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...an ancient set of leather balls inside tombs of the prehistoric Yanghai cemetery near the modern city of Turfan... contained a central core crafted from leather or hair products and are encased in a leather pouch tied up together with a band. Two of the three are clearly marked with a red cross on the outer leather cover and were located in the burials sites of possible horse riders, indicating that they might have been employed in an early form of polo. These baseball-sized Turfan balls were carefully examined by researchers and radiocarbon dated back to the period between 1189...

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...