Nanshan Site

Nanshan Site is 200 meters away from the north of Nanshan, Shangfang Village, Chengguan Township, Mingxi County, Fujian Province. It is a national key cultural relics protection site and a provincial archaeological park. The site is comprised of caves 1-4 on the south side of Shishan Mountain, the top, the east slope and the north slope of the mountain, covering an area of about 180,000 square meters. 

The site was discovered in 1986 and excavated for six times between 1988 and 2017. It has the characteristics of the best stratum preservation, rich cultural connotation, and a large time span (about 5,800-3,500 years ago) and so on. In 2017, it is awarded the honor of “TOP six new archaeological discoveries in China”.

More than 50,000 carbonized rices unearthed from the site are the earliest rice remains found in the eastern area of Mount Wuyi, and the Nanshan Site is the cave site with the largest number of carbonized rice grains unearthed in China. There are many similarities in the anthropological features between the unearthed ancient human remains and those in the “Liangdao people” found in the Penghu, Taiwan, which provides research materials for many popular studies, such as the prehistoric relationship between Fujian and Taiwan and the origin of prehistoric human beings in Taiwan. The important remains of living area built by burnt earth, mud polished black pottery and white pottery found in the site are unique and rare in Fujian Province.