China's "Pompei" reproduces rural life 2,000 years ago

[Guest guest]

China's "Pompei" reproduces rural life 2,000 years ago

 

An ancient village which was buried underground more than 2,000

years ago has been unearthed in Neihuang County, central China's

Henan Province, Chinese archaeologists announced on Monday.

 

The Sanyangzhuang ruins were excavated in the old course of the

Yellow River, the second longest waterway in China. The only intact

ruins of an ancient village so far discovered in China, said Xu

Pingfang, a famous archaeologist of archaeological studies of the

Han and Tang dynasties (618-907).

 

They tell vividly the scenes of production and life in rural areas

in the late Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.), said Xu, also

president of the Archaeological Society of China.

 

The foundations of seven courtyards have been unearthed over the

past nearly two years. From four of the seven courtyards,

archaeologists discovered the ruins of rooms, rooves, walls, wells,

toilets, pools, ridged cropland and trees, as well as large number

of relics that depict production and people's daily life at that

time.

 

Like the famous Pompei of the ancient Roman Empire, which was buried

by the sudden eruption of the Vesuvius, the Sanyangzhuang ruins were

well preserved since the ancient village was buried suddenly by mud

and sand flushed by the flooding of the Yellow River, said Xu.

 

All the scenes were "frozen": the distribution of courtyards, roads,

cropland and walls of various buildings; collapsed ceilings of

houses, articles used in daily life, such as stone ware, pottery

ware and iron tools, all were kept in their original locations, Xu

said.

 

A house was being repaired when the flooding occurred as

archaeologists found the tiles used to rebuild the house, piles of

castoff building materials, and a pond where mud was stirred.

 

Such scenes were rarely seen in past archaeological excavations,

said Sun Yingmin, deputy director of the Henan Provincial

Administration of Cultural Heritage.

 

The ruins vividly show the distribution of courtyards and the nearby

environment: all the courtyards, consisting of major rooms and ring

rooms, face the south and are surrounded by cropland; there were

venues for various activities outside the courtyards and there were

pools, wells and facilities for daily life in or outside the

courtyard as well as roads leading faraway.

 

Farming methods adopted in the Western Han Dynasty imposed a great

influence on China's agricultural civilization.

 

The discovery of large areas of cropland at the Sanyangzhuang ruins

provided first-hand materials for studying farming culture and the

farming system in the Western Han Dynasty, said Liu Qingzhu, head of

the Archaeological Research Institute under the Chinese Academy of

Social Sciences. Ridged farmland was the most important discovery at

the Sanyangzhuang ruins, he said.

 

Some experts even held that discovery of the ridged farmland could

possibly correct past recognition of farming culture in ancient

China and even rewrite China's farming history.

 

They said the distribution of courtyards and ruins of cropland also

provided valuable evidence for studying the structure of grassroots

organizations and relationship between different households in the

Western Han Dynasty.

 

Flooding of the Yellow River had been regarded as one of the major

dangers in the Western Han Dynasty. Discoveries at the ruins

provided new materials for studying how the Yellow River was

harnessed and changes of the river course in the Western Han, they

said.

 

Experts said that currently only a very small part of the ruins has

been excavated and they expected to find more important and valuable

relics.

 

A meeting on how to protect and further excavate the ruins was held

in Beijing recently. The State Cultural Heritage Administration will

allocate special funds for further excavations at the site and for

protecting and restoring the original look of the ancient village.

 

Source: Xinhua

http://english.people.com.cn/200602/21/eng20060221_244695.html