Posted on 02/26/2004 12:30:26 PM PST by blam
'Descendants of the Dragon' confirmed at the Liaohe River Valley
In thousands of years, the Chinese people have been deeming themselves as "the descendant of the dragon" though there is no enough solid proof to support the statement. But in this year, with continually findings of dragons in archeological work at the Liaohe River Valley, the statement that the Chinese people are "the descendant of the dragon" is further confirmed.
In thousands of years, the Chinese people have been deeming themselves as "the descendant of the dragon" though there is no enough solid proof to support the statement. But in this year, with continually findings of dragons in archeological work at the Liaohe River Valley, the statement that the Chinese people are "the descendant of the dragon" is further confirmed. Dragon, in Chinese people's minds, is a symbol of luckiness and wisdom. Dragon is credited with magic power to control wind and rain, transport humans to the celestial realms and bring about auspicious signs. It is regarded as a bridge between human and heaven and gods. Dragon is introduced into areas including ancient study of celestial phenomena, study of destiny and monarch politics, which adds a bit mysterious color to itself.
Since 1983, archeologists have carried out excavations at Red Mountain remains of ancient culture, Niuheliang, the Liaohe River Valley and unearthed a great deal of valuable cultural relics. Of the items unearthed, two dragon shaped jade articles drew most attention. To discover the whole picture of the remains, the Research Institute of Archeology of Liaoning Province carried out a final excavation at the 16th site of the remains in 2003. The excavation work covered an area of 1, 575 square meters. Six tombs, 479 pieces of relics including jade articles were unearthed. In this excavation, the third piece of jade dragon was discovered in a tomb as well.
The jade dragon carving, made of soft jade in light green color by grinding, resembled the Chinese character "dragon" in ancient inscription on bones and turtle shields. It took the same shape with the other two dragons unearthed in 1984.
In the 1970s, a similar jade dragon was discovered in Sanxingtala village, Wengniute Banner of Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia. Confirmed by professor Su Bingqi, a famous archeologist and President of the Chinese Archeology Society, the jade dragon of Sanxingtala is by far the earliest Chinese traditional dragon-shaped jade article ever found.
Niuheliang Ruins is situated at the junction of Jianping country and Lingyuan county of northeast China's Liaoning Province. Covering an area of 50 square kilometers, it is the place where the famous Red Mountain culture site locates. Red mountain culture derives its name from the Red Mountain at north suburb of Chifeng city, Inner Mongolia, where the site was discovered. Red Mountain Culture was created by tribes living at west Liaohe River valley about 5,000 to 6, 000 years ago. Numerous prehistoric potteries and jade articles were discovered here. The head portrait of the "Red Mountain Goddess" and site of an ancient country consisting of temple, tombs excavated in 1984 once caused a great stir in the world.
At the Liaohe River valley, painted dragons and dragon statues were continually discovered at Zhaobaogou remains of ancient culture and Chahai remains of ancient culture, which can be traced back to 6, 000 and 8, 000 years ago respectively. Hence archeologists including Su Bingqi concluded that the Liaohe River was the cradle of the Chinese dragon.
Guo Dashun, a famous archeologist and a member of the standing committee of the Chinese Archeology Society, said the dragon of the Liaohe River featured various types and series apart from old ages. The dragon of the Liaohe Rive made in early years could be divided into eight types, namely statue, basso-relievo, woodcarving, depicted, colored pottery, clay sculpture, jade carving and color depicting chronologically. A total of 21 dragons were discovered.
Guo said the jade dragon carving unearthed at the Liaohe River vividly embodied a combination of various animals. Among the antitypes were pig, deer, bear and bird. After interaction and influence between the animals' antitypes, through continuous human processing, the dragon design was finalized. The process was tightly related to the origin and development of the Chinese civilization, the country and its people. Dragon, therefore, has been regarded as symbol of the Chinese people for thousands of years.
With a drainage area of 345, 000 square kilometers, the Liaohe River runs across northeast China's Liaoning, Jilin Provinces, eastern part of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region and northern part of Hebei Province. The Liaohe River is deemed as one of the cradles of the Chinese civilization and the Chinese people.
By People's Daily Online
The Zuni Enigma
Very interesting--looks like I'm heading back to the library again soon, LOL! While I was there today getting Mummies of Urumchi I also picked up some books on Asian and American Indian art to see if I could identify any parallels, and one thing I was meaning to look at was the possibility of Japanese influence on Indians of the American Pacific coastline, which sounds like it would fit well with the thesis of Davis' book. The art of Pacific Northwest Indians has always intuitively struck me as similar to Pacific islanders' art, which I've guessed might reflect Japanese influence. I hadn't considered the possibility of Japanese influence on Southwestern tribes as well--very interesting idea. Thanks for the reference!
Thailand is a developing country as opposed to a third world country and as such has a well developed University system which has just come into its own recently. The country is one big archaeological site with the Buddhist Sangha very involved. There are also several foreign Universities with people over there most of the time. Of course, Buddhists have specific interests but they are not really closed minded. It is a lot easier to dig in a wat coumpound than on an American Indian reservation. Kings Rama IV, Rama V, and Rama VI were particularly interested in Archaeology and invited American, French, Dutch and British archaeologists in. Now I know that the University of Penn. and U of Minn., are among the American schools working with Thammasat Univ. Fine Arts Department on both sites and restorations. A French group was working with Chiang Mai University near Lamphun on a Dravidian / Mon site going back about 1600 years. Additionally, there are neolithic and bronze age sites active when funds become available near Chaing Mai.
One of the people I talk to a lot is a retired Engineering professor from Chiang Mai University. If his wife were in better health, he would like to become a monk again at a temple near Nan. Others I have talked to are from Char Hae, near my wife's home in Phrae Province. These people are quite well read -- much more so than I. A lot of the temples are 600 to 700 years old and are built on earlier sites -- some going back to 300 AD. Signs of Buddhism are sparse going back that far but in the Northeast, Khmer Hindu temples (some later converted to Buddlist), are literally all over the place.
The very early periods of Ban Chiang pottery have designs similar to both Southwestern and Southeastern USA. However, most pottery of that period (5,000 to 8,000 years ago)worldwide can be said to be similar to the later Native American pottery.
Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Atlas of the Mysterious in North America
Incidentally, there's a lot of other interesting (and often strange) info in this book. Although the author generally takes politically-correct issue with the hypothesis that North American burial mounds might be of European origin, p. 62 mentions that one North American cairn occurs at a known Norse site in Newfoundland, L'Anse aux Meadows. Crossreferencing of this site with the author's accompanying map shows that the site is near another burial mound dated to 2000 BC, the L'Anse Amour Burial Mound, and is also south of a Labrador stoneworks site at Nulliak Island that resembles sites in New England which the colonists attributed to the Celts.
ROFL! At the rate new stuff is coming out sometimes I feel like 9 days is a long time these days! :)
And with serpents
The solar wind can cause the comet's tail to twist and appear to writhe. This is illustrated by this APOD picture of Comet Ikeya-Zhang:
We don't see too many large comets these days, or this effect would be much more widely known.
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The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
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