Lantian people lived thousands of years ago.

Lantian people's life time was originally thought to be about 690,000 years ago to 950,000 years ago, but it was thought to be about 700,000 years ago to1150,000 years ago after re-determination.

Lantian people are hundreds of thousands of years earlier than Beijingers. So they have many differences in physical form. For example, Lantian people look more like apes, and their intelligence and limbs are not as developed as those of Beijing people.

Archaeologists therefore classify Lantian people as "early Homo erectus" and Beijingers as "late Homo erectus". They lived in the Middle Pleistocene and Paleolithic. The early Lantian people were the earliest residents of Xi 'an.

Cultural characteristics

Lantian people were discovered in Chenjiawo and Gongwangling, Lantian County, Shaanxi Province in 1963 and 1964 respectively. Gongwangling is located in the southeast of Lantian County17km. It is a small earthen mountain with Bahe River in front and Qinling Mountain in the back. When climbing Gongwangling, a gravel layer with a thickness of about 30 meters was found, which was covered with "red soil" with a thickness of about 30 meters.

There are two layers of buried soil in the lower part of red soil. A relatively complete human skull, three teeth fossils, stone tools and many animal fossils have been found between these two layers of buried soil. A relatively complete mandible fossil was found in Chenjiawo.

Only 34 stone products were found in Lantian people's place of origin. The raw materials are mainly quartzite and veined quartz, with stone cores, stone chips and stone tools. Stone tools include large sharp tools, large multilateral tools, small and medium-sized multilateral tools and unilateral tools, as well as scrapers and stone balls. Rough machining technology, single-sided machining and interactive machining. Irregular shape and low utilization rate of raw materials indicate that the stone-making technology at that time was still relatively primitive.