Maozhu Mountain and Guanshan Sites

Maozhu Mountain and Guanshan Sites

The Maozhu Mountain and Guanshan Sites are classified as Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level.

Era: Paleolithic Age

The Maozhu Mountain and Guanshan Sites are located in Luoxi Village, Xijin Subdistrict, about four to five kilometers northwest of Ningguo City, Xuancheng, Anhui Province. They are cultural sites from the Paleolithic Age, situated 600 meters east of Xijin River and 150 meters from the Wan-Gan Railway. The two sites are located on two southwest-northeast trending ridges, about 500 meters apart. They were surveyed and discovered by the Anhui Provincial Institute of Archaeology in late 1986 and excavated in 1997. The sites are roughly semi-circular in distribution, measuring 10 meters in length and 6 meters in width. Over 1,100 gravel pieces and stone artifacts were unearthed, mainly including choppers, scrapers, pointed choppers, stone balls, and pointed tools. The central part of the site features a blank area of about four to five square meters. The sites are buried at the bottom of the reticulated red soil, dating back to the middle Middle Pleistocene.

The sites were discovered in 1988 and excavated in 1997 by the Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other organizations. The Maozhu Mountain Site covers an area of 500,000 square meters, with its core area roughly semi-circular in shape, consisting of a ring belt made up of over 1,100 gravel pieces and stone artifacts. On the ring belt, there are a number of circular arrangements composed of gravel and stone artifacts, with diameters ranging from 0.0 to 0.0 meters (text unclear), totaling 20 numbered features. Among the remains...

A total of 154 stone artifacts were found. The geological age of the remains is the middle Middle Pleistocene, approximately 600,000 years ago. The nature of the remains may be that of a material storage site and a stone tool manufacturing workshop. The Guanshan Paleolithic Site covers an area of 450,000 square meters, with the two sites being about 500 meters apart from northeast to southwest.

The Maozhu Mountain and Guanshan Paleolithic site clusters are among the earlier discovered open-air type Paleolithic sites in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, providing important data for the study of early humans during the Paleolithic Age.

In May 2013, they were designated and announced as part of the seventh batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level by the State Council.

(1) Maozhu Mountain Site.

Protected area: bounded by the surrounding wall (18×18 meters).

Construction control zone: outside the protected area, 120 meters east to the road edge, 120 meters south to the cement road edge, 60 meters west to the boundary wall of the nursing home, and 60 meters north to the edge of the kiln site.

(2) Guanshan Site.

Protected area: bounded by the site itself, covering an area 35 meters north-south and 27 meters east-west.

Construction control zone: outside the surrounding wall, 170 meters east to the ditch, 10 meters south to the pond, 20 meters west, and 50 meters north.

Further reading:

· Seventh Batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level