Shuidonggou is an archaeological site and

tourist attraction A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement. Types Places of natural beaut ...

in Ordos,

Yinchuan Yinchuan is the capital of the Ningxia, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China, and was the capital of the Tangut people, Tangut-led Western Xia, Western Xia dynasty. It has an area of and a total population of 2,859,074 according to the 2020 C ...

Ningxia Ningxia, officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in Northwestern China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1954 but was later separated from Gansu in 1958 and reconstituted as an autonomous ...

. It is the earliest

paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...

site in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

, dating from over 30,000 years ago, and one of the

AAAAA Tourist Attractions of China AAAAA () is awarded to the most important and best-maintained tourist attractions in the People's Republic of China, given the highest level in the rating categories used by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. As of 2025, there are 359 tourist ...

, a list of the most important and best-maintained tourist attractions in the People's Republic of China.

History

Human occupation of the site took place in the

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division ...

to Middle Holocene. Over 50,000 individual items have been collected from the site. A section of the

Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' long wall") is a series of fortifications in China. They were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against vario ...

lies within the site.

Discovery

Émile Licent Émile Licent (1876–1952; with the adopted Chinese name, 桑志华, while he was working in China) was a French Jesuit trained as a natural historian. He spent more than twenty-five years researching in Tianjin. His expeditions spread across var ...

, a paleontologist from France, was the first to discover the site in 1920, finding a

Rhinoceros A rhinoceros ( ; ; ; : rhinoceros or rhinoceroses), commonly abbreviated to rhino, is a member of any of the five extant taxon, extant species (or numerous extinct species) of odd-toed ungulates (perissodactyls) in the family (biology), famil ...

fossil and stone tools. His discovery was followed up by a formal excavation in 1923 and successive excavations since.

References

{{reflist Archaeological sites in China Paleolithic sites in China Tourist attractions in Ningxia