Shuidonggou Site Museum

　　The Shuidonggou Tourist Area in Ningxia is a national AAAAA-level tourist attraction and a national geopark. It is hailed as the “birthplace of prehistoric archaeology in China” and a “historical testament to cultural exchanges between China and the West.”

　　The Shuidonggou Tourist Area is 19 kilometers west of Yinchuan City. This was a sacred place where humans thrived 30,000 years ago. In 1923, French paleontologists Teilhard de Chardin and Émile Licent discovered a prehistoric cultural site here. Through excavation, a large number of stone tools and animal fossils were unearthed, making Shuidonggou the earliest discovered Paleolithic human cultural site in China.

　　The Shuidonggou Site is one of the earliest excavated Paleolithic sites in China. In 1920, Belgian priest Father Teilhard discovered a woolly rhinoceros skull and a well-made quartzite tool in the loess-like rock cliffs east of Shuidonggou. In 1923, French paleontologists Teilhard de Chardin and Émile Licent found five Paleolithic locations in Shuidonggou. Through excavation, they obtained a large number of flaked stone tools and a small number of fragmented animal fossils. At that time, some scholars grouped the cultural remains of Shuidonggou with those from Salawusu in Wushen Banner, Inner Mongolia, under the name “Hetao Culture,” considering them to be relics from the middle Paleolithic period.

　　Since the 1960s, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the museums of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region have conducted multiple surveys and excavations at Shuidonggou. In addition to animal fossils and stone artifacts, bone tools and ornaments were also discovered. Re-examination results showed that the cultural artifacts from these two locations were different. The Shuidonggou Site should be classified as belonging to the late Paleolithic period. Thermoluminescence dating indicated that it dates back approximately 40,000 years.

　　A total of more than 10,000 stone artifacts have been discovered at the Shuidonggou Site, primarily made from siliceous limestone, followed by quartzite, then sandstone, flint, and others. The vast majority of the stone tools were processed from flakes or long flakes, mainly using the back-and-forth flaking method, but also including striking against the fracture surface, as well as cross, opposite, or alternate flaking. Among the tool types, scrapers were the most common, while points and choppers were rare.

　　Bone tools found at the site included bone awls made by grinding animal bone fragments. Ornaments were made from perforated ostrich eggshells with slightly polished edges. In addition, traces of fire use were also discovered at the site. (National Cultural Heritage Administration)