Posted on 08/11/2004 4:31:47 PM PDT by blam
Wednesday, August 11, 2004. 6:01am (AEST)
Shanghai two millenniums older than previously thought
China's thriving and modern metropolis of Shanghai was first established nearly 6,000 years ago, about two millenniums earlier than previously estimated, experts and state press have said.
Newly discovered artefacts in Shanghai's outskirts prove the first inhabitants migrated from neigbouring Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces more than 6,000 years ago, Song Jian, director of the Shanghai Cultural Relics Management Commission, told AFP.
Mr Song said new archaeological evidence, including pieces of a human skull, show that today's teeming city of 17 million was first populated some 2,000 years earlier than thought.
Experts previously thought the first people to arrive here came from central Henan province some 4,000 years ago, even though in the 1960s relics from a tribe originating from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces were discovered.
"This April, we found a human skull that proved to be one of the first human beings in Shanghai," the China Daily quoted Zhang Minghua, a curator at the Shanghai Museum, as saying.
"They brought Shanghai advanced tools and skills. Ruins of a well were found which marked the first time Chinese stopped being totally dependent on rivers and lakes.
"People used to consider Shanghai as a booming new city with a history of only several hundred years, but that's wrong," Mr Zhang added.
< Ruins of a well were found which marked the first time Chinese stopped being totally dependent on rivers and lakes. >
They numbered their wells? "Water Well #1, we will no longer be solely dependant on rivers and lakes" In Chinese that is probably just one symbol.
Lemurs can't leap that far can they?
GGG Ping.
I'm not sure what's going on in China, but these kind of articles come out about every six weeks. Each claims to reveal some ancestral factoid that means China is much more important than we all thought.
I smell a politburo that is going through adolescent unsuredness.
Nothing important happening. They are merely establishing an ownership claim to the entire planet.
Ancient China is more important than we have previously believed. Europeans may originate from that region.
Ancient China, 5-15,000 years ago.
Can't be much more than 6000 years ago.
Maybe, what? Eight years???
Thanks blam. I understand. I still think these pronouncements have more to do with China seeking to puff up it's chest today, and a lot less about actual new findings. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it.
Before China started it's threats against the west and Taiwan, I was intrigued by it a lot more than Europe. Today I see it as a rogue nation biding it's time.
The archiological aspects do interest me, but I will acknowledge my view of China today clouds every other perception of mine with regard to it, past, present and future.
China has plans to build as many as 32 large 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactors over the next 16 years.
I wouldn't doubt it. And we can't start one.
Thanks Blam. The Gobi was wetter and more hospitable at one time, and as we who read "Noah's Flood" know, the lake that made much of that possible dried up in what we now refer to as prehistoric times. :') When I'm back home I'll dig out Ruhlen's discussion of the Japanese bias against prehistory, which may make a nice sidebar. (':
Noah's Flood:
The New Scientific Discoveries
About The Event That Changed History
by William Ryan
Walter Pitman
hardcover
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
The Tarim Mummies:
Ancient China
and the Mystery of the
Earliest Peoples from the West
by J. P. Mallory and Victor H. MairThe Mummies of Urumchi
by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
One millennium, two millennia, three potato, four.
During the next spasm of "cultural revolution", the same fate will be meted out to the archaeologists involved in systematic excavations.3,300-year-old capital ruins eyes World Heritage listThe cultural relics authorities in Anyang have constructed Yinxu Ruins Museum at the base of an ancient palace, renovated Fuhao Tomb, which was an important building for the Yinxu Culture, and built Yinling Museum near the tombs of Shang kings, Jin said... The widely accepted earliest date of Chinese history is 841 B.C., in Sima Qian's Record of History. The first half of the Chinese civilization remains a mysterious and hot topic among world historians.
