Shimao Ruins of Shenmu

The Shenmu Shimao (mǎo) site is a large-scale city site discovered in China from the late Longshan to the early Xia period. It is located on the north side of the Tuwei River in Shimao Village, Gaojiabao Town, Shenmu County, Yulin City, Shaanxi Province, on the northern edge of the Loess Plateau in northern Shaanxi. The Shimao site is about 4,000 years old and covers an area of about 4.25 million square meters. This former “stone city” has a lifespan of more than 300 years. In 1976, when Dai Yingxin, a professor of the Department of Archaeology at Northwestern University, was conducting an investigation in Shanxi, he heard some information about Shenmu Shimao from Shanxi folks, and went to Shimao to investigate. Since then, archaeological teams from Xi’an and Beijing have carried out archaeological excavations. . In 2006, Shenmu Shimao was announced as a national key cultural relics protection unit. The Shimao site was selected as “The Eve of Chinese Civilization” among the top ten new archaeological discoveries in 2012, “the world’s top ten field archaeological discoveries” and “the world’s major archaeological discoveries in the 21st century”.