In Inner Mongolian, the Salawusu River follows a U-shape valley
winding through Maowusu Desert in the southern tip of the Ordos
Grassland.
Salawusu means "yellow water" in Mongolian, from which we can
imagine the yellow waters of Salawusu River all year round.
Wavering and elegant red willows are seen on both banks of the
river, meaning this river is also called the Red Willow River. The
river valley was the cradle of an old, splendid Ordos culture.
Sang Zhihua, a French Catholic priest and geobiologist,
discovered a fossilized front tooth of a Hetao person for the first
time in the valley. Later, Chinese archeologists searched this area
many times and unearthed many cultural relics. The Hetao people
lived 35,000 years ago and created the Salawusu Culture. Geological
findings, fossilized animals, and stoneware show that this culture
was part of the late Paleolithic Period.
Salawusu sites are mainly found in Dagouwan village and
Dishaoguwan village, Wushen Banner, Ordos City of Inner
Mongolia.
Ashes were discovered at Dagouwan village. They were
oval-shaped, and one to two meters wide and long. The middle part
is basin-shaped and over 30 fragments of burned animal bones were
found near the basin. This shows that the site used to be a place
where Stone Age people roasted animals for food. In other parts of
the village, 100 to 200 pieces of stoneware were found. They were
rather small in size, including pointed, scraping and carving
tools. Most typical were scraping tools, small carving tools and
cuneiform stones. Though these pieces are distinguished from fine
Neoliths of the early Neolithic Period, fine column-shaped stones
were also found here, which testifies to the existence of fine
stoneware. The stoneware of the Salawusu Culture was very similar
to the earlier stoneware from the Peking Man culture, Xujiayao Man
culture in Yanggao, Shanxi Province and later stoneware from the
ShiyuCulture, Suxian County, Shanxi Province, and the Xiaonanhai
Culture, Anyang, Henan Province. This shows that all of these
cultures belong to a system ranging from Zhoukoudian (the Peking
man site) to Shiyu, and that Salawusu culture is closely related to
Central China.
Twenty-three fossils deriving from the Hetao people were
discovered, including 19 fossils, such as mandible bones,
thighbones, shank bones, splintered bones and blade bones. Six of
them were unearthed from the Proterozoic formations of the late
Pleistocene period. A child's front tooth was discovered in 1922.
Studies of Hetao man fossils show that they are 35,000 to 50,000
years old. Though their characteristics were close to those of
modern people, they retained some primitive characteristics, which
showed that they were Homo sapiens. The characteristics of Hetao
man's front teeth and skulls resembled the oriental race.
Many fragments of mammal fossils were also found on the
riversides, including the skulls and teeth of rhinoceroses, the
ribs of primitive cows and horses, the bones and tusks of elephants
and pieces of animals' legs. Fossil records show that the faunal
groups at Salawusu included giant Namagulingchi elephants with
slightly curved front teeth, which were similar to modern
elephants; fossil tusks discovered in Ordos being 2.4-3 meters
long; long-haired Pimao rhinoceroses whose fossils are widely found
in the post-Pleistocene formations in Ordos; a complete skeleton of
a Pimao rhinoceros was unearthed at the Salawusu River in the
1920s;a giant Hetao Giant-Antler deer with strong bodies having a
flat fan-shaped antlers branching out, the antlers being almost
vertical atthe top of their skulls, a unique kind of deer; Wangshi
water buffalo named after Mongolian farmer Wang Shun who discovered
the fossilized buffalo; they had unique horns with triangular
transverse sections; Nuoshi camels that were stronger and taller
than modern camels, they were peculiar to the faunal groups at
Salawusu; hyenas and tigers accounted for the largest share of
fossilized animals. The rear end of a fossilized tiger from the
Quaternary Period was discovered at the Yangsiwan section of
Salawusu's plant and faunal fossils. Over 45 kinds of fossils were
found in the area, which is truly a home to fossils.