In the summer of 1973, the Hemudu Site was discovered accidentally by farmers of Hemudu Village when they built drainage facilities in the northeast of the village. The renowned Hemudu site, covering an area of about 40,000 square meters, is an important village site in the New Stone Age, with cultural relics of about 4 meters thick. The site has four cultural layers overlapped. According the measurement of C14, the fourth layer dates back to 6,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Rows of wooden poles and board stakes were orderly arranged along the small hill. This was a railing-style construction, with large stake of 23 meters long and 7 meters deep and the front porch about 1.3 meters deep. Most of these wooden poles had mortises and tenons, the earliest ones that have ever been found in China, indicating that such kind of techniques were adopted then.

A large amount of rice was unearthed in the site. The well-preserved rice, including indica rice and japonica rice, was proved to be cultivated rice. The large amount of well-preserved rice with a wide distribution area made the Hemudu Site a rare Neolithic site in China and wrote a new page in the archaeological history of the Neolithic Age with the first-time discovery of indica rice. Other objects unearthed included tools used in agricultural production and processing, such as spade-like bone plough, wooden box, bone sickle, and timber. These proved that agricultural production had become a main sector in local area 6,000 and 7,000 years ago. The discovery of rice in the Hemudu Site has another significant meaning. People originally believed that India was the origin of Asian rice, while the discovery in Hemudu proved that rice unearthed there was over 3000 years older than that discovered in India.

Also unearthed in the Hemudu Site was a large amount of animal bones, including man-feed pig, dog, buffalo, wild deer, red elk, river deer and bear as well as some extinct species such as elephant and rhinoceros. These bones provided important data to the study of weather changes in ancient times and the beginning of primitive stockbreeding.

The Hemudu Culture had a colorful primitive art. Pottery wares were decorated with animal and plant patterns. Other relics included pig, sheep and human head figures made of pottery, and bone-enchased and ivory-enchased objects. The unearthed bone whistle can still make sounds.

The discovery of the Hemudu Site bears proof that as early as 6,000 and 7,000 years ago, there appeared quite developed primitive culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River that is believed to be one of the cradles of the ancient Chinese civilization.