Nihewan Museum

Nihewan Museum

The Nihewan Museum serves as a patriotic education base.

The Nihewan Museum is located in the Nihewan Cultural Square of the new urban area of Yangyuan County. Covering an area of 20 mu, the main building has two floors with partial three-story sections, measuring 91 meters in length, 53 meters in width, and 17 meters in height, with a total construction area of 4,623 square meters. The total investment was 41 million yuan. As a national mid-sized exhibition venue, it is currently the only one in the province and the largest paleolithic-themed museum in the country, capable of displaying over 50,000 unearthed cultural relics. The museum has a semi-circular floor plan facing northeast, with a 30-meter-high “H”-shaped iconic pillar standing tall, symbolizing how Eastern humans emerged from Nihewan. The exterior walls are adorned with striped granite bands representing the standard stratigraphic layers of Nihewan.

The Nihewan Museum has an exhibition area of 2,145 square meters, with over 500 meters of exhibition space divided into an introductory hall, four main exhibition halls, and one temporary exhibition hall. It mainly showcases the Nihewan standard stratigraphy, the Nihewan ancient lake, early Paleolithic humans from the Majuangou site dining on elephants, mid-Paleolithic humans from the Houjiayao site hunting horses, the late Paleolithic microblade manufacturing workshop at the Hutouliang site, and scenes of early gathering and agricultural activities at the Yujiazhai site. Additionally, modern technologies such as painting, sculpture, sound, light, and electricity are used to comprehensively depict the production and daily life of Nihewan’s ancient humans—from hunting and gathering to using fire, eating, and making tools—from two million to ten thousand years ago. The museum is divided into six exhibition zones, with each hall interconnected in a looped structure yet individually compartmentalized and self-contained. The main structure also includes large storage rooms for cultural relics, archives, and restoration workshops. In terms of architectural scale and collection size, the museum ranks among the top, joining national-level museums such as the Yuanmou Man Museum in Yunnan and the Zhoukoudian Site Museum in Beijing as part of the world’s archaeological and scientific research bases. Moreover, on-site exhibition halls will be built within the Nihewan site cluster as integral parts of the museum, focusing on the permanent protection and exhibition of key sites such as Xiaochangliang, Hutouliang, Houjiayao, and Majuangou under protective shelters, recreating scenes of ancient human life.

The Paleolithic Age marks the emergence of humans, characterized by the use of chipped stone tools. Humans of this era exhibited primitive physical traits, and their remains coexisted with many extinct animal species. Geologically, it falls within the Pleistocene epoch, spanning from 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 years ago.

This exhibition zone reconstructs sites such as Majuangou, Xiaochangliang, Donggutuo, Cenjiawan, and Feiliang. The displays feature murals depicting the natural environment and human activities of the time alongside cultural relics and specimens, illustrating how humans made and used tools. The exhibits combine painted scenery with real artifacts—by hollowing out the hands holding weapons in the mural paintings and placing authentic relics there instead. This approach breaks away from traditional museum display conventions, allowing visitors to directly understand how these distant and unfamiliar stone tools were made and used.

During the exhibition, footage from the excavation of the Majuangou site and live video recordings from the Feiliang site excavation are played on loop.

On the first step of the 262-meter-long bronze walkway at the China Millennium Monument in Beijing—symbolizing the long river of Chinese history—the name of the Xiaochangliang site in Nihewan is engraved. A miniature replica of the Millennium Monument is also featured.

Further Reading:

· National Third-Class Museum of China