Local Farmers found 2,000 years old carved caves while pumping water out of five small pools

The caves are one of the largest structures ever excavated by human hands. First discovered in 1992, 24 caves have been found to date, one of which has been developed as a tourist attraction.

Interestingly, to date, not a single historical record has been found that details or explains the monumental construction process that involved the removal of more than 1,000,000 cubic meters of rock.

These caves have become a mystery to many people trying to figure out how builders in the past were able to carve out these gigantic caverns and leave such unique tool marks on the surface of its walls.

The mysterious tool marks found in the Longyou Caves have baffled scientists since their discovery. Scientists from around the world wonder how the caves have been able to keep their structural integrity for such a long time. And then there is the question of those tool marks.

The Lonyou Caves mystery

What really makes these caves so mysterious and what is so special about their tool marks?

Modern-day high-tech machines dig away stone and grind down the walls and ceilings in mines and quarries.

But when we discover the same types of tool marks in caves that date back far beyond the time of any formally recorded technology capable of even remotely producing any similar marks on stone surfaces, most of us can’t help but scratch our heads.

How did people in remote history manage to carve out these caverns leaving tool marks that only find their likeness in modern mining operations?

The elephant in the room

Mainstream academia generally believes that people in the remote past were mostly simple dwellers and technologically primitive compared to people today. According to academia, the evolution of technology went from primitive (in the past) to more advanced (today).

If what the tool marks in the caves suggest is confirmed, then the aforementioned assumption would be turned on its head.

While this hypothesis is an accepted theory in the field of academics, sites like the Lonyou Grotto in China put mainstream theories about what ancient people were capable of under scrutiny.

Longyou Caves and history

According to historians, the caves were created in the Qin Dynasty, 212 BCE; however, there is no historical record of their construction. The caves were first discovered in 1992. So far, 24 caverns have been discovered, one of which has been transformed into a tourist attraction.

Mainstream historians believe that the Lingyou Caves were carved out of the massive stone by hand. Each cave has a volume of several thousand cubic meters. Apparently, the ancient builders did it all by hand, with hammers and chisels.

But they didn’t chisel any simple way. The builders apparently chiseled the walls and ceilings in a way that left a uniform pattern.

A different paradigm

When deriving conclusions within a framework of fixed notions and the chronology of events, it is difficult to ascribe perfectly aligned tool marks to the crude hammer and chisel work done by people of ancient times.

While it seems plausible to people who just consume information and do not critically think about what is said, those who do some research will find it hard to reason the facts surrounding the Longyou Caves using mainstream explanations.

To truly understand and properly analyze the caves and similar structures, you will need to be able to literally “think outside of the box.” You must be ready to constantly change your previous notions and reconsider prevailing hypotheses and theories in the light of new facts and artefacts surfacing.

It is, however, understandably difficult for any academic to throw away theories that they spent almost a decade studying and on which they have based their entire academic careers.

Tomb of Duke Jing of Qi and his 600 Sacrificial Horses found by Archaeologists

A surprising find was made in China in 1964: a tomb holding the bodies of hundreds of horses, perfectly organised in rows. Such a complex burial and large sacrifice clearly indicated that the tomb belonged to a person who held a high place in society.

It was soon found that the tomb belonged to Duke Jing of Qi and that the horse remains were, sadly, a sacrifice made in his honour.

Now excavations have resumed at the ancient sacrificial pit and archaeologists are hoping to learn more secrets about the burial, history, and scale of the army in the pre-Qin period.

Duke Jing, Son of a Concubine

From 547 to 490 BC the State of Qi was ruled by Duke Jing of Qi. Duke Jing was given the name Lü Chujiu at birth, and his ancestral name was Jiang. Duke Jing was a title he earned after his death.

The Duke was born to a concubine of Duke Ling of Qi and had an older half-brother named Duke Zhuang. Their father died in 554 BC and was succeeded by Duke Zhuang.

