The earliest remains of hominid habitation in Beijing Municipality were found in the caves of Dragon Bone Hill near the village of Zhoukoudian in Fangshan District, where the Homo erectus Peking Man (Sinanthropus pekinensis) lived from 770,000 to 230,000 years ago. Paleolithic homo sapiens also lived in the caves from about 27,000 to 10,000 years ago.
In 1996, over 2,000 Stone Age tools and bone fragments were discovered at a construction site at Wangfujing in the heart of downtown Beijing in Dongcheng District. The artifacts date to 24,000 to 25,000 years ago and are preserved in the Wangfujing Paleolithic Museum in the lower level of the New Oriental Plaza.
Archaeologists have found neolithic settlements throughout the plains of Beijing from Xiaoniantou and Shangzhai Village in Pinggu County in the east to Xueshan Village in Changping District in the north, and Zhenjiangying in Fangshan District in the southwest. These sites indicate that farming was widespread in the area 6,000 to 7,000 years ago.
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