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 BC-24 AD), 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, roofs, 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 fara way.
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.
(Xinhua News Agency February 22, 2006)
