Tiger Mountain Site

Tiger Mountain Site

The Tiger Mountain Site is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

There are over 30 Neolithic cultural sites in the Daihai area of Liangcheng. Among them, the Tiger Mountain and Yuanzigou sites have drawn significant attention from domestic archaeologists. The former has been included in the second batch of key cultural relics protection units in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, while the latter was once listed as one of the national archaeological discoveries in 1987.

The Tiger Mountain Site is situated on the southern slope of Tiger Mountain in Yongxing, approximately 30 kilometers northwest of Daihai. It lies to the north of Manhan Mountain and boasts a history of over 5,000 years. Excavation work at the site began in 1982 under the direction of Tian Guangjin, a renowned local archaeologist, and the fieldwork was largely completed within a year. Through excavation and survey, it was found that the site is surrounded by stone walls that rise above the ground, covering a total area of about 30,000 square meters. Over 60 semi-subterranean house foundations were excavated alone, distributed across several terraces of varying elevations. The semi-subterranean houses on each terrace were typically arranged in groups of two or three, with doors mostly facing southeast. More than 200 pieces of pottery, stone tools, and bone artifacts have been unearthed and are now displayed in the site exhibition room. In addition, a complete set of li (ancient cooking vessel) artifacts was discovered here — the only such intact collection in China — ranging from pointed-bottom to round-bottom li, providing extremely valuable specimens for studying the origin and development of the li.

The stone walls surrounding the buildings discovered at the Tiger Mountain Site measure 38 meters from northwest to southeast and 31 meters from northeast to southwest. The northern and northeastern sections of the wall are relatively well-preserved, with remaining heights of about 0.3 meters and widths of around 1 meter. The western and southern walls, due to the steeper terrain, have suffered more severe damage, but their orientation remains clearly visible. The entire stone wall follows the contour of the mountain, forming an irregular, basket-like shape that is narrower at the top and wider at the bottom. This stone wall structure is among the earliest city wall constructions discovered through archaeology in China to date. Although it does not yet possess the characteristics of formal urban architecture, it is distinctly a prototype of a city and can undoubtedly be regarded as one of the birthplaces of urban construction.

Judging from the densely concentrated residential remains and the stone enclosure defense system on the mountainside of Tiger Mountain, it is evident that this site served as an important stronghold for ancient humans in the region. The ancient inhabitants who lived here began to adopt a settled lifestyle, engaging primarily in primitive hunting and animal husbandry-based agriculture, and had started to master skills in construction, carving, and painting.

While ancient humans relied on the mountains for shelter, they always regarded water as the source of life. The Yuanzigou Site, excavated on the western slope of Yuanzigou on the northern shore of Daihai, fully confirms this. With a history of over 5,000 years, the Yuanzigou Site has been under excavation since 1986 under the leadership of Guo Suxin, another distinguished archaeologist from the region, with a currently exposed area of 2,000 square meters. A total of 28 cave-style houses and 43 semi-subterranean houses have been unearthed, along with hundreds of polished stone tools including stone axes, stone knives, stone shovels, stone sickles, stone grinding plates, stone grinding rods, and various pottery household items. The floors and walls of the house remains were constructed using white lime plastering, much of which remains well-preserved to this day. Multiple small kilns used for firing pottery and pools for producing lime have also been discovered near the house sites. After personally inspecting the site, Professor Yan Wenming, head of the Department of Archaeology at Peking University, remarked: “The discovery of such a large number of clearly arranged Neolithic human dwellings in cave form at the Yuanzigou Site is truly rare. Judging from the architectural style of the caves and their relatively standardized construction, one might wonder if there were already specialized construction workers at the time?” The archaeological findings at both the Yuanzigou and Tiger Mountain sites provide extremely valuable material evidence for the study of the origins of civilization and statehood in northern China...

Source: People's Government of Ulanqab City