Some 105,000 pieces of equipment, animal fossils and their fragments, have been found at the site, and more than 95% of the equipment is made of petrified wood that resembles stone.
“These teams challenge the classical concept that during the Paleolithic period, stone teams were small in the northern part of China, while in the southern part they were giants. Among those who made giant stone equipment, the other people of Mengxihe also have unique small artifacts and have shaped a long-lasting regional tradition,” Zheng said.
Wang Youping, a professor of archeology at Peking University, said the abundant plant remains discovered at the site were the first discovered in this period.
Although archaeologists have so far recovered more than 30,000 pieces of seeds and culminations, they constitute a very small proportion of all samples recovered in 2023.
Rudimentary studies have revealed that plants, in addition to peach, grape, plum, walnut, and acorn, were the most commonly edible.
“Most Paleolithic sites contain only stone equipment and animal fossils, but in this one there is a lot of plant remains. We know that other Paleolithic peoples lived by hunting and gathering plant-based foods. The first theory has been proven through the many animal fossils found. seen before, but this last one is shown for the first time,” Wang said.
Zheng from the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology said that plant remains are extremely difficult to preserve, but those at the site were found in a special water-saturated environment.
Ziyang became famous about 70 years ago with the discovery of Ziyang Man, a 40,000-year-old human skull. The skull is considered a vital representative of Homo sapiens in southern China. The Mengxihe site is about 35 kilometers from where Ziyang man discovered.