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Inscribed animal bones and jade pieces unearthed in Changle County of eastern Shandong Province are earliest examples of Chinese characters dating back 4,500 years ago, the latest archaeological studies show. The discovery broke the record for the previous earliest known examples of Chinese characters, the inscribed animal bones and tortoise shells, known as the oracle bones, of the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC-1100 BC), by more than 1,300 years. The oracle bones were major discoveries at the Yinxu in Anyang of central China's Henan Province... Li Laifu, the Shandong Oracle Scripts Association president, said the inscriptions may be left by the...

Pottery offers clues to origin of Chinese characters www.chinaview.cn 2006-03-22 21:10:18 HEFEI, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Chinese archaeologists claim that pottery utensils dating back 7,000 years ago which bear inscriptions of various symbols are probably one of the origins of Chinese characters. They made the conclusion on the basis of several years' study into the symbols carved on over 600 pottery ware items unearthed from the New Stone Age site in Shuangdun village, Xiaobengbu town of Bengbu, a city in East China's Anhui Province. The symbols include rivers, animals and plants, and activities such as hunting, fishing and arable farming,...

Mysteries of the Xiaohe Tombs in Xinjiang, China The Epoch Times Jun 10, 2005 A bird's-eye view of the Xiaohe Tombs. (Zhang Hongchi) On April 17, 2004, the Xiaohe ("Small River") Tombs in Xinjiang Province, discovered in 1939 by Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman, were said to be among China's top 10 archaeological discoveries. According to a Guangming Daily report from April 23, public interest in the tombs was first sparked when Bergman published a detailed introduction to the Xiaohe basin archaeology called the Archaeological Researches in Xinjiang in Stockholm in 1939. However, when the tombs' landmark Xiaohe River dried up,...

New Desert Coffins Unearthed in Xinjiang Archeologists found the first wooden coffins with mud cover at Lop Nur Desert in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to the regional archeology institute. Excavation of Xiaohe tomb complex began in October in 2003, leading to the discovery of 108 tombs so far. The most recent excavation yielded 33 tombs, including 25 for adults and eight for children. Those buried in coffins with mud cover may be of relatively high social status. But the conclusion can only be made after the coffins are opened, according to scientists with the institute. Archeologists have...

