Site of the Yiyuan Ape-Man

Site of the Yiyuan Ape-Man

The Site of the Yiyuan Ape-Man is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Site of the Yiyuan Ape-Man is located on Qizi’an Mountain in Jiuhui Village, Tumen Town, at the foot of Mount Lushan in Yiyuan County, Shandong Province, about 3 kilometers from the county seat.

On September 18, 1981, cultural relics surveyors in Yiyuan County discovered a fossilized ape-man skull in a limestone crevice on this mountain. Authenticated by authoritative institutions such as the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peking University, and the Shandong Provincial Museum, it was identified as a fossil of an ape-man from the Paleolithic Age, dating back approximately four to fifty thousand years — around the same period as the world-famous “Peking Man.” It belongs to the middle Pleistocene epoch and has been named the “Yiyuan Ape-Man.”

The first discovery at the Yiyuan Ape-Man site was a skullcap, followed by six teeth, a humerus, a rib, a femur, and two brow ridges. Among the associated fossils were bones of animals common to the middle Pleistocene, including the giant deer, Li’s wild boar, giant beaver, tiger, and hyena. The skull was determined to include most of the parietal bone, part of the occipital bone, and parts of the frontal bone. Experts concluded that the remains belonged to two individual ape-men. Later excavations uncovered two more ape-man teeth fossils, consistent with the initially discovered ones. The discovery of the “Yiyuan Ape-Man” fossils is another major achievement in China’s paleoanthropological research. It is the first such find in Shandong Province and represents the earliest-known “Shandong Man” to date. The skull fossil of the “Yiyuan Ape-Man” is now preserved at the Shandong Provincial Museum.

In 2006, the Yiyuan Ape-Man site, as a Paleolithic-era ancient site, was approved by the State Council for inclusion in the sixth batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units