A key to solve the mystery of the origin of Lingnan ancestors

Qingtang Site is located in qingtang town, yingde city, which is under the jurisdiction of Qingyuan City in northern Guangdong Province. It is a typical cave site in the transitional period of Neolithic Age in southern China, showing the settlement pattern in southern China from 25,000 to 1000 years ago.

Through three years of archaeological work, continuous stratigraphic accumulation from the late Pleistocene to the early Holocene was discovered in the Qingtang site, and many important remains such as tombs and fire pits were cleared, and more than 10,000 specimens of ancient human fossils, stone tools, pottery, mussels, bone horns, animal bone fossils and plant remains were unearthed. Many discoveries make it a key to solve the mystery of the origin of Lingnan ancestors.

Archaeology found a tomb about 13500 years ago, and unearthed a well-preserved human bone fossil, which was a squat burial. This may be the earliest burial place in China. Archaeologists have confirmed that Cantonese people really ate all the land, sea and air through the remains: their diet was mainly deer, as well as birds, fish, turtles, snails and mussels ... The remains of the fire pit show that cooked food is normal, while a pile of boiled broken bones shows that ancestors used food efficiently. The change of food types reflects the transition history of southern China from a hunter-gatherer society to an early agricultural society.