Cui Zhu, a powerful minister, supported Duke Zhuang until Duke Zhuang had an affair with Cui Zhu’s wife. As a result, Chi Zhu killed Duke Zhuang in 548 BC. Upon his brother’s death, Duke Jing took to the throne. With Duke Jing on the throne, Cui Zhu and nobleman Qing Feng took control of the state as co-prime ministers.

After much turmoil in the State of Qi caused by unrest between Cui Zhi and Qing Feng, Duke Jing appointed Yan Ying as prime minister, and thus began a period of peace and prosperity for the State of Qi.

Duke’s Death Leads to Coup

Duke Jing was married to Princess Yan Ji from the State of Yan. Their son became the crown prince of Qi, although he died during Duke Jing’s reign. Duke Jing had at least five other grown sons – possibly more – but he chose his youngest son, Prince Tu, as the new crown prince.

Prince Tu was born to a mother of low status, and he was still a young boy when named crown prince. To ensure his support, Duke Jing ordered the ministers of the Guo and Gao clans to support Prince Tu.

The Duke’s other sons were exiled to the remote city of Lai. Soon thereafter, Duke Jing died, in 490 BC. Although Prince Tu was installed on the throne, several clans staged a coup d’etat, and Duke Jing’s son Prince Yangsheng was brought back to take over the throne. He killed Prince Tu and became known as  Duke Dao of Qi.

The Sacrificial Horse Pit of Jing’s Tomb

Duke Jing of Qi was buried at Yatou in Linzi District of Zibo, Shandong Province. On the northern side of the tomb, archaeologists discovered the sacrificial burial of 145 horses in a pit measuring 215 meters long and surrounding three sides of the tomb.

Several years later, another 106 horse skeletons were found at the tomb, raising the total to 251. The horses are believed to have been young, between 5 – 7 years old when sacrificed.

The horses are believed to have been given alcohol until they became unconscious, and then struck upon the head.

Excavations were halted in 2003 due to inadequate preparations, but archaeologists at the time estimated that there may be up to 600 more horses buried in Duke Jing’s honour, along with 30 dogs, two pigs, and six other domesticated animals. While other sacrificial horse remains have been discovered in China, this is by far the largest.

New Excavations Launched

After a 16-year pause, excavations at the tomb of Duke Jing have now resumed and experts will finally be able to confirm the number of horses buried there. 

Xinhua News Agency revealed that over 3,000 cultural relics were unearthed during the initial excavations, and more are expected to be found over the next 8 months as archaeologists resume explorations. 

The site of the Tomb of Duke Jing of Qi now houses a museum and is a National Historical and Cultural Site. It is under consideration to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The horse remains are an incredible find, as it is difficult to imagine the complexities of a sacrifice of such a large magnitude. According to historical records, Duke Jing was infatuated with horses, which shows that this sacrifice was made as a gesture of great honour towards the fallen king.

China’s Atlantis: Shi Cheng an Ancient Underwater City in China

Shi Cheng, Chun’an County, Zhejiang, China. An ancient city, established about 1300 years ago, now lies at the 26-40 m depth underwater. The city and the valley were deliberately flooded in 1959 in order to create an artificial lake and hydroelectric power station. Now it could be a unique paradise for divers.

A maze of white temples, memorial arches, paved roads, and houses… hidden 130 feet underwater: this is China’s real-life Atlantis.

The so-called Lion City, tucked in a lake between the Five Lion Mountain, was once Shi Cheng – the centre of politics and economics in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

But in 1959, the Chinese government decided a new hydroelectric power station was required – so built a man-made lake.

Erecting a dam, the historical metropolis was slowly filled with water until it was completely submerged by the turquoise-blue mass now referred to as Qiandao Lake.

Depending on where on the lake bottom it is, the city is between 85 and 131 feet underwater.

And it lay forgotten for 53 years.

The Greek philosopher Plato wrote about Atlantis some 2,600 years ago, describing it as ‘an island situated in front of the straits called the Pillars of Hercules.’ 

