China News Service, Xiangyang, December 12 (Hu Chuanlin and Zhang Pan) Dr. Shan Siwei, the executive leader of archaeology at the Phoenix Tsui site of the Department of Archaeology, Wuhan University, introduced to a reporter from China News Agency on the 12th that after nearly three months of archaeological excavations, new discoveries were made at the site The 15600-meter-long ancient city wall is preliminarily judged to be more than 5,000 years ago.

　　The Fenghuangzui site is located in the middle reaches of the Han River, spanning the two villages of Qianwang and Yanying, Longwang Town, Xiangzhou District, Xiangyang City. The city site is square in plan and covers an area of ​​140,000 square meters. Together with the peripheral affiliated settlements, the total area is about 500,000 square meters.

Based on the analysis of the unearthed pottery tripods, pots, cups, ring foot plates, cylinders, and other cultural relics, archaeologists determined that the site was 5200 to 4200 years ago, and the main age belongs to the Qujialing culture to the Shijiahe culture.

In October 2019, the site was announced as the eighth batch of national key cultural relics protection units.

　　Starting in September this year, the Department of Archaeology of Wuhan University has carried out archaeological excavations of 450 square meters in the southern part of Fenghuangzui site.

Up to now, seven houses dating from the Neolithic period have been unearthed. The smallest is only 78 square meters and the largest is 50 to 60 square meters.

A few meters away from the house is the tomb area. A total of nine earthen pit tombs were found. There were human remains in the tombs, as well as funerary objects such as spinning wheels and red pottery cups.

　　To the south of the residential area, archaeologists discovered the southern city wall of Fenghuang Tsui, which was rammed layer by layer with loess.

The perimeter of the city wall is about 1,500 meters, about 45 meters high, and more than 20 meters wide.

The moat adjacent to the ancient city wall is also quite large, with a circumference of more than 2,000 meters and a width of more than 20 meters.

In the past three months of excavation, a large number of pottery, stone tools and a small number of jade and bone objects have been unearthed.

　　Shan Siwei introduced that such a large ancient city wall is definitely not a family that can complete it in a short time, it is built in an organized and planned manner.

Judging from various factors, the Fenghuangzui site should be a very important military site. From the Jianghan Plain to Xiangyang into the Central Plains, or from the Central Plains to the Jianghan Plain, you have to enter from this place, just like a checkpoint.

　　"At the end of the Neolithic period, with the early King Xia attacking towards the south, the ancient city of Fenghuangzui finally disappeared." Shan Siwei said that in the past, the history of Xiangyang city was 2,800 years, and the newly discovered ancient city walls and moats were more than 5,000 years old. History, from the urban development history of Xiangyang, the Fenghuangzui site has advanced the urban development history of Xiangyang for more than two thousand years.

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