Wangfujing Paleolithic MuseumⅠ

Idle shoppers in Wangfujing's luxurious Oriental Plaza could perhaps do with reminding that their hunter-gatherer forbearers are but a short distance away: 12 meters below, in fact. The sight of a pack of naked caveman hunting a wild bull in the forest may look an unlikely vision in the seemly environs of Beijing's leading tourist shopping area; nonetheless that's exactly what the Wangfujing Paleolithic Museum is offering to anyone who strays across its threshold.

The unlikely location for such an offbeat museum – which may have spurred more than a few puzzled tourists to wonder "What the holy hell?" – has a logical explanation. The relics of several 25,000-year-old Chinese ancestors were discovered in 1996 by a Peking University student during the construction of Oriental Plaza.