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He said the island he called Atlantis ‘in a single day and night… disappeared into the depths of the sea.’

Searches continue across the Mediterranean, particularly around Gibraltar, to find the original Atlantis.

But China’s manmade version will soon be a renowned attraction. Qiu Feng, a local tourism official, has now suggested using Shi Cheng as a destination for diving clubs.

A team was dispatched to explore the city before tours are designed.

Qui said: ‘We were lucky. As soon as we dived into the lake, we found the outside wall of the town and even picked up a brick to prove it.’

Protected from wind, rain, and sun, the entire city has been branded a ‘time capsule’ as almost every structure remains completely intact, including wooden beams and stairs.

In a Desert in China, a Trove of 4,000-Year-Old Mummies

Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary graveyard in the midst of the terrifying desert north of Tibet. Its people died almost 4,000 years ago, and their remains were well preserved by dry air.

The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead of a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

The long-vanished people have no name because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life, and even the language they spoke.

Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin, a region encircled by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklimakan Desert, a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.

In modern times the region has been occupied by Turkish-speaking Uighurs, joined in the last 50 years by Han settlers from China. Ethnic tensions have recently arisen between the two groups, with riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. A large number of ancient mummies, really desiccated corpses, have emerged from the sands, only to become pawns between the Uighurs and the Han.

The 200 or so mummies have a distinctively Western appearance, and the Uighurs, even though they did not arrive in the region until the 10th century, have cited them to claim that the autonomous region was always theirs. Some of the mummies, including a well-preserved woman known as the Beauty of Loulan, were analyzed by Li Jin, a well-known geneticist at Fudan University, who said in 2007 that their DNA contained markers indicating an East Asian and even South Asian origin.

The mummies in the Small River Cemetery are, so far, the oldest discovered in the Tarim Basin. Carbon tests done at Beijing University show that the oldest part dates to 3,980 years ago. A team of Chinese geneticists has analyzed the mummies’ DNA.

Despite the political tensions over the mummies’ origin, the Chinese said in a report published last month in the journal BMC Biology that the people were of mixed ancestry, having both European and some Siberian genetic markers, and probably came from outside China. The team was led by Hui Zhou of Jilin University in Changchun, with Dr. Jin as a co-author.

All the men who were analyzed had a Y chromosome that is now mostly found in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia, but rarely in China. The mitochondrial DNA, which passes down the female line, consisted of a lineage from Siberia and two that are common in Europe. Since both the Y chromosome and the mitochondrial DNA lineages are ancient, Dr. Zhou and his team conclude the European and Siberian populations probably intermarried before entering the Tarim Basin some 4,000 years ago.

The Small River Cemetery was rediscovered in 1934 by the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman and then forgotten for 66 years until relocated through GPS navigation by a Chinese expedition. Archaeologists began excavating it from 2003 to 2005. Their reports have been translated and summarized by Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert in the prehistory of the Tarim Basin.

As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, Dr. Mair recounted, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.

At the foot of each pole, there were indeed boats, laid upside down and covered with cowhide. The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes they had been buried in. They had felt caps with feathers tucked in the brim, uncannily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen capes with tassels and leather boots. A Bronze Age salesclerk from Victoria’s Secret seems to have supplied the clothes beneath – barely adequate woolen loin cloths for the men, and skirts made of string strands for the women.

Within each boat, coffin were grave goods, including beautifully woven grass baskets, skillfully carved masks, and bundles of ephedra, an herb that may have been used in rituals or as a medicine.

In the women’s coffins, the Chinese archaeologists encountered one or more life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. Looking again at the shaping of the 13-foot poles that rise from the prow of each woman’s boat, the archaeologists concluded that the poles were in fact gigantic phallic symbols.

The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with bladelike tops. These were not the oars they had seemed, at first sight, the Chinese archaeologists concluded, but rather symbolic vulvas that matched the opposite sex symbols above the women’s boats. “The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism,” Dr. Mair wrote. In his view, the “obsession with procreation” reflected the importance of the community attached to fertility. Nowadays those who suffer from infertility can have access to the right medications to help them with their issues, as well as medications like for erectile dysfunction, whereas back then there were more natural ways to help procreation happen.

