Chinese Archaeologists Find New Cultural Relics Of Ancient Loulan City

URUMQI, Oct. 8 (Xinhuanet) -- A team of Chinese archeologists have discovered new cultural relics in the ruins of the ancient Loulan city, which is supposed to be the capital of the Loulan Kingdom and is part of Chinese ancient civilization that vanished 1,500 years ago.

The findings, located underground northwest of an ancient government office site, include camel feces, fodder, charcoal and bestial bones under a 70-centimeter-thick layer dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 AD to 220 AD).

"The discovery provides another important evidence for the controversy whether Loulan city was the capital of the Loulan Kingdom," said Wang Binghua, member of the research team.

The relics also indicated there were human activities before the Eastern Han period, and aroused the opinion that it was only after the Eastern Han when the Loulan city became a political and cultural center of the Lop Nur Lake area, he said.

Loulan city suddenly disappeared from the area in the third century, leaving a wealth of enigmas for later generations. No traces of Loulan had been found until 100 years ago when Swedish explorer Sven Hedin accidentally discovered the ruins of the ancient city buried in desert.

However, there have been different views among Chinese and foreign archaeologists on why and how the city, once a booming trade center with a thriving trade in silk, glass and perfume, disappeared so suddenly. Enditem

Here is a previous posting about the people of the Loulan region:

The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy

The below quote is from a one time poster to FR from China:

