2,000-year-old tombs unearthed
Archaeologists in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region have unearthed about 500 tombs dating back more than 2,200 years in Horinger County and excavated a large number of relics.
The 500 tombs of the Warring States Period (475 B.C.-221 B.C) were excavated at the ruins of the ancient Tuchengzi city from April to December, said Li Qiang, a work staff with the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Institute of Archaeological Research.
Li said that archaeologists found that dead people buried in these tombs lie on their back, some with limbs straight and others with limbs bended. There are also some who lie on their side.
Let's see, mass graves of 2-something men, many of whom are missing heads and have evidence of weapons injuries. . .yeah, sounds like they were craftsmen all right!
More from China Researchers shed new lights on origin of ancient Chinese civilization
Chinese ancients living 3,500 to 4,500 years ago already had many choices for meal, including millet, wheat and rice, which are still the staple food of the Chinese.
They also compiled calendars according to their astronomical observation, which is regarded as one of the symbols of the origin of civilization.
They made exquisite bronze vessels to hold wine and food, and some of the bronze vessels were later developed into symbol of the supreme imperial power.
But how the Chinese civilization started and evolved remains a magnetic topic that has cost the lifelong efforts of generations of scholars.
Kind of a mish mash of findings.
Opinion piece: We suck Dancing to whose tune?
In the socio-politics of the Indus studies, the current international scholarship has a sub-text that is academically unacceptable to Indian archaeologists. The sub-text is that the Indus civilisation is related essentially to 'Middle Asia' in inspiration and not to South Asia as such. The archaeological evidence is overwhelmingly to the contrary but that has not deterred Euro-American archaeologists from pressing this point in various forms and guises.
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It is also important that we refer to an unpleasant but inescapable phenomenon of global archaeological research, i.e., the element of tension between First World and Third World archaeologies. With some honourable but regrettably rare exceptions, the archaeological research by First World archaeologists in the Third World is currently characterised by plain insolence — a complete contempt for whatever has been done in the field of archaeology in that part of the world by indigenous archaeologists. The fact that a number of indigenous archaeologists are invariably manipulated by such First World archaeologists by throwing different types of 'carrots' to them makes the situation rather sordid from the Third World point of view.
The quoted portion above gives the general tone of the piece, which basically centers on criticism of an "Indus Centre" that is funded in some part by an American organization. There's obviously some truth to what Chakrabarti says about the relationship that has existed between Western (primarily) and Third World archaeologists. But then again, how many Third World countries even have the excess capital to pony up for such projects? This is changing, obviously, as many countries work to develop their own economies and a homegrown class of professional archaeologists (see Egypt in particular). There's certainly a ways to go to get to rough parity in terms of resources, and western archaeologists are becoming more and more aware of the changing nature of the relationship. This article seems a bit overblown.