On April 14, archaeologists in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, south China, unearthed remains of a 180-centimeter tall man dating back more than 6,000 years.

"Such a tall man would rarely have been seen in south China in ancient times," said Huang Xin, head of the Cultural Relics Management Institute of Youjiang District, Baise City.

Huang is one of the archaeologists who took part in the recent excavation at the Neolithic site in Gongyuan Village, Yangxu Town of Baise City.

Huang said they were amazed to see that the bones of ancient people scattered at the site were thicker than that of modern people, and were awestruck by a penis-shaped stone totem unearthed there.

Archaeologists also found a large number of stone tools such as hammers and chisels, and remains of animals including bears, monkeys and deer.

Whether the discovery implies the existence of a tall ancient race or not would require further study, said Huang.

With an area of 800 sq km, the Baise Basin, where the Neolithic site is located, lies between south China's Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and Southeast Asia, a crucial location in the study of the origins, evolution and migration of ancient peoples, experts said.

Experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been digging at the site since 1973. In 2000, a paper in Nature argued that finds of stone tools there dating back 800,000 years undermined the Movius Line theory, which contended that East Asian cultures were stagnant compared to those in western Eurasia and Africa at the time.

(Xinhua News Agency April 25, 2005)