fought side by side, and the sound of bulldozers resounded through the hills. When cleaning the topsoil of the production area, good news came soon, and some stone flakes and stones with traces of artificial strikes were found.Stone tools are the weapons used by ancient human ancestors to conquer and transform nature.The making of tools marks man's conscious agency and his final separation from the animal kingdom.Yet we cannot help but be overjoyed, because they were found in the topsoil, which makes it difficult to tell who their owner was.Because the use of percussion stone tools continued until very late in human history.However, after all, it brought valuable clues, among which there may be tools used by the Yuanmou people.

With the deepening of the excavation work, three stone tools with obvious traces of artificial impact were finally found in the brown clay layer where the Yuanmou man's tooth fossils were found.Yuanmou people had the ability to manufacture and use stone tools, we are sure of this. We have uncovered nearly half of the hill where Yuanmou Man is located. There are not many mammal fossils there, but this is the fossil layer containing the fossil remains of Homo erectus, which shows that these animals once lived with Yuanmou Man.The most exciting part of the excavation was the discovery of dense charcoal!

Oldest remains of human fire? "Charcoal dust!" The comrade who discovered it first exclaimed.More than one charcoal was found.What is striking is the phenomenon of "symbiosis" between charcoal and mammalian fossils. Animal fossils can be found wherever charcoal is found, and charcoal can be found in most places where there are animal fossils.Is it a natural fire or a relic of artificial fire?This is an intriguing question.According to the strata, this is a shallow water area near the lake. The clay layer often contains gravel or gravel lenses, fossils containing freshwater snails, and there are often traces of porcupine gnawing on mammal fossils, etc., indicating that there is no It may be the residence of ancient humans.According to analysis, these charcoal chips are not like the ashes of the original place of the fire, but were washed down by rainwater from the nearby shore, but the distance does not seem to be too far away.

In the past, charcoal debris appeared in the strata in the Lantian people's production area in Gongwangling, Shaanxi. There were three or four places there, and the distribution range was not large. The largest charcoal debris was only "recognizable to the naked eye".According to research, it is believed that they may be left over from the use of fire by primitive people, which means that people in Lantian may have learned to use fire.But here, charcoal chips are clearly visible, the finer ones are as small as sesame seeds, and the larger ones are bigger than soybean grains.The distribution area of ​​charcoal chips is relatively large, and there are several layers up and down, and the distance between layers varies from 30 to 50 cm.

"Using fire" is a remarkable event in human history. Using fire to make human beings dominate a natural force is a great progress in human culture.Yuanmou people not only made and used stone tools, but it seems that they might also use fire! Clawed Beasts-Ancient Animal Fossils After excavating the "Yuanmou Ren" mountain, we basically figured out the layer relationship of the fossils. We decided to expand the excavation area and expose a large area to the east, that is, toward the shore of the lake at that time.First use explosive blasting to loosen the soil layer, and then use a bulldozer to lift off the thick covering layer.The rumble of cannons and the rattle of machines made the excavation site a tense and busy scene.Not only have we successively found some stone tools used by Yuanmou people and more relics of fire use, but we have also found for the first time from the primary layer an ancient mammal that survived from the Tertiary period—the tooth fossils of clawed beasts, which are Yuanmou people’s fossils. The age of human existence - the early and late Pleistocene has added another strong evidence.