Chinadotcom
20013,000-year-old capital discovered in central ChinaShangyang Town, capital of Guo State in China's ancient Zhou Dynasty (1,000 B.C.- 771 B.C.), returned to the spotlight after being buried into oblivion for more than 2,600 years, according to archaeologists' announcement Monday... The discovery unearthed very sophisticated architecture with a well-developed water supply system and remains of copper refineries, pottery workshops and grain depots... Guo State was an important vassal state in China's Zhou Dynasty, dating back some 3,000 years ago. The exact location of the Capital of Guo State was a pending archaeological task for many years.
Chinadotcom
2001Beijing court tries robbers of ancient tombThe tomb, dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A. D.) and located near Laoshan Hill in Shijingshan District, was excavated in March last year... The seven suspects were among the first to discover the tomb. The suspects confessed that they robbed the tomb on several occasions from May to November 1999... The tomb was identified as having valuable cultural relics by the country's archaeology bureau. The seven were accused of destroying the tomb and relics inside. The court will make verdict against them soon.
Chinadotcom
Jan 12 2001
That's consistent with an older view, that of diffusion of discoveries (writing, the plow, the stirrup, the abacus, gunpowder, what-have-you) from point of origin (wherever each one originated) outward to the rest of the world. I don't believe it of course. ;')Rethinking a History That's Carved in StoneThree months after the announcement of its discovery in Central Asia, a tiny stone object inscribed with symbols thought to be the writing of an obscure desert culture from 4,000 years ago is more of an enigma than ever. If this is indeed an early form of writing, as its discoverer has suggested, it is strong evidence for a previously unknown civilization that began about 2300 B.C. across much of modern Turkmenistan and parts of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan... An even more puzzling aspect of the discovery has been raised by specialists in ancient Chinese writing. They contend that the inscription bears more than a passing resemblance to Chinese writing -- not an early script, but one that was not used until about 200 B.C... There is no clear evidence for Chinese writing before about 1300 or 1200 B.C. -- 1,000 years after people lived at the Anau site in Turkmenistan where the mysterious inscription was unearthed... Another possibility, which would throw the scholarship of Chinese writing into turmoil, is that the 2300 inscription date is correct. That would suggest that influences from Central Asia or farther west might have contributed to the invention of Chinese writing. Dr. Mair, who holds that such influences were greater than previously thought, has raised this controversial point.
by John Noble Wilford
July 31, 2001
Another ancient civilization foundA major early civilization -- rivaling in sophistication the ones that emerged in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia, the famed cradle of civilization -- apparently thrived in central Asia between 2200 BC and 1800 BC. These people, who lived in desert oases in what is now Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, used irrigation to grow wheat and barley, forged distinctive metal axes, carved alabaster and marble into intricate sculptures, and painted pottery with elaborate designs, many with stylized versions of local animals, according to discoveries that have emerged during the past decade or so... In the 1970s, Soviet archaeologists working in remote deserts west of Afghanistan came upon vast ruins, each one bigger than a football field. All were built with the same distinct fortress-like pattern -- a central building surrounded by a series of walls. By the mid-'70s, the Soviet archaeologists had discovered several hundred of these structures in the areas known as Bactria and Margiana. But their findings remained little known to the outside world because they had never been translated from Soviet journals... Hiebert said he believes that a third area, Anau, outside Ashgabat near the Iranian border, is connected to this civilization, perhaps even the origin of the culture. It is about 2,000 years older, going back to 4500 BC, or the Copper Age. A New Hampshire archaeologist, Raphael Pumpelly, had discovered ancient ruins at Anau in 1904, but the site did not receive much attention from the Russians. Only now, said Hiebert, are all the pieces, once divided by political boundaries, falling into place.
by Faye Flam
May 3, 2001
Origins of the Bronze Age
Oasis Civilization in Central Asia
by Fredrik T. Hiebert
The headline and lead sentence make it sound like they've found evidence that the city of Shanghai was built 6000 years ago, but the actual content of the article only seems to indicate they've found evidence that people were living in the region of present-day Shanghai 6000 years ago. That's a huge difference.
That would make Shanghai the oldest continuously lived in city in the world, usurping the title from Damascus
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