Dingcun Site

Dingcun Site

The Dingcun Site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Located by the Fen River near Ding Village, about 4 kilometers from Xiangfen County and 35 kilometers from Linfen City, the Dingcun Site stretches approximately eleven kilometers from Shicun in the north to Caizhuang in the south. It is internationally renowned for the discovery of fossils from China’s Paleolithic Age.

The Dingcun Site is a gravel field within a landscape of fractured cliffs and ravines. It was here that cultural remains from China’s Middle Paleolithic Age were unearthed. The initial discovery was made in 1953 during sand excavation work. In the autumn of 1954, a team of archaeologists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Shanxi Province conducted excavations across an area of about 11 kilometers in length and 5 kilometers in width around Ding Village. From the ancient river gravel layers beneath the loess, they discovered three fossilized teeth of a Dingcun child aged around 12 or 13, over two thousand stone tools crafted by the Dingcun people, as well as fossils of 28 mammal species, 5 fish species, and 30 mollusk species that coexisted with the Dingcun people. In 1976, a child’s skull fossil was also found in the gravel layers at the same site. Since these discoveries were made in Ding Village, they were named “Dingcun Man.” The Dingcun Man exhibits physical traits intermediate between modern humans and apes, with shovel-shaped incisors similar to those of modern Mongolians.

Further Reading:

· First Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units