The Longyou caves [China, 1st-2nd c AD]

House of the Sun ^ | prior to November 28, 2018 | unattributed, www sources

[SunkenCiv]

In June, 1992, a villager named Wu Anai, decided to pump the water out in one of the water holes of the area. Thus, they discovered that it was actually a cave, that was filled with water. The water presumably had been there for a long period of time. It took 17 days of continuous pumping to clear the cave. They found that it was a man made cave. The discovery of this cave encouraged Wu and his companions to pump the water out of another six caves. The caves were all next to each other. They found the caves were generally the same in structure, differing mainly in scale. Each cave had steps that led to the bottom of the cave. Each cave had pillars, ranging from one to four according to the size of the cave. The floor size of the seven caves varied from 300 square meters to 2000 square meters.

To date, 24 caves (3 clusters of 8 caves) have been found, one of which is the main tourist attraction. The 24 caves are all within one square kilometers. Apparently there are about fifty to seventy more caves in the larger Longyou area. Today there are five caves open to tourists... Since a total of 24 such caves have been found on Phoenix hill, the overall excavation would be 900,000 cubic meters.

[gnarledmaw]

Yknow, I was thinking too, this is in Southeast China on the Quijang River, no? Wouldnt that be like the people of Lousiana or Florida building cisterns? In a place like Petra extreme community based water collection and conservation makes sense, at this location, not so much.

[Larry Lucido]

a man made cave

A man-cave.

[Drumbo]

Someone has to do it:

[wildbill]

Ceilings that high would be unworkable as warehouses for arms or food IMO.

Cisterns that big would indicate a huge population to be served and the fact that nothing has been found in the way of a major city nearby. In fact, the article says the area has had no traces of population until very recently.

This is the kind of overbuilding similar to the huge stones at Baalbeck in Lebanon and other ancient sites around the world. Sure, you COULD use them to build something but even if you were SMART enough and had the technology to carve and move them, why would you use such a large size. Smaller would serve the same purpose and take much less work. The same applies to these caves.

Genesis offers an explanation that tried to explain the obvious problems of the giant artifacts known to the writer(s)—There were giants in the earth in those days...

[Grimmy]

Thanks for the ping.

This cave system is just weird enough to be interesting.