Wushan Ape-man Site

Wushan Ape-man Site is located at Longguping Village of Wushan County, Chongqing. It covers an area of 700 square meters. It has been listed as a key national cultural protection unit.

On October 13, 1985, molars and mandible fossils were discovered at Longping Village in Damiao District of Wushan County by Huang Wanbo (a famous paleoanthropologist). The discovery shocked the world since it wavers the theory of human beings were stemmed from Africa and also proved that the earliest human beings in China were born in Three Gorges Area.

Those unearthed fossils could be dated back to 2.01 million and 2.04 million years ago after identification. The discovery of Wushan Ape-man fossils indicated that there were primitive human beings lived and activated at Sichuan Area about 2 million years ago. Wushan Ape-man is the earliest human being fossil unearthed in China so far.

Authorities said that the discovery of Wushan Ape-man fossils promoted the evolution of Chinese people back to 2 million years ago. The discovery also provides new evidence for searching of more ancient (about 2 million to 4 million years ago) human being fossils and cultural relics. It also provides evidence to prove that human beings were stemmed from Yangtze River Basin of China.

In the end of 1988, archeologists collected 120 species of vertebrate fossils at Wushan Ape-man Site. A batch of artificial stone implements was unearthed in the second excavation in 1997. Later, experts inferred that this area experienced a 2000-year volcanic eruption from the analysis of the rare metals here. Homo sapiens fossils and Butterfly-ape man fossils (about 1.4 million to 2 million years ago) were unearthed at the place called Earth Scar. We can infer that Homo sapiens migrated to the hottest and wettest place from the dark and cold Africa at that time.