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View of winged Lion of Venice at Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy. (Photo by BGStock72 on Shutterstock) In A Nutshell Scientific testing shows Venice’s bronze Lion of St .Mark was cast in China during the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907), not in Europe. Lead-isotope analysis traced the copper to the Guishan, Yaojialing, and Anji mines along China’s Lower Yangzi River. Stylistic evidence reveals it began as a mythic tomb guardian called a zhènmùshòu, complete with horns and bat-like ears later cut away. Venetian merchants, possibly the Polo family, may have refashioned the statue into a winged lion as Venice’s new...

Chinese archaeologists have uncovered the tomb of Kim Young, a hostage prince from the ancient Korean kingdom of Silla, in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, Northwest China. This remarkable find marks the first formal archaeological excavation of a Tang Dynasty (618–907) royal tomb belonging to the Silla kingdom.The epitaph discovered inside offers a rare, detailed account of Kim Young's life, deepening our understanding of the Tang Dynasty's hostage system and diplomatic ties with Silla, located on the Korean Peninsula, according to reports by the China News Service...The tomb is a single-chamber earthen cave featuring a long sloped entrance passage and a skylight...

A centuries-old tomb uncovered in China reveals a stunning discovery that challenges everything we know about the Tang dynasty. Among the vibrant murals, a mysterious foreign figure stands out. A Panoramic View Of The Tomb. Photo courtesy of Jinyang Ancient City Research Institute | The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel ========================================================================= In 2018, construction work on a road in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province in northern China, led to an unexpected archaeological discovery. Researchers uncovered a tomb from the Tang dynasty, dated to the year 736 AD, that contained detailed murals illustrating everyday life during that period. The tomb...

Even though the Communist Party of China is officially atheist, and the central government was once wary of religion, subtle signs and increasing activities show there is a changing attitude towards religion in order to unite China and its neighbors. In March last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping stood in the offices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris, and extolled the profound impact Buddhism has had on China. "Buddhism originated in ancient India," said Xi, the leader of the officially atheist Communist Party of China. "After it was introduced into China, the religion went...

The Sogdians were an Eastern Iranian-speaking people originally from Sogdiana, or modern-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Traders, artisans, and cultural brokers, their influence peaked during the Tang Dynasty, or roughly from 618 to 907 CE, described as the "Golden Age" of the Silk Road. But until recently, very little has been known about their origins and interaction with other populations.A breakthrough in understanding the Sogdians came from the analysis of two skeletons excavated from a Tang Dynasty tomb, M1401, in Guyuan, northwest China. The tomb was excavated by the Ningxia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in 2014 to prevent...

Daming is by far the largest and most opulent palace complex in the world. Tang was China's most major dynasty.

An art museum collaborates with expert chemists to investigate a Tang dynasty dancing horse.In order to solve a 1,300-year-old mystery, the Cincinnati Art Museum requested help from a University of Cincinnati scientist.The Chinese dancing horse sculpture at the museum is so lifelike that it seems to be ready to gallop off its pedestal. However, H ou-mei Sung, an expert in East Asian art, questioned the authenticity of a decorative tassel on the terracotta horse’s forehead that resembled the horn of a mythical unicorn.Pietro Strobbia, an assistant professor of chemistry at the UC College of Arts and Sciences, was contacted by...

...Eighth century Asia was an ever-shifting mosaic of different tribal and regional powers, fighting for trade rights, political power and/or religious hegemony. The era was characterized by a dizzying array of battles, alliances, double-crosses and betrayals.At the time, nobody could have known that one particular battle, which took place on the banks of the Talas River in present-day Kyrgyzstan, would halt the Arab and Chinese advances in Central Asia and fix the boundary between Buddhist/Confucianist Asia and Muslim Asia.None of the combatants could have predicted that this battle would be instrumental in transmitting a key invention from China to the...

Chinese archaeologists have examined a batch of bamboo slips unearthed from a Western Han Dynasty (202 BC-8 AD) tomb and found they recorded the long-lost rules of "liubo", an ancient Chinese board game. More than 5,200 bamboo slips were excavated from the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun near Nanchang in eastern China's Jiangxi Province. Over 1,000 of them were recently confirmed to be inscribed with the rules of liubo, according to the institute of excavated text research at Peking University, which is in charge of examining the items. Liubo, literally "six sticks," is a two-player board game dating back...

  Here are some photos from the newly opened "Tang Dynasty Paradise Park" in Xi'an.It just opened at the first of April and even though it has no real historical significance, it's still a beautiful park that provides some of the best entertainment I've ever seen in my life and I highly recommend paying a visit. Even though the only historical ties the Tang Paradise Park has are in its appearance, it still provides somewhat of a modern view of the architectural beauty that graced the Tang Dynasty period. It also has the largest and most beautiful water show in...

Osama bin Laden tried to purchase the world's largest pearl, the Pearl of Allah, as a gift to Saddam Hussein "to unite the Arab cultures," and Hussein was prepared to accept, according to the pearl's owner. Victor Barbish, who owns sixty-six percent of the pearl on behalf of his daughter, told WorldNetDaily he received an offer in 1999 from individuals who said they were "from bin Laden's group" to purchase the pearl for $60 million to give to Hussein as an overture of unity between al-Qaida and the Iraqi government.