Millions of years in time

With a construction area of more than 7,000 square meters and nearly 5,000 sq m devoted to exhibitions, the museum is designed to narrate a story of epic scale and profound continuity.

That narrative entered modern science a century ago, when in 1924, American geologist G. B. Barbour formally identified the "Nihewan Bed" after an on-site inspection.

"That marked the beginning of systematic scientific investigation here," says Wang Fagang, a researcher at the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Over the past century, this work has revealed a sequence so complete that it has revolutionized understanding of early history. "It is the site with the longest duration and the most complete Paleolithic cultural sequence in East Asia," says Xie Fei, 72 and a reputed archaeologist.

Xie has worked at Nihewan since 1983. "It is the region with the most complete sequence of human evolution outside of Africa and Israel," he adds.

Confronted with such an immense and technically complex record, the museum's core challenge was clear: how to make this deep scientific history accessible to a general audience. Its exhibitions, arranged chronologically across eight thematic halls, guide visitors from the ancient Nihewan Basin and its diverse animal life through key stages of human evolution.

"One of the biggest challenges was how to present materials that look very simple to the untrained eye,"Wang says. "Stones and bones don't automatically tell their stories."