Undated file photo shows the Paleolithic ruin sites in Daocheng County, southwest China's Sichuan Province.

More than 200 Paleolithic sites have been found in southwest China's Sichuan Province since 2019, challenging the claim that the area had scarce hominins in the Old Stone Age.

The discovery, a result of a comprehensive archaeological investigation launched in 2019, was briefed on Saturday at a seminar in Sichuan's Meishan City.

Before 2019, archaeologists had only identified over ten Paleolithic sites in Sichuan, leading some experts to believe that there were few early human dwellers in the region until much later, said Zheng Zhexuan with the Sichuan institute of cultural relics and archaeology.

The 200 sites, where many stone tools and human remains have been unearthed, are scattered across the Sichuan basin and the western Sichuan plateau. They include the Mengxihe Site in Ziyang City, the Taohuahe site in Suining City, and the Wangjiayan site in the provincial capital, Chengdu.

The findings suggest that as early as the Paleolithic Age, Sichuan was already a significant area for cultural exchange and population migration between the East and the West and between China's northern and southern regions, said Zheng.