99 Paleolithic sites newly discovered in Ordos

A total of 99 Paleolithic sites were recently discovered in the city of Ordos in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

That's quite an achievement for the three-month Paleolithic archaeological survey, which was jointly conducted by the Ordos Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the School of Sociology and Anthropology at Sun Yat-sen University in Ordos' East Ulan Mulun River Basin this year.

Bao Lei, a staff member of the Ordos Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, said in an interview on Dec 23 that nearly 10,000 stone artifacts were collected in the archaeological dig.

The distribution and composition of the stone products are well preserved. This is said to improve the chances of more precisely estimating the age of this batch of materials - and also provides better physical data for further research on ancient human behavior.

Liu Yang, an associate professor at the School of Sociology and Anthropology at Sun Yat-sen University, said the biggest highlights of this archaeological investigation were the distribution of the discovered Paleolithic sites, which had a certain clustering phenomenon.

The collected stone products can generally reflect the general appearance of the stone product manufacturing process.

Also, although there are differences in the number and types of stone products at the 99 sites, the tool types were generally found to be a combination of stone tools represented by serrated blades, scrapers and notched tools.

It is worth mentioning that in the dig, archaeologists discovered typical fine stone leaves and stone cores. This indicated that the survey specimens may be a mixture of stone products from different cultures in multiple periods - at least in the Paleolithic middle and late periods.

The Ordos Plateau has an important position in the history of Paleolithic archaeology in China and the world, according to Wang Dafang, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Cultural Relics Society.

Wang added that the local earth had enriched the Paleolithic archaeological materials and Paleolithic cultural connotations in this area, making it an important discovery for the epoch in China.