Xiaochangliang (simplified Chinese: 小长梁; traditional Chinese: 小長梁; pinyin: xiǎochángliáng) is the site of some of the earliest paleolithic remains in East Asia, located in the Nihewan Basin in Yangyuan County, Hebei, China, most famous for the stone tools discovered there.
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The tool forms discovered include side and end scrapers, notches, burins, and disc cores. Although it is generally more difficult to date Asian sites than African sites because Asian sites typically lack volcanic materials that can be dated isotropically, the age of the tools has been magnetostratigraphically dated as 1.36 million years. This method is more accurate than carbon dating since it uses the data of changes caused by earth's magnetic field.
The site was first discovered by the US geologist George Barbour in 1923. Barbour invited French archaeologists Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Pere Licent. In 1935 de Chardin found a stone (flint) tool and deternimined the age of the site to be over a million years - the oldest artefact then known. Many scientists, including de Chardin, debated whether this tool might not be naturally formed.
The discovery by Pei Wenzhong of Peking Man hundreds of kilometers to the south (followed by wars and revolution) distracted the world scientific attention. However, from 1972-1978 more than 2000 pieces of stone tools were discovered, together with some bone tools, which confirmed Xiaochangliang (or Nihewan) as a paleolithic site.
In 1982 Wei Qi, then 44, found a huge hominid settlement at Donggutuo Village. He took samples to Pei, whose Peking Man was not half as old. "He said nothing," said Wei. "But I guess he had accepted it." Pei died of a heart attack a few days later. [1]