Arthur Wolf, an anthropologist at Stanford University and an expert on fertility in East Asia, said that the poles perhaps mark social status, a common theme of tombs and grave goods. “It seems that what most people want to take with them is their status if it is anything to brag about,” he said.

Dr. Mair said the Chinese archaeologists’ interpretation of the poles as phallic symbols were “a believable analysis.” The buried people’s evident veneration of procreation could mean they were interested in both the pleasure of sex and its utility, given that it is difficult to separate the two. But they seem to have had a particular respect for fertility, Dr. Mair said, because several women were buried in double-layered coffins with special grave goods.

Living in harsh surroundings, “infant mortality must have been high, so the need for procreation, particularly in light of their isolated situation, would have been great,” Dr. Mair said. Another possible risk to fertility could have arisen if the population had become in-bred. “Those women who were able to produce and rear children to adulthood would have been particularly revered,” Dr. Mair said.

Several items in the Small River Cemetery burials resemble artifacts or customs familiar in Europe, Dr. Mair noted. Boat burials were common among the Vikings. String skirts and phallic symbols have been found in Bronze Age burials of Northern Europe. There are no known settlements near the cemetery, so the people probably lived elsewhere and reached the cemetery by boat. No woodworking tools have been found at the site, supporting the idea that the poles were carved off-site.

The Tarim Basin was already quite dry when the Small River people entered it 4,000 years ago. They probably lived at the edge of survival until the lakes and rivers on which they depended finally dried up around A.D. 400. Burials with felt hats and woven baskets were common in the region until some 2,000 years ago.

The language spoken by the people of the Small River Cemetery is unknown, but Dr. Mair believes it could have been Tokharian, an ancient member of the Indo-European family of languages. Manuscripts written in Tokharian have been discovered in the Tarim Basin, where the language was spoken from about A.D. 500 to 900. Despite its presence in the east, Tokharian seems more closely related to the “centum” languages of Europe than to the “satem” languages of India and Iran. The division is based on the words for a hundred in Latin (centum) and in Sanskrit (satam).

The Small River Cemetery people lived more than 2,000 years before the earliest evidence for Tokharian, but there is “a clear continuity of culture,” Dr. Mair said, in the form of people being buried with felt hats, a tradition that continued until the first few centuries A.D.

City wall discovered that’s 1,000 years older than Rome, lost civilization found in China

The ancient walls of a lost city in southern China have been uncovered in a remarkable find by archaeologists. The northern section of the city was found at the Sansingdui archaeological site located in Sichuan province. It dates back than 3,000 years to the Bronze Age.

​The Southern, Western, and Eastern sections fo the city have now been uncovered as well, granting archaeologists a full picture of what the settlement used to look like. Three Neolithic tombs thought to have predated the walls have also been unearthed, with one including a full human skeleton.

In 1929, a farmer digging a new well discovered a stash of jade relics, which led Chinese archaeologists to excavate the area around the village.

Nothing came of these explorations until 1986 when two enormous sacrificial pits were found. Uncovered from the pits were thousands of pottery, jade, bronze, and gold artifacts that were not seen elsewhere in China before.

This exciting find led to a whole new understanding of the development of Chinese culture. The artifacts were dated as being 3,000 to 5,000 years old, and archaeologists knew they were examining a previously unknown ancient culture that had developed thousands of miles from civilizations of a similar age.

The artifacts showed evidence of having been burned or broken before they were carefully buried; however, this doesn’t detract from the magnificence of the find.

The dig uncovered sculptures with animal faces, masks with dragon features, human-style heads with masks on, figurines of animals such as dragons, birds, and snakes all beautifully decorated, as well as a sacrificial altar, a bronze tree, rings, knives, and other decorative items.  The most unusual item found was an eight-foot-tall human figure made of bronze.

