China News Service, March 18th. On March 18th, the six field archaeological excavation projects that were finally selected for the new archaeological discoveries in China in 2021 were officially announced.

  Xiaoxin will take you to see it first!

Piluo Paleolithic Site, Daocheng County, Sichuan

Hand axe and thin-blade axe unearthed from the Piluo site Photo courtesy of Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology

  At the southeastern foot of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and 2 kilometers away from Daocheng County, next to the secondary tributary of the Jinsha River, the Piluo Site in Daocheng, Sichuan contains secrets.

  Several excavation sites excavated at the site are about two meters deep at the deepest. The strata of the excavation section are intertwined with yellow and red. Yellow represents the cold period and red represents the warm period. Each stratum represents tens of thousands of years of time.

  Multiple profiles of human activities, Acheulean hand axe, thin-blade axe... In September 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced the important archaeological findings of the Pilo site.

  Experts believe that this completely resolves the dispute over whether China and East Asia have a real Acheulean technology system, and the academic argument that "Eastern early human culture lags behind the West" is purely prejudice.

Huangshan Neolithic Site, Nanyang City, Henan Province

Photo courtesy of Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Jade Tools Unearthed at Huangshan Site

  Huangshan Neolithic Site is located in Huangshan Village, Nanyang City, about 3 kilometers away from Dushan Mountain, a famous jade mountain in China.

  Through years of archaeological work, not only a large number of important remains have been unearthed from the Huangshan Neolithic site, but also the relevant scientific and technological archaeological achievements have been outstanding. Important achievements have been made in dating, plants, human bone DNA, and lithological analysis of jade tools. The well-preserved prehistoric cultural relics can be called the archaeological wonder of "three thousand years of prehistory at a glance".

  Archaeological experts believe that the Huangshan Neolithic site is a large central site spanning the Neolithic Yangshao Culture, Qujialing Culture, and Shijiahe Culture, involving the nature of jade tool making. It is the area that has been discovered in the Nanyang Basin. The largest site with the highest standard of relics and rich connotations reflects the social complexity and civilization process of the integration and development of cultural exchanges between the North and the South at that time. It is a key site for exploring the origin and cultural development of the Nanyang Basin and Jianghan Plain, and it is also a key site for the study of Chinese civilization. , a major discovery of Neolithic archaeology in China.

Sanxingdui Shang Dynasty Site in Guanghan City, Sichuan

The picture shows the cultural relics in the sacrificial pit of Sanxingdui.

Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan

  The Sanxingdui site, discovered in the late 1920s, is the largest and highest-level central site in the Xia-Shang period discovered so far in the Sichuan Basin.

  In 1986, Chinese archaeologists unearthed more than 1,000 precious cultural relics such as bronze statues and bronze figures in the rescue excavations of No. 1 and No. 2 sacrificial pits, which made the Sanxingdui site truly known to the world.

  The Sanxingdui site continued from the Neolithic Age to the early Spring and Autumn Period. At that time, the Sanxingdui culture and Baodun culture coexisted in the Chengdu Plain, both belonging to the first phase of the ancient Shu civilization.

In the late Shang Dynasty, Jinsha culture emerged as an ancient Shu culture that was in the same vein as Sanxingdui and Baodun.

Warring States Tombs in Guozi Mountain, Zhangshu City, Jiangxi Province

The picture shows people visiting the tomb model of Guozishan in the Zhangshu Museum.

Photo by Liu Zhankun

  Experts have demonstrated that the Guozishan tomb is the largest tomb of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty found in Jiangxi so far.

  Although the tomb was disturbed by early robbery, there are still more than 2,600 sets of utensils.

The types of unearthed utensils are mainly lacquered wood utensils, in addition to metal utensils, ceramic utensils and jade utensils.

From the perspective of utensils, it includes various categories such as ritual utensils, musical instruments, weapons, carriages and horses, and daily utensils.

The unearthed zheng is well preserved, with a towering tail and a total length of 2.3 meters. It is the longest piece unearthed so far.

In the tomb, there is also a bronze dove-staffed Xunzi human-shaped upsetting and two bronze ge (halberd) inscribed with the "King of Yue".

Zhengjiahu Warring States Period Qin and Han Cemetery, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province

Image source: CCTV News Client

  The Zhengjiahu Cemetery is located in Chengguan Town, Yunmeng County, Hubei Province. It is located in the southeastern suburbs of the city site of the King of Chu. It is about 1,000 meters away from the Longgang Cemetery and about 3,000 meters from the Sleeping Tiger Cemetery.

  The main achievements of the excavation in 2021 are as follows: a batch of precious written materials has been unearthed. In addition to the wooden slips of dispatching policy, the most precious is the wooden gou (a kind of polygonal wooden slip) from the tomb M274 in the late Warring States period. There are 7 lines, each line contains more than 50 words, and the full text is about 700 words. It is the earliest "first long essay" in the era.

  Unearthed a group of rare burial utensil paintings, dating from the end of the Warring States Period to the Qin Dynasty and the Qin and Han Dynasties. The themes are all first seen, filling the historical gap of the materials and types of paintings in the Qin and Han Dynasties. Thought and artistic modeling provided important materials; a large number of exquisite lacquer wood wares were also unearthed, well preserved and with distinctive regional characteristics, which provided important materials for the study of Qin and Han lacquer ware production and circulation and arts and crafts.

Tombs of Tuyuhun Royal Family in Tang Dynasty, Wuwei City, Gansu Province

The picture shows Racecourse Beach M1.

Photo courtesy of China News Service Gansu Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics

  The Tuyuhun Tomb Group in Wuwei, Gansu Province is a Tang Dynasty tomb group.

Among them, the tomb of King Xi Murongzhi located in Chashan Village, Qilian Town, Tianzhu Tibetan Autonomous County, Wuwei City is the only well-preserved tomb of the Tuyuhun royal family found so far.

Murong Zhi was the third son of the last Tuyuhun king Murong Nuo Hobo and Princess Honghua.

  The ancestors of the Tuyuhun people were the Murong clan of Xianbei in Liaodong, and then their branches moved westward to the border areas of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and other provinces, and gradually developed into an independent country, and finally surrendered to the Tang Dynasty.

  There are more than 800 pieces of various funerary objects such as textiles and lacquer wood unearthed in the tomb, including wooden hu beds, six-curved screens, complete sets of military equipment mainly composed of iron armors, pen, ink, paper, inkstone and other stationery items, all of which are of the same period in China. The first or rare discovery of its kind.

The tomb also unearthed the earliest white wine found in China.

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