Panxian Dadong Paleolithic Site

　　The national-level cultural heritage site — the Panxian Dadong is located in Shili Village, Zhudong Township. Originally a Taoist worship cave, the Guangxu-era "Puan Direct-Jurisdiction Hall Records" describes it as “bright and spacious, free from the distress of darkness, with flat ground where a three-room Buddhist temple was built. Ascending via winding paths from the temple, one finds a tall stalagmite with a flat top, upon which a Guanyin Pavilion was erected. Descending further, the cliffs close in, and by sidling crab-like through the narrow passage, the great cave lies ahead.” Later, it became a place where villagers produced saltpeter. The mountainous piles of ancient biological fossils within the cave were casually discarded, smashed to feed pigs, or used to fertilize fields. It was not until the 1970s that the site was discovered by geologists.

　　In 1990, relevant departments in Liupanshui City sent several stone artifacts collected from the surface deposits at the entrance of Panxian Dadong to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for research. Huang Weiwen, head of the Paleoanthropology Department at the institute, and others noted that these exquisitely crafted stone tools bore clear and standardized evidence of platform preparation techniques — a method previously thought to be unique to contemporary cultures in the West. They subsequently dispatched geologist Yuan Zhenxin and others for an on-site survey. At the site, they collected over ten stone artifacts and a large number of mammalian fossils, including several extinct species such as the Stegodon orientalis, the Chinese rhinoceros, and the giant tapir.

　　 In April 1992, with approval from the National Cultural Heritage Administration, a 21-day trial excavation and cleaning operation was carried out at Panxian Dadong. The results were astonishing: within an area of 12 square meters, over 700 stone artifacts and more than 500 fossil specimens were unearthed, including one human tooth fossil and dozens of mammal species, along with a small number of bird and fish fossils. The discoveries from the several excavations at Panxian Dadong have drawn increasing amazement and attention from the archaeological community both in China and abroad. Especially noteworthy is the fact that the cultural remains and original living surfaces at the Dadong site were preserved in the state they were left in, containing a wealth of potential information. The rich and well-preserved Quaternary deposits at Dadong provide ideal conditions for establishing a standard stratigraphic profile of Quaternary cave sediments in South China.

　　 In 1993, a formal excavation was conducted at Panxian Dadong, yielding four ancient human tooth fossils, over 2,000 stone artifacts, nearly 10,000 animal fossils, as well as a collection of ancient human cultural remains such as ash, charcoal fragments, and burnt bones. Panxian Dadong is an Pleistocene cave, and the discovery of a Middle Paleolithic human site here is extremely rare worldwide. Among the Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries in China in 1993, the Panxian Dadong site ranked first and was recognized by experts both in China and abroad as a major discovery of ancient human cave sites in the country. The excavation at Panxian Dadong is also rare among early human sites globally, offering an ideal location for multidisciplinary comprehensive research with significant scientific value. In terms of scale, age of cultural deposits, and the variety and quantity of archaeological materials, it is comparable to Beijing’s Zhoukoudian site.