Posted on 03/19/2005 3:48:39 PM PST by blam
The Sand Dune Forgotten by Time
Archaeologists working in the extreme desert terrain of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have moved a step closer to unraveling the mystery of a 40-century-old civilization.
They unearthed 163 tombs containing mummies during their ongoing and long excavation at the mysterious Xiaohe tomb complex.
And it's all thanks to the translation of a diary kept by a Swedish explorer more than 70 years ago.
"We have found more than 30 coffins containing mummies," said Idelisi Abuduresule, head of the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute and the excavation team.
The complex is believed to contain 330 or so tombs buried in several layers within a 2,500-square-meter sand dune.
"Most of the items are in the original state of the time when they were buried, and that will help reveal a lot of information about the society and life style of the people of that time," said Idelisi, during his trip back from the desert dust and heat to the autonomous region's capital Urumqi to record the finds, and store the artifacts.
The Xiaohe tombs are believed to have been the burial site of the mysterious Loulan Kingdom, which disappeared without historical trace about 15 centuries ago.
Today's archaeologists are following in the footsteps of Swedish explorer Folke Bergman, who in 1934 ventured south along a river in Lop Nur Desert in the eastern part of Xinjiang.
He said on his return that he'd discovered a dune harboring over 1,000 coffins that date back 4,000 years ago.
He named the place Xiaohe (small river) tombs.
But the river he used to navigate to this ancient site dried up and the dune and its tombs were forgotten about for decades.
In the late 1990s, however, Chinese sociologists translated Bergman's records on archaeological exploration in the area into Chinese and the hunt for dune and its mysteries was once again underway.
In addition to burial articles such as bent wooden blocks and straw baskets, Idelisi's team has found in some coffins wooden figures wrapped in leather instead of mummified bodies.
A bird's-eye view of Xiaohe tombs shows the oval-shape dune taking on the appearance of dumpling pricked full of chopsticks.
Above every coffin protrudes two thick wooden stakes, a symbol some believe of ancient worshiping.
"Considering the scale of the burial site and the mysterious cultural signs, the analyses of the relics are going to yield some exciting results," predicted Idelisi.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage approved excavation of the Xiaohe tombs in 2003.
(China Daily March 19, 2005)
If the Berbers were indigenous, then they weren't originally related to the Vandals, who were a Germanic tribe that entered North Africa via Spain.
The Iberians were not Celtic, but were rather a North African people who crossed the Strait of Gibraltar around 1500 BCE. The Basques seem to have already been living in the Pyrenees at the time. Celts migrated into northern Spain around 700 BCE via France, and the Celts and Iberians eventually merged. In the meantime, Phoenicians and Greeks settled a number of trading colonies along Spain's Mediterranean coast (with the Phoenicians eventually being replaced by Carthaginians). As elsewhere around the Mediterranean, there was a lot of mixing of peoples.
Ancient writing found in Turkmenistan
BBC | Tuesday, 15 May, 2001, 05:57 GMT 06:57 UK | staff
Posted on 11/01/2004 10:24:57 PM PST by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1265930/posts
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Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution. |
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I guess this information has been lost.
Forget my previous post. I see you brought it along with you. Thanks blam.
You're welcome. How in the world did you find this after all this time?
It was pure coincidence blam. When you updated the GGG info, I just happened to refresh my page at the same moment and your update post was on top.
I don't subscribe to your list because you guys are way over my head but I do try to follow some of the GGG stuff because it is so interesting. Thanks.
Some of the stuff I read tonight from your years past posts have cleared that up for me. At least in my minds eye.
Quite simply, they didn't. I don't believe the Chinese would want to read what I read this night.
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