"I detected there was an essay concerning the ethnic consist of "Wu Hu" which invaded China during the Jin Dynasty. The author's view was that the Turk which raided China later was a Caucasian tribe (there Khan described as with grenn eyes and red cheek, more evidance available) , "Wu Hu" (Xiongnu, Jie, Qiang, Di, Xianbei) were not. But according to the Chinese ancient historical annual, the Xiongnu are such Nordic tribe with red hair and blue eyes like "Wushun". And, Jie, which was a branch of Xiongnu, also described as with high Nose Bridge, and "deep" eyes. After the collapse of their ruling to Han, the Jie people was distinguished easily because of their Caucasian feature and slaughtered (more than 200,000 victims). The historical work of the later dynasties also described the remained Xiongnu people as "Long nose" and "yellow hair". Until Tang dynasty, the "Qi Hu" which is the offspring of the royal Xiongnu people, still called "Hu tou Han se" which mean's they adopt the Chinese tongue, but still "foreign" feature. Much other evidence can support the standpoint that Xiongnu are Caucasion,I don't want to illustrate any more. Some people believe the Xiongnu are Mongolian race, because the Roman historian said the Hun people who invaded were"brown skin, stocky body, slanting eyes" which are typical Mongolian trait. But, actually, the Hun who invaded Europe 5th century was not the descendant of Xiongnu. The contemporary scholars affirm they are the identical tribe just because the pronunciation of "Hun" and "Xiongnu" are approximately the same. And there is some relationship between their languege. I also want to point out that around the 5th and 6th century, there's another branch of "Hun" ruined the Persia and Northwest India, that Branch was called "White Hun" The Persian historian said that thier feature were different from "Hun", with white body. Hence, it seemed that, they were also Caucasian. Now, let's come to Xianbei, many people noticed that, in the historical book, the Xianbei people were called "Bai Lu" means white invader (thief). And in the Great Work <>, I found the following story--The Emperor Of Eastern Jin, Jin Ming Di (Shima Shao), was with yellow beard and hair, because his mother was a Xianbei female. Once he went to inspect his troop without notice, And the warriors all considered him as Xianbei people, then chased him as enemy. The folk songs at that time said, "Huang tou Xianbei jin Luoyang"--Xianbei is with "yellow head", it is quite possible that "yellow head" referred to their yellow hair and beard. Xianbei is an alliance of tribes; there might also be some Mongolian tribes in it, but the Caucasian consist was more obvious, which all Hans paid attention to it. I'm inclined to be in approval of what Mr. Peng elaborated yesterday. The contemporary Chinese people don't dwell on the ethnic origin of the nation, most of them believe they are simply Mongolian race. That's not a correct concept. The racial intermix in china began before any dynasty, but the Neolithic time. The skulls unearthed in the relics of Banpo Xi'an reveal the trait of Caucasian, exactly, the Nordish Caucasian. The Banpo civilian used to be the hybrid of Nordish and Mongolian (like the Finn today). We all know, the Banpo is the representative civilization of the Northern China Neolithic civilizations, we can infer, many other Chinese civilizations in that time were created by Caucasian or mingled people. The Hemudu in Zhejiang is the representative Neolithic civilization in Southern China. But after measuring the skulls detected there, it was extremely amazed that, they're of Negro characteristics! One renowned Chinese anthropologist stated in his work that "According to the numerous skeletons of Indo-Europe people unearthed in China and the feature of the Southern Chinese people today, the Chinese nation can't be classified into the Mongolian race simply. At an earlier time, many Chinese anthropologists also clarify that it's completely wrong to say the ancient skeletons discovered in China belong to the same race. The Mongolian couldn't be regarded as the only "Local Chinese". The Caucasian also had been inhabited in Eastern Asia since very early time. In Japan, the aboriginal Ainu people was finally confessed as the ancestor of current Japanese nation. The Ainu was the Caucasian tribe moved to the Japanese islands more than 20,000 years ago, while the Mongolian just reached Japan around 10,000 years ago. They intermixed and yielded the Japanese people now. The same procedure of intermixing also took place in Korea. Another famous event happened last year also support the idea--some researchers of biochemistry analyzed the DNA refined from the mummies in some ancient tombs in Shangdong province, and made a conclusion that these DNA correspond that of the European people. Another research discovered that the gene of Northern Chinese is more close to the Caucasian, rather than the Southern Chinese. The origin of Zhou, The third Dynasty of ancient China, is also doubtful. The time of the establishment of that dynasty is not far from the time of Aryan Expansion. The chariot used by the soldiers of Zhou just resembles the chariot used by Aryan invaders to India! More critical, the ancient Chinese work written by Mengzi said that, Zhou Wen Wang (the emperor of Zhou) is the people of "western barbarians" It's quite possible that a branch of Aryan intruded china at the moving of Aryan. Someone even suspect the origin of the Qin Dynasty, which was the subsequent dynasty of Zhou. At least, there was some independent Aryan tribes which didn't integrated with local Chinese or absorbed by local Chinese still existed in Western and central China at the time of late Zhou dynasty. It was recorded that the king of Qin attack the ruler of Zhou with some barbarous tribes but failed. That event happened a few hundred years BC, at that very time, the Bactoria in Central Asia was conquered by 4 Nomadic Aryan tribes, the origins of 3 of these tribes were definite. Now, some historians reckon the 4th tribe might be the failed Aryan tribe that moved back to Central Asia. Until Han dynasty, the "Yue zhi" (pronounced as 'rou zhi, an Aryan Tribe) still live in Ganshu province, and sometimes also find the track of their activity in Northern China. And the region east to Tianshan Mountain (in the center of Eastern Turkeystan) was distributed by Saka (A branch of Aryan, whose language belongs to the Iranian Group, known as Scythian by Westerners and 'Sai Zhong' by Chinese). Now, many scholars believe that many "Yi" and "Di" (the diverse barbarian tribes) recorded in early Chinese dynasties are Caucasian. I'm afraid the origin Xiongnu can be traced back to Scythian. Because the record revealed that their custom were exactly the same. Thus, the Chinese people nowadays contain abundant of Caucasian blood. But currently, they all belong to the same nation, that's because the ancient Chinese culture was so great that it could absorb any other races, it was a furnace to integrate all races. And the Caucasian, Mongolian created the grand Chinese civilization together."

275 Posted on 12/14/2001 02:10:41 PST by genealogy_prober

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