The Lantian Man site lies in Lantian county, south-east of Xi'an where the Wei River plain runs into the Qinling mountains. In the 1960s palaeontologists working in the red clay and gravel deposits there recovered fossil remains of Homo erectus - a skull cap from one locality and a jaw from another - and the finds pushed the known human occupation of northern China back by hundreds of thousands of years. Dating has been debated since, but the fossils are consistently placed in the Middle Pleistocene, on the order of several hundred thousand to around a million years old.
The site and its museum
A small museum and a monument mark the principal locality, set against the scarp of the Qinling foothills. The displays cover the fossils themselves - the originals are held in Beijing, and what is shown locally is cast and contextual - together with the stone tools recovered from the same deposits and an explanation of the stratigraphy that made the dating possible. The geology is explained in straightforward terms, which makes the site useful for families as well as specialists.
The Qinling setting
The reason to come is as much the landscape as the fossils. The Qinling range is the great divide of central China, separating the yellow-earth north from the wetter south, and it is the reason Xi'an has its particular climate and its particular history as a capital. The northern foothills are cut by river gorges, terraced with fields and dotted with the occasional temple. The same area holds the Cuihua Mountain geopark and the pilgrim site of Louguantai, so a half day at Lantian can be run together with either.
Practical notes
Lantian is about an hour east of Xi'an by car, and public transport involves a bus to the county town and then a local taxi, which is slow; a car and driver is the practical option. The site charges a modest admission fee. There is little English signage, so bring a translation app or a guide. The road up into the foothills is scenic and worth extending beyond the museum if you have the time, particularly in autumn when the slopes turn.