In the winter of 1973, more than 6,000 cubic meters of earth were excavated in Yuanmou Man's birthplace. Although human fossils still need to be found, the hard work has borne fruit.We not only found 14 species of mammal fossils, including several surviving species from the Tertiary Period, but also cultural relics of Yuanmou Man.In particular, the discovery of a large amount of dense charcoal is of great value for the study of the history of human fire use, because Yuanmou people lived more than 1 million years earlier than the earliest human fire use known so far. Unexpected Discovery in Sijia Village That's strange, where did the considerable amount of debris on the ground come from?It has been observed that, unlike the natural ones, its traces of artificial strikes are too obvious.We searched on the second and third terraces near Sijia Village, and the open surface of the Longchuan River unfolded in front of us. There were several papaya trees in the large sugarcane fields by the river, and numerous fruits emerged from the leaves.It's almost time to return to the station, and we don't want to give up if we can't find the origin of the stone tools.Suddenly, a rather large gully appeared not far away. Could there be clues to unravel the mystery there? Sure enough, a typical stone tool was accidentally found from the deposits of the gully, mixed with a large number of residual stone slices among numerous gravels. Soon, after excavation, many stone tools were found from the original strata, which belonged to the tools of humans in the late Paleolithic period, because the culture of the Paleolithic period is characterized by striking stone tools.Not only do we find percussion tools here, but we also find percussion tools of the same nature from other places. microliths discovered Rain, non-stop.We braved the rain and searched carefully on the hillside.The rain caused a temporary pause in the field excavation work, but it washed out countless fossils, and this time it did an unexpected job for us. There are often many white quartz fragments on the brick-red weathering crust near Danawu Village, which seem to have artificial impact marks on them. What is their significance? On the edge of a small shallow gully, we found a surprising phenomenon. There was a piece of round gravel half buried in the soil. Its surface was moistened by rain, showing faint traces of smashing. The wet soil around it was dull in color, and flakes of flint were scattered on it. The pale flint fragments were so dazzling compared with the dull wet soil, and in some places the fine chips of the flakes were exposed by the washing of the rain.what!Isn't this the "working point" of the smashing stone tool?There are stone anvils and stone hammers, and there are marks on them.We continued to search carefully, and even found a small tunnel stone tool that was "forgotten" by the ancients-a shoe-shaped scraper that was cut very delicately.Near Danawu Village, we found more "work sites". Could this be the site of a microlith tool production site?This finding deserves further investigation. How did the microliths come about?It turns out that when the material culture of primitive humans transitioned from Paleolithic culture to Neolithic culture, compound tools (such as spears, arrows, etc.) appeared in large numbers on the basis of accumulated rich production experience. In order to better play the role of tools, Therefore, stone tools are generally developing towards small and exquisite.Since the appearance of microlithic tools in large numbers in the late Paleolithic period, they continued to the late Neolithic period in many areas.In the past, the microlith tools discovered in my country were mainly found in the north, and now we have also found it in the Yuanmou area, which is of great significance.It not only fills the gap in the Yunnan area, but more importantly, preliminary research shows that it has its own characteristics, which are different from the microlithic culture in northern my country, and it represents a new regional microlithic culture.This fully proves that the production struggle of mankind and the development of material culture are all moving forward according to the same law. According to the discovered microlithic materials, there are many scrapers with deep notches, which are considered to be used to process utensils such as arrow shafts and bone needles, which proves that human hunting activities were well developed at that time. Apocalypse of a Polished Stone Ax I remember that in 1971, the expedition team held a small on-site exhibition of "Yuanmou Ape Man" in Yuanmou, and a member of Zhanger Village named Yang Yi presented us with a polished stone axe.According to the information provided by this commune member, we visited the workers at the lime kiln in Zhanger Village and conducted an on-the-spot investigation.We found a lot of pottery and polished stone tools there, which is indeed a Neolithic site.Later, the expedition team discovered another Neolithic site in Dadunzi, the upper reaches of the Zhanger Village River.This site has been excavated many times by the Yunnan Provincial Museum to prove that it is a typical Neolithic site with thick cultural accumulation, rich relics, well-preserved and large area, providing valuable materials for the study of primitive societies in Yunnan.This is the famous Neolithic site of Dadunzi more than 3000 years ago. The Neolithic Age is a stage of development after the Paleolithic and Microlithic.During this period, there were significant developments in terms of production methods, material culture, and social organization.Humans in the Neolithic Age have already started to engage in primitive agriculture and animal husbandry.At this time, in addition to striking stone tools, polished stone tools also appeared and used in large numbers, and pottery and textiles were invented.Due to the development of productivity, it also promotes the improvement of human culture. This time the expedition team was not satisfied with the materials that had been found, and visited the poor and lower-middle peasants in the vicinity again, conducting publicity and investigation at the same time.With the enthusiastic support of leaders at all levels and the broad masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, we have successively found many precious cultural relics and many Neolithic sites in Yuanmou area.From the inspiration of a stone ax to the group of ruins found later, the scientific investigations in Yuanmou area have obtained a wealth of physical materials on the development of primitive society.Through these materials, a magnificent picture of the continuous development of primitive human beings in the struggle with nature is shown in front of us.We firmly believe that with further excavation and research, the understanding of the history of ancient human development in the Yuanmou Basin will be more in-depth in the future.