Tianshuigou Site: Aerial photography of the discovery site of the “Dali Man” skull fossil

On March 21, 1978, Liu Shuntang and other comrades from the geological exploration team of the Electric Power Design Institute of the Shaanxi Provincial Water Conservancy Bureau accidentally discovered a preserved stone while working in Tianshuigou east of Jiefang Village, Duanjia Village, Dali County, Weinan City. Basically complete ancient human skull fossil. Later, it was named "Dali Man", about 180,000 to 230,000 years ago——

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On April 20, 1992, the Dali Man Site was announced by the Shaanxi Provincial People's Government as the third batch of provincial cultural relics protection units; on June 25, 2001, it was announced by the State Council It is one of the fifth batch of national key cultural relics protection units and was renamed "Tianshuigou Site". On the afternoon of February 4, 2021, I came to this site for the first time and operated a drone to take aerial photography.

This is located at the junction of the loess plateau and the Wei River Valley. It is a typical transition area from plateau edge slope to valley terrace. Tianshuigou is a large gully on the east bank of the Luohe River. The Luohe River turns from the north meridian to the southeast here, cutting through the loess plateau to expose the Quaternary strata, including "Dali Man" skull fossils, stone tools and animal fossils. wait.

This place is located at the junction of Dali County and Pucheng County in Weinan City, with ravines and crisscrosses and inconvenient transportation. Tianshuigou is on the east side of Jiefang Village, in the shape of a semicircle, with its opening facing the west. There is a cement road leading there, and two stone monuments are erected at the mouth of the ditch, namely the monument for cultural relics protection units in Shaanxi Province and the monument for national key cultural relics protection units.

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The drone rose from the mouth of Tianshui Gorge and flew above Jiefang Village. Then, he turned the drone's head and flew over Tianshui Valley from west to east. The terrain and landforms here were unobstructed, like a huge torn open wound.

The loess plateau where Tianshuigou is located is about 120 meters above the surface of the Luo River, and runs generally from northeast to southwest. , known as "Duan Jialiang". In the section of Tianshuigou, there are obvious three-level terraces, and each layer is very clear.

The first terrace is about 8 meters above the river surface and is composed of gravel layer, sand layer and sandpaper clay layer. It belongs to the Holocene era; the second terrace is about 35 meters above the river surface and is composed of gravel layer, It is composed of a layer of grained sand, yellow sand and silt and is dated to the late Pleistocene. The third terrace is about 50 meters above the river surface and is composed of a layer of sand, gravel and loess and is dated to the late middle Pleistocene.

Shooting from south to north

Shooting from north to south

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< p> The skull fossils of the Dali people and the earliest stone tools and animal fossils were all unearthed in the middle and lower sand and gravel layers of the third terrace on the north side of Tianshuigou. After repeated identification, Dali people were an earlier type of early Homo sapiens, filling an important link in the history of human evolution.

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From October 1978 to October 1980, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other units conducted two archaeological excavations here, and unearthed smaller There are more than 800 pieces of stone tools, as well as mammal fossils such as ancient rhomboids, three-door horses, and rhinos.

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From the autumn of 1983 to the spring of 1984, the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archeology and the Xi'an Banpo Museum conducted a large-scale archaeological survey around Tianshuigou, covering an area of ??more than 10 kilometers. 18 new Paleolithic sites were discovered, and archaeological excavations were conducted at important sites such as Yuhong River and Yuhong Village, and more than 6,000 pieces of various stone products and a rich number of animal fossils were discovered.