The tomb of one of the most infamous emperors in Chinese history was unearthed in a construction site in Yangzhou city, close to a fake tomb that had become a tourist attraction, archaeologists said.
The eastern city’s institute of archaeology confirmed on Sunday that the tomb, in Xihu township, Hanjiang district, belonged to Yang Guang, who brought the Sui Dynasty (AD 581-618) to an end but also accomplished several major construction projects, including the Grand Canal and the reconstruction of the Great Wall.
According to Shu Jiaping, director of the institution, Yang’s tomb lacked the usual splendor of the wealthy in the Sui dynasty, due to his sudden death during a revolt. Read more.
Mexican archaeologists have discovered a roughly 1,200-year-old tomb at the Zapotec site of Atzompa, a find that shows the city’s central complex not only had a civic-ceremonial area but also a residential section.
The discovery in the southern state of Oaxaca was made during work to preserve the remains of what the experts believe was a home inhabited between A.D. 750-900, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, said in a statement.
The tomb, which contained the skeletal remains of two adults, is the fourth to be discovered in that satellite city of Monte Alban. In early 2012, a funerary complex consisting of three tombs was found inside a building in the elite sector of Atzompa. Read more.
Swedish archaeologists have unearthed what is presumed to be a dolmen, or a portal tomb, that is believed to be over 5,000 years old near the megalithic monument Ale’s stones in southern Sweden.
”The findings confirm what we have believed; that this has been a special place for a very long time,” said archaeologist Bengt Söderberg to news agency TT.
On Saturday, the first day of the dig, the scientists already had a hunch that they would find something on the site, expecting a Stone Age grave and a Bronze Age monument.
And since, the hunch has become stronger. Read more.
XI’AN: Archaeologists said a black substance found in an ancient tomb in northwest China’s Shaanxi province is a 2,000-year-old portion of beef.
Scientists arrived at the conclusion after months of analysis confirmed the substance’s makeup, according to Hu Songmei, a paleontologist from the provincial archaeological institute.
Xinhua news agency reports that according to Hu, the beef — most of which had been carbonised — is the earliest beef product discovered in China.
The beef was discovered two years ago in a bronze pot placed in a tomb believed to date back to the Warring States Period (475 B.C. - 221 B.C.), said Hu.
The tomb was discovered during a excavation conducted by the institute from 2009 to 2010 in Wanli village in the provincial capital of Xi’an.
“The beef did not shrink, which proves that it had been dried before being put into the pot,” said Hu. (source)
Excavating a remote Maya palace in the ruined city of Uxul, archaeologists in Mexico have uncovered the ancient tomb of a young prince—and a rare artifact.
The floor of an entrance building within Uxul’s 11-building royal complex concealed the entrance to the small chamber, which held the remains of the 20- to 25-year-old man and nine ceramic objects.
On one cup, “there was a simple message … in elegantly modeled hieroglyphics that read: ‘[This is] the cup of the young man/prince,’” team member Nikolai Grube, an anthropologist at Germany’s University of Bonn, said in a late-July statement.
Another cup bears a date, which Grube and colleague Kai Delvendahl interpret to mean the year A.D. 711, giving some indication as to when the prince lived and died.
It’s common for Maya artifacts to refer to their owners, Grube said. But all previous princely drinking vessels have been excavated “illegally, without controlled excavation, by looters. This is the first time we have found such a vessel in an archaeological context.” Read more.
Buried deep under a hill in central China, surrounded by an underground moat of poisonous mercury, lies an entombed emperor who’s been undisturbed for more than two millennia.
The tomb holds the secrets of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who died on Sept. 10, 210 B.C., after conquering six warring states to create the first unified nation of China.
The answers to a number of historical mysteries may lie buried inside that tomb, but whether modern people will ever see inside this mausoleum depends not just on the Chinese government, but on science.
“The big hill, where the emperor is buried — nobody’s been in there,” said archaeologist Kristin Romey, curatorial consultant for the Terracotta Warrior exhibition at New York City’s Discovery Times Square. “Partly it’s out of respect for the elders, but they also realize that nobody in the world right now has the technology to properly go in and excavate it.” Read more.
A view of a burial chamber at the archeological site of Atzompa.
A view of the building (top) where archeologists found a burial chamber at the archeological site of Atzompa.
An archeologist brushes off dust at a burial chamber at the archeological site of Atzompa.
Archeologists work at the entrance of a burial chamber at the archeological site of Atzompa. More.
About 1,800 years ago, at a time when China was breaking apart into three warring kingdoms, a warrior was laid to rest.
Buried in a tomb with domed roofs, along with his wife, he was about 45 years old when he died. Their skeletal remains were found inside two wooden coffins that had rotted away. Archaeologists don’t know their names but, based on the tomb design and grave goods, they believe he was a general who had served one or more of the country’s warring lords, perhaps Cao Cao and his son Cao Pi.
His tomb was discovered in Xiangyang, a city that, in the time of the Three Kingdoms, was of great strategic importance. Rescue excavations started in October 2008 and now the discovery is detailed in the most recent edition of the journal Chinese Archaeology. Read more.