Blast blower some 2,500 years old discovered in Xinjiang www.chinaview.cn 2004-06-06 11:02:29 URUMQI, June 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists claim that as early as 2,500 years ago people living in the current northwestern Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region had begun to use blast blowers, as they discovered a bronze blowpipe in the Yanghai Tombs in Turpan. "The function of the blowpipe is much like that of the blast blowers which people are using now," said Lu Enguo, a research member with the Xinjiang archaeological research institute. "Although we discovered bronze blowpipes several years ago in Kuqa County and the northern part of...

~~~snip~~~ hey did a DNA test on the Cherchen man (the 3800 year old 6'6 tall dark blonde mummy and the oldest mummy found), and the beauty of Loulan (the red hair mummy), and both of these mummies contained East Asian Mongoloid DNA. Even the Chinese scientist were astonished. The Mongoloid component of the Tocharians are not from Han Chinese or pre Han Chinese, but most likely from Altaic types of Mongoloids such as Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Mongolians. This obviously indicates that the Tocharians were already mixed for quite a few generations, since they looked mostly Caucasian. Very interesting....

Genetic testing reveals awkward truth about Xinjiang’s famous mummiesM (AFP) 19 April 2005 URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived. The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades. “It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it...

Ancient European remains discovered in Qinghai www.chinaview.cn 2004-07-06 15:32:53 XINING, July 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Archeologists confirmed that the human skeletons discovered this May in northwest China's Qinghai Province belonged to three Europeans who lived in China over 1,900 years ago. "The physical characteristics of the bones showed it is a typical European race," said Wang Minghui, an expert with the archeological institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. The skeletons were spotted at Zhongchuan Town of the province's eastern most Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County. Since 2002, archeologists have unearthed nine tombs of Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD)...

THE CURSE OF THE RED-HEADED MUMMY5-18-2001 by Heather Pringle Until he first encountered the mummies of Xinjiang, Victor Mair was known mainly as a brilliant, if eccentric, translator of obscure Chinese texts, a fine sinologist with a few controversial ideas about the origins of Chinese culture, and a scathing critic prone to penning stern reviews of sloppy scholarship. Mair's pronouncements on the striking resemblance between some characters inscribed on the Dead Sea Scrolls and early Chinese symbols were intensely debated by researchers. His magnum opus on the origins of Chinese writing, a work he had been toiling away at for...

Archaeologists in Central China's Henan province have excavated a large neolithic settlement complete with moats and a cemetery. The Shanggangyang Site covers an area of 120,000 square meters and sits along a river in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, dating 5,000 to 6,000 years back to the Yangshao culture, which was widely known for its advanced pottery-making technology. The site features two defensive moats surrounding three sides. Researchers have found relics of three large houses as well as 39 tombs, the large number suggesting several generations resided there, archaeologist Gao Zanling, a member of the Zhengzhou Administration of Cultural Heritage, said....

BEIJING (Reuters) - China ordered its journalists on Saturday to learn "Marxist news values" and uphold the principles of news as prescribed by the ruling Communist Party, the latest step in President Xi Jinping's crackdown on the media. The guidelines by the All China Journalists' Association are aimed at both traditional and online media and are another sign of Xi's politically conservative agenda. "Let us hold high the banner of socialist core values," the report said, using the party's term for orthodox beliefs. Xi has espoused old school Maoism as he seeks to court powerful elements in the party. Like...

BEIJING -- The top leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) decided on Friday to cut salaries for executives of state-own enterprises (SOEs). During a meeting presided over by Chinese President and CPC General Secretary Xi Jinping, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee approved plans to reform the system that determines centrally administered SOE executives' salaries and the size of their expense accounts and other privileges. In a statement released after the meeting, the Political Bureau said excessive salaries will be cut to reasonable levels. It urged SOEs to improve their corporate ethics, saying that income gaps...

China's energy heavyweights Sinopec Corp and PetroChina have upgraded their outlook on the country's shale gas industry, citing steadily declining costs, but stopped short of predicting a near-term boom. China, estimated to hold the world's largest technically recoverable shale resources, is hoping to replicate the shale boom that has transformed the energy landscape of the United States. Industry experts caution that it would be much more difficult for China to monetise its shale gas reserves than the U.S. as it faces serious challenges from water shortages to complicated geological structure and a lack of infrastructure. But top executives at China's...

Aug. 27 will officially go down as a red letter day in the history of reserve currencies and dollar hegemony in how oil and gas are purchased throughout the world. In a new announcement from the Russian business media source, Kommersant, Gazprom has conducted the first sale of oil in a currency other than the dollar, and will henceforth open their purchase window to accept both Roubles and Yuan for the exchange of oil and gas products. Beginning today with an 80000 ton oil shipment from their Arctic fields, Gazprom Neft agreed to new terms on the sale and transfer...

Sometimes it is best to toss security-challenged technology, and that's the recommendation experts are giving to small businesses using a flawed router from a China-based manufacturer. Trend Micro reported this week that routers sold under the brand name of Netcore in China and Netis outside of the country contained a "backdoor" that could be easily accessed by a hacker to monitor Internet traffic. ...

Russians, Chinese, and people from the Middle East have shown the most interest in Malta’s sale of EU passports so far. A spokeswoman for Henley & Partners, the British firm handling the controversial passport scheme, told EUobserver that “over 200” people from 30 different nationalities have applied since it got up and running in early 2014. She added that: “The main geographic areas from which applicants originate are the MENA [Middle East and north Africa] region, Russia, China, and South East Asia”. She also said the well-heeled applicants will bring in more than €200 million in foreign investment to the...

Learning that U.S. Navy commissioning coins were made in China is more than Middle Paxton Twp. resident Gene Stilp can tolerate. The citizen activist doesn't like seeing the "Made in China" label on any product, knowing it signals the continued erosion of America's manufacturing base. But having the United States military buying Chinese-made commemorative coins is an insult to those who wear its uniforms, he said. On Monday, Stilp asked U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., to push for a federal law barring any branch of the military from buying collectible coins minted outside the nation's borders. The Democratic state House...

SHANGHAI — China could have a new homegrown operating system by October to take on imported rivals such as Microsoft, Google and Apple, Xinhua, the government news agency, reported. Computer technology became an area of tension between China and the United States after a number of run-ins over cybersecurity. China is now looking to help its domestic industry catch up with imported systems such as Windows from Microsoft and the mobile operating system Android from Google. The operating system would first appear on desktop devices and later extend to smartphone and other mobile devices, Xinhua reported on Sunday, citing Ni...

The Kremlin is counting on acquiescence from the BRICS quintet as it confronts the West, and counting on capital from China to offset the loss of Western money. This is a pipedream. China's Xi Jinping drove a brutal bargain in May on a future Gazprom pipeline, securing a price near $350 per 1,000 cubic metres that is barely above Russia's production costs. Pieties aside, the two countries are rivals in central Asia, where China is systematically building pipelines that break Russia's stranglehold. China has large territorial claims on Far Eastern Russia, land seized from the Qing Dynasty in the 19th...

China Discovers Cross-Border Tunnels Leading to Xinjiang, North Korea Images from a Chinese satellite show cross-border tunnels in sensitive regions. By Shannon Tiezzi August 26, 2014 In April 2013, China launched Gaofen-1, its first high-definition earth observation satellite (Gaofen-2 was launched just last week, on August 19). This week, China’s National Space Administration reported that Gaofen-1 had captured images showing “dozens of cross-border tunnels” in northwest Xinjiang and along the China-North Korea border. It’s unclear exactly what the tunnels are used for, but Chinese media tied their existence to previous reports on illegal China-North Korea border crossings, as well as...