Posted on 04/09/2002 6:26:40 AM PDT by blam
Space rock may solve death of mythic emperor
April 09 2002 at 09:59AM
Beijing - A 5 000-year-old meteorite unearthed in north-western China may explain the legendary death of the man celebrated as the nation's earliest ancestor, the Yellow Emperor, state media said on Tuesday.
The official China Daily said the meteorite, found near a mausoleum for the Yellow Emperor in the Shaanxi province county of Huangling, may lie behind the cataclysmic shattering of land that historical records say killed China's enigmatic first emperor.
The discovery also sheds light on a local legend that nine dragons broke up the ancient town of Huangling, the newspaper said in quoting Li Yanjun, a long-time Yellow Emperor researcher and one of those who found the meteorite.
Scepticism abounds over accounts of China's part-real, part-mythical forefather named Huangdi, to whom the word for "emperor" and the imperial colour of yellow are traced.
Chinese legend credits him with inventing the cart and the boat, and his dialogues with the physician Qi Bo were the basis of China's first medical book, the Yellow Emperor's "Canon of Medicine", or Nei Jing.
Huangdi's wife, Lei Zu, taught China how to weave silk from silkworms and his minister Cang Jie devised the first Chinese writing characters, according to tradition.
Huangdi is said to have reigned from 2697 to 2597 BC, before a dragon came and took him back to Heaven at the age of 110.
Geologists estimate the uncovered meteorite sample dates back 5 000 years, the newspaper said.
The sample, found buried deep in the ground, was only 82cm long and 21cm wide and had bumps, holes and traces of burned matter, said Li.
He said the meteorite was thought to have crashed on top of the mountain where Huangdi was supposedly buried.
Some 50 000 mainland and overseas Chinese flocked to the nearby mausoleum, first erected in the Han Dynasty, to pay their respects to the cultural patriarch last Friday for the annual Tomb Sweeping Day.
Since 1992, China has spent 200 million yuan ($24 million) to renovate the mausoleum outside the ancient capital of Xi'an, which is nestled in an ancient forest of 80 000 cypress trees, some over 1 000 years old, the People's Daily said on Sunday.
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