The archaeologists were surprised to find numerous bronze masks and human heads that have square faces, huge almond-shaped eyes, long straight noses, and exaggerated ears.

These were carbon dated and found to be from the 12th to 11th century BC, and the well-developed technology used to create these bronzes astounded the scientists.

The ancient Chinese metallurgists knew that adding lead to an amalgam of copper and tin gave them a stronger substance that they could use to create large items such as the human and the tree.

One of the masks, the largest ever found anywhere, measured an astounding 1.32 meters wide and 0.72 meters tall. The animal-like ears, protruding eyes, and ornate bodies of these masks demonstrated an artistic style unique from any other found in China.

Unfortunately, no written texts have been located at Sanxingdui to help scientists unravel the mysteries of the city.  This Bronze Age civilization, which is now known as the Sanxingdui Culture, has been associated with the ancient kingdom of Shu; the rich artifacts have been attributed to the legendary kings of Shu.

There may be few reliable records that link this civilization to the kingdom of Shu, but the Chronicles of Huayang that were written in the Jin Dynasty, which existed from 265-420 AD, tell of the Shu Kingdom being founded by the Cancong. These people were described as having bulging eyes, a common feature of the artifacts found at Sanxingdui.

This amazing civilization was at its prime around 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, and the city was then completely abandoned.

The question that is facing archaeologists now is – why?  A theory has been put forward that a major earthquake hit the region, causing landslides that blocked the water supply to the city, so the residents had to leave their city and move closer to the river. This theory has not been proven.

4,000-year-old skeletons of mother Clutching a child to her chest at China

The loving embrace of a mother and her child lasts for 4,000 years, Chinese archaeologists reported after finding their interlocked skeletons.

Archaeologists unearthed proof of a mother’s love in Qinghai province, China, when they discovered the 4,000-year-old skeletons of a mother and child still locked in a dying  embrace.

The two skeletons are frozen in time, preserved in the stance they took in their final moments before an earthquake wiped out China’s “Pompeii of the East” around 2,000 BC.

The mother’s arms are draped around her son in what archaeologists believe to be both an embrace and an attempt to protect her son as catastrophe hit.

The mother was trying to shield her child from a massive earthquake that struck China in 2000 BC and triggered massive floods; the event is sometimes referred to as ‘China’s Pompeii’. The site is riddled with tragic scenes.

Lajia Ruins Museum, located in northwest China’s Qinghai province, is a 4000-year-old earthquake relic, with very well preserved artefacts and skeletons.

The entire disaster scene is so shocking it has been likened to the Pompeii tragedy. Pompeii was a Roman city wiped off the face of the Earth after a volcanic eruption and buried under ash and pumice.

Archaeologically, the entire site is stunning: it paints an incredibly well-preserved picture of an important ancient event.

It is also very important because it holds early clues to an early Bronze Age civilization that lived in the upper Yellow River region and of which we know very little about. But from a human point of view, it’s just heartbreaking.

These people had a rough fate, they were killed by a disaster they could do nothing to protect themselves against; they couldn’t even protect their children, try as they might. It’s a testimony to nature’s strength, and how weak we sometimes are against it.

I just hope they don’t separate the two skeletons. I’m not sure why – it’s not for a religious reason – but it just seems wrong to separate the two.

Rare 6-Million-Year-Old Skull of Juvenile Ape Discovered

A new cranium of a fossil ape from Shuitangba, a Miocene site in Yunnan province, China has been confirmed by a team of scientists. Dr Denise Su, curator of palaeobotany and paleoecology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, co-authored research describing the new skull published online in the Chinese Science Bulletin.

A significant discovery is the new juvenile cranium of the fossil ape Lufengpithecus, since juvenile crania of apes and hominins are extremely rare in fossil records, particularly those of infants and young juveniles.

The latest find cranium is just the second relatively complete cranium of a young juvenile in the entire Miocene (23 to 5 million years ago) record of fossil apes all over the Old World, and both were discovered from the late Miocene of Yunnan Province.

