The discovery of the Caoyangang Ruins site in Xinghua city, located in East China's Jiangsu province, was announced by the National Cultural Heritage Administration on Sept 13.
The find is widely seen as being an important achievement of the regional civilization exploration project that has been conducted by Jiangsu since 2022.
Covering an area topping 80,000 square meters, the site can be traced back around 7,000 years ago.
It mainly includes ash pits, house sites, fences and ash ditches. More than 150 ash pits have been cleared, with over half of the pits filled with wood that was suitable for building materials.
In terms of relics, over 2,800 small items of various types have been unearthed, including pottery, objects made of horn, stone implements and wooden objects.
The wooden objects include drill wood igniters, spinning wheels and cones. Among them, drill wood igniters are currently the earliest physical objects to have been found in China.
The site is the only coastal wetland prehistoric site found in the northern region of the Yangtze River and the low-altitude saturated burial environment allows for the preservation of organic matter remains, said Gan Huiyuan, the leader of the site.
Gan added that the discovery of a large number of animal remains and a huge amount of plant remains was of great significance for studying the prehistoric economy and the development and dissemination of rice agriculture in the region.
A jade implement discovered at the Caoyangang Ruins site. [Photo/WeChat account: jstvjsxw]