The Loom Cave, known as the "No. 1 Cave in Henan", is it the place where fairies hid their looms?

The Loom Cave is a cave located on the hillside in the north of Wangzongdian Administrative Village, Cuimiao Town, Xingyang, west of Zhengzhou (Figure 1). It is said that in ancient times, there was a beautiful and wise fairy who saw that the creatures in the lower world wore leaves in summer and animal skins in winter, and felt very pitiful. So she secretly brought a loom from heaven to the mortal world. She put the loom in this cave, wove brocade and yarn, and taught the people to sew clothes. This cave was called the Loom Cave.

Figure 1: Zhijidong Site

This cave, hanging on the cliff, seems isolated from a distance, but there are unique views inside the cave. Although there is no couplet like "Huaguoshan blessed land, Shuiliandong Dongtian" inside, it is far away from the ground and placed in the air, which is also a Feng Shui treasure land. The cave is rich in deposits. After years of archaeological work, it has been found that the deposits inside are 24 meters thick and can be divided into more than 20 layers. These deep strata and unearthed objects tell the world with real objects: 100,000 years ago, ancient humans once moved and rested here. Of course, there should be no fairies at that time. After all, human evolution has gone through different stages such as Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, early Homo sapiens, and late Homo sapiens before evolving into today's modern humans (modern humans belong to late Homo sapiens) (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Human evolution

The human remains seen in the Loom Cave should be the early Homo sapiens stage (250,000-50,000). Humans of this period are also called ancient people. Their body shape is very close to that of modern people, and their brain capacity has greatly increased to about 1,400 ml, which is not much different from the brain capacity of modern people. At that time, some primitive features were still retained in the body shape, such as developed brow ridges, low and slanted foreheads, flat and wide noses, and protruding jaws. The most influential people of this period are the Neanderthals, who are well known to the public. An archaeologist once said that if Neanderthals were to wear modern clothes and mingle among the crowd, we modern people might ignore that this was an ancient human who lived 200,000 years ago. It can be seen that the difference between early Homo sapiens and modern people (late Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens) is not great. There are also many famous early Homo sapiens in China, such as the Dali people found in Shaanxi.

Figure 3: Stone tools unearthed from Zhiji Cave

Ancient humans in this period used chipped stone tools to process stones and made various tools, including side scrapers, choppers, end scrapers, and pointed tools (Figure 3). In addition, there were various stone processing tools such as stone hammers, stone cores, and stone anvils. Humans in this period had learned to use fire. In caves, ancient humans used stone tools to split up various animals they hunted, such as spotted deer, badgers, and giant deer (the giant deer eventually died out during evolution), and roasted them. After feasting on them, they would also smash the bones and suck out the marrow, so most of the animal bones seen in the caves were in broken pieces.

This Paleolithic site is second only to Zhoukoudian in China in terms of its rich accumulation, relics and artifacts, and is located in central China. It is very important from the perspectives of cultural exchange, human migration, etc. Therefore, it is also known by archaeologists as "the No. 1 Cave in Henan."