The Yuanmou people live neither in the Yangtze River Basin nor the Yellow River Basin, but in Yuanmou County, Yunnan.

As an early Paleolithic human fossil in southwestern China, Yuanmou Man is the earliest Homo erectus known so far in China. He lived in the Yuanmou area of ??Yunnan. 1.7 million years ago, Yuanmou, Yunnan, was a lush, subtropical grassland and forest, where Yuanmou people and remnant animals from the Third Age such as branched deer and claw-hoofed beasts lived and multiplied together.

In order to survive, the Yuanmou people used crude stone tools to hunt them. According to the two teeth, stone tools, and charcoal chips of the monks, as well as the subsequent excavation of a small number of stone products, a large amount of charcoal chips, and mammal fossils in the same layer at the same location, it was proved that they were able to make tools and use fire. Primitive humans.

Extended information

Discovery process:

In 1965, Qian Fang, Pu Yuqing and other scholars went to look for fossils near Shangnabeng Village. At that time, under the guidance of an old cattle herder, they went to a ravine about 1 km west of Beng Village to look for fossils. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon, a person found the fossil of a Yunnan horse under a dirt bag, and then found two human incisors. Later, scholars brought the tooth fossils back to Beijing.

In February 1972, this discovery was announced after identification by Hu Chengzhi of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. Hu Chengzhi published the article "Fossils of ape-man teeth discovered in Yuanmou, Yunnan" in the 1973 issue of Acta Geologica Sinica.

In October 1973, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized a large-scale excavation and discovered artificially crafted stone tools, charcoal scraps, and mammal fossils in nearby strata. But no new human fossils were discovered.

On July 25, 1976, its absolute geological age was determined to be about 1.7 million years ago using paleomagnetic methods.

Reference: Baidu Encyclopedia-Yuanmou People