XI’AN - A public cemetery uncovered in the city of Xi’an, capital of Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, was used for maids of the Tang Dynasty (618 - 907), an archaeologist told Xinhua Tuesday.
A dozen tombs, located in the west of the thousands-year-old city, were found in April, 2012, Liu Daiyun, a Shaanxi Archeology Research Institute researcher said.
Since then, the tombs have been examined.
“The structures of the tombs in this region are similar, and they have obvious characters of the Tang Dynasty. According to the epitaph of a 70-year-old maid, we deduced that the place was a public cemetery for maids of the imperial palace,” Liu said. Read more.
The preservation of immovable historic relics displayed in large open spaces like China’s world-renowned Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses requires air curtains and other modifications to recreate the primitive environment from which archaeologists excavated the relics. That’s the conclusion of a study of environmental control measures for archaeology museums in the People’s Republic of China. Their study appears in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology.
ZhaoLin Gu and colleagues point out that environmental factors have deteriorated many of the more than 1,500 unearthed relics in China’s Museum of Qin Terracotta Warriors and Horses, for instance, and in other museums involving large open spaces. The Qin museum covers an area of more than 17,500 square yards, almost three football fields. Read more.
A 1,300-year-old unidentified cluster of 102 tombs, 40 percent of which were made for infants, have been unearthed in China’s restive westernmost province.
The tombs, found on the Pamirs Plateau in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, contain wooden caskets with desiccated corpses, as well as stoneware, pottery and copper ware believed to have been buried as sacrificial items, said Ai Tao from the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute.
“The cluster covers an area of 1,500 square meters on a 20-meter-high cliff, an unusual location for tombs,” Ai told state-run Xinhua news agency.
He added that his team was also very surprised to find such a large number of infant corpses. Read more.
Observers say work on the Goguryeo stele is an attempt to incorporate it into Chinese history
China continues its closed research into a recently unearthed Goguryeo stele, or memorial stone, that is attracting interest as the second Gwanggaeto Stele. The Hankyoreh confirmed that the research team includes a large number of scholars who took part in the Northeast Project, which was controversial for its distortions of Goguryeo history.
Goguryeo was one of the three kingdoms of ancient Korea, along with Baekjae and Silla. Parts of its territory are in present day North Korea, North eastern China and Russian Far East.
Officials in the city of Ji’an in Jilin Province, northeast China, where the new Goguryeo stele was discovered, assembled a guidance team for protection and study of the gravestone. Read more.
Researchers have been able to trace a line between some of the earliest modern humans to settle in China and people living in the region today.
The evidence comes from DNA extracted from a 40,000-year-old leg bone found in a cave near Beijing.
Results show that the person it belonged to was related to the ancestors of present-day Asians and Native Americans.
The results are published in the journal PNAS.
Humans who looked broadly like present-day people started to appear in the fossil record of Eurasia between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.
But many questions remain about the genetic relationships between these early modern humans and present-day Homo sapiens populations. Read more.
“Peking Man,” a human ancestor who lived in China between roughly 200,000 and 750,000 years ago, was a wood-working, fire-using, spear-hafting hominid who, mysteriously, liked to drill holes into objects for unknown reasons.
And, yes, these hominids, a form of Homo erectus, appear to have been quite meticulous about their clothing, using stone tools to soften and depress animal hides.
The new discoveries paint a picture of a human ancestor who was more sophisticated than previously believed.
Peking Man was first discovered in 1923 in a cave near the village of Zhoukoudian, close to Beijing (at that time called Peking). During 1941, at the height of World War II, fossils of Peking Man went missing, depriving scientists of valuable information. Read more.
BEIJING: Archaeologists have excavated about 3,500kg of ancient coins in China’s Inner Mongolia Region, Xinhua reported on Sunday. Most of these coins were in prevalence during the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD).
According to Lian Jilin, a researcher with the regional Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the coins were found in three millennia-old coin pits in the ancient town of Huoluochaideng after police cracked three theft cases.
Most of the coins were “Huoquan”, the coins commonly used in the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), said Lian.
Archaeologists also excavated over 100 casting moulds from the relics of a coin workshop. Read more.
Engraved objects are usually seen as a hallmark of cognition and symbolism, which are viewed as important features of modern human behavior. In recent years, engraved ochre, bones and ostrich eggs unearthed from various Paleolithic sites in Africa, the Near East and Europe have attracted great attentions. However, such items are rarely encountered at Paleolithic sites in East Asia.
According to article published in the journal of Chinese Science Bulletin (vol.57, No.26), Dr. GAO Xing, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his team reported an engraved stone artifact in a stone tool assemblage at the Shuidonggou Paleolithic site, Ningxia, Northwest China. Read more.
