0154 - Finds Add 1,000 Years To History Chinese Of Civilization. Groups of ...Back

Finds Add 1,000 Years To History Chinese Of Civilization. Groups of stone tombs, a goddess temple and a sacrificial altear, all more than 5,000 years old, excavated at a 5,000-hectare site in western hilly areas of Liaoning Province, northeast China, have predated the earliest traces of Chinese civilization at least one thousand years. Archaeologists speculate that remains of such a big scale of construction should be evidence of the social and political activities of an early state which might have emerged more than 1,000 years earlier than the Xia, hitherto supposed to be China's first dynasty (between the 21 st and 16 th centuries BC). The excavation bagan in 1979 and is still going on. The site is located in the middle area of the Hongshan Culture in china's northeast, which is a primitive culture starting from the neolithic age (7,000 to 8,000 years ago). The way the temple, altar and tombs were luied out benrs some resemblence to Beijing's Tai Temple, the Temple of Heaven (the alter) and the mi ng (imperial) Tombs. A number of broken pottery statues of naked females, the head of a goddess, jade ornaments and painted hollowed - out pottery unearthed one metre under ground indicate that the site belonged to u matriarchal society.