The new cranium is also noteworthy for its age. Shuitangba, the site from which it was recovered, at just over 6 million years, dates to near the end of the Miocene, a time when apes had become extinct in most of Eurasia.

Shuitangba has also produced remains of the fossil monkey, Mesopithecus, which represents the earliest occurrence of monkeys in East Asia.

The preservation of the new cranium is excellent, which is important because all previously discovered adult crania of the species to which it is assigned, Lufengpithecus lufengensis, were badly crushed and distorted during the fossilization process.

In living ape species, cranial anatomy in individuals at the same stage of development as the new fossil cranium already show a close resemblance to those of adults. Therefore, this fossil gives researchers the best look at the cranial anatomy of the species.

The team notes that the new cranium shows little resemblance to those of living orangutans, and in particular, shows none of what are considered to be key diagnostic features of orangutan crania.

Lufengpithecus, therefore, appears to represent a late surviving lineage of Eurasian apes, but with no certain affinities yet clear.

The survival of this lineage is not entirely surprising since southern China was less affected by the climatic deterioration during the later Miocene that resulted in the extinction of many ape species throughout the rest of Eurasia.

The researchers are hopeful that renewed excavations will produce the remains of adult individuals, which will allow them to better assess both the relationships among members of this lineage as well as the relationships of this lineage to other fossil and living apes.

“In addition to the ape, we have recovered hundreds of specimens of other animals and plants,” said Su.

“We are looking forward to going back to Shuitangba next year to continue fieldwork and, hopefully, find more specimens of not only the ape but other animals and plants that will tell us more about the environment.

Given what we have recovered so far, Shuitangba has great potential to help us learn more about the environment in the latest part of the Miocene in southern China and the evolution of the plants and animals found there.”

A 3,100-year-old bowl of soup found next to a dead body – and it’s still LIQUID

Right on cue for soup season, archaeologists have found a 3,100-year-old tomb lined with what are believed to be bronze soup bowls in Shaanxi province, China, according to Live Science.

All those bowls might have been in service of the decomposed, unidentified corpse archaeologists also found in the tomb.

Along with the bowls and the body, Live Science reports, archaeologists found a “four-handled tureen” decorated with dragons, birds and 192 spikes. There are also a few bovine heads thrown in, for good measure.

“The occupant of Tomb M4 was most likely of elite status, and could potentially be a high-ranking chief or the spouse of a chief,” Live Science reported the translation of the original Chinese journal article as reading.

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Shaanxi province, where the bowls were found, was the capital of the Zhou dynasty.

M4 was not the only tomb that archaeologist Zhankui Wang’s team found. Fifty-six or more tombs have been uncovered nearby since excavations began in 2012, according to Live Science.

As Live Science reports, the Zhou people of China were warring against the Shang at the time of the burial.

The archaeologists reportedly observed the names of several prominent Shang clans on the vessels they found, suggesting they originally belonged to the Shang.

The archaeologists conjecture that these vessels may have been plundered from the Shang by the Zhou.

“After conquering the Shang dynasty, the Zhou king distributed the plundered war spoils to the military officers with great achievements, and these spoils usually included bronze vessels,” the archaeologists wrote, according to Live Science.

They believe that the vessels may have been plundered during the war for succession.

According to The Encyclopedia Britannica, the Zhou and Shang dynasties co-existed for many years. For years, they alternated between friendly relations and fighting with one another, until one of the major houses of the Zhou created a plan to conquer the lands held by the Shang.

These plans culminated in a battle in the middle of the 11th century B.C., and eventually led to three years of fighting that resulted in the Zhou conquering all of China.

The Zhou was the longest-ruling of China’s dynasties, ranging from between approximately 1046 to 256 B.C, according to Columbia University.

The Shang dynasty, though not as long-lived, provided archaeologists with some of the earliest examples of Chinese bronze work, according to Encyclopedia Britannica