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Post Info TOPIC: Tibetan Archaeology


L

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RE: Tibetan Archaeology
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Qinghai historical researchers have discovered a section of the Great Wall from the Ming Dynasty on the Tibet Plateau. The part of the ancient wall discovered is a flanking wall.
The Qinghai Great Wall is primarily on the west side of Xining Guard Post (also built in the Ming Dynasty and where Xining city is today). To the west it connects the Hexi Great Wall in Gansu Province and it extends for almost 1000 kilometres.

Source People's Daily

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The roof of the world should be covered in trees. Today, Tibet is mainly covered by desert pasture, but it was likely once adorned with cypress forest, which was destroyed by local inhabitants over the past 4600 years.
Georg Miehe of the University of Marburg in Germany and colleagues analysed climate data, pollen records and ancient soil samples from around Lhasa.
They suggest that not only is the climate, with plenty of rainfall, little permanent frost or snow and good mean temperatures through the growing season, most suited to forest growth, but that people burnt down trees to make way for barley cultivation and grazing animals.

Source

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L

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Sagya Monastery
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Chinese archaeologists have discovered a 700-year-old rare moat surrounding a monastery in southwest Tibet.

"The unearthed part of the moat whirled its way about every five meters in a square manner, which has been a shape rarely found in history both at home and abroad" - Zhang Jianlin, deputy director of the Shaanxi Archaeology and Research Institute.

The excavated section of the riverway is 8.8 meters deep, 6 meters and 3.3 meters wide on its upside and downside respectively.
The moat is 17 meters far from the Sagya Monastery in Sagya County, Xigaze City in the southern part of Tibet. The monastery was built in the 13th century when the county was a political and religious center for the region.
The Sagya Monastery covers an area of 14,700 square meters. The building began to be restored in 2002 at a cost of 86 million yuan. The renovation is expected to complete at the end of this year.

Source: Xinhua

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L

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Late Palaeolithic foragers
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Recent exploration in Tibet has shown that humans penetrated the region between 13,000 and 15,000 years ago, and may have been there ten millennia before that. These foragers occupied short-term camps; permanent settlement did not occur until the Neolithic.

"The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau is the largest continuous high-elevation ecosystem on the planet, characterised by extremes of climate," David Madsen notes in the Journal of Archaeological Science. "Understanding this is critical in understanding the capacities of early humans for the movement into other extreme environments such as Siberia and Beringia" — the Ice Age land bridge that led into the Americas.

The team’s survey around Qinghai lake, in the northeastern corner of the plateau at an elevation of 3,200m, was at a lower elevation than most of Tibet, which lies above 4,000m, and formed an intermediate stage, they surmise, in human movement to high altitudes.
Two sites on the south shore of the lake were studied: that at Heimahe No 1 consisted only of a hearth and four adjacent use surfaces defined by successive thin layers of charcoal. Radiocarbon dates for all four clustered between 13,000 and 12,800 years ago. The hearth was adjoined by an area of raked-out burnt cobbles, which may have been used for cooking. Such methods optimise the use of scarce fuel, something that must have been a problem in this treeless region, because the heated stones allow a longer cooking time and provide warmth during the cold nights. A slate scraper, a small grinding stone or anvil for smashing bones to extract marrow, a handful of bone splinters and some thinning flakes from tool manufacture were the principal artefacts found. "The limited cultural features and small number and diversity of artefacts suggest a short-term, single-visit foraging camp occupied by a small group," the team reports. The main activity was hunting a gazelle-sized animal and collecting birds’ eggs.
The Jiangxigou No 1 site to the east along the shore consisted of two hearths, with debris from toolmaking and again the bones of a gazelle-sized animal. It has been dated between 15,000 and 14,000 years ago. "A comparatively large array of broken and burned bone fragments may be associated with boiling and degreasing," the team says, while four large cobbles may have been used to smash bones for marrow.
The similarity of these sites suggest "a very consistent foraging and settlement strategy, occupation by a very small group for a very short, perhaps overnight, stay. This suggests that the Late Palaeolithic foragers of Qinghai lake were operating from residential bases located elsewhere, likely at lower elevations." Whether the lake area was exploited because of the availability of wild yak dung as a fuel is not yet known, but the overall impression is that these foragers did not adapt to living in the intermediate Tibetan uplands until after the ice had retreated and they were able to settle there as year-round herdsmen.

Source: Times Online

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L

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Potala Palace
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In 1994, Potala Palace, the symbol of Tibet, was registered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a World Heritage Site. Standing 3,600 meters above sea level, there is no palace located at a greater elevation. Its uniqueness of design and level of splendour radiate majesty.

In front of Potala Palace are two stone statues of lions, figures associated with the Chinese. These two lions were placed there meticulously by the Chinese Government to Sinicise the cultural heritage of the Tibetan minority. These are similar to the stone lions placed by the Chinese Government in front of the restored castle walls built in ancient times by Koguryo, a Korean kingdom that occupied land of present China. Both sets of lions reflect a common state of affairs.

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The Potala Palace
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China has spent 53 million yuan and 1,000 kilograms of gold to refurnish Potala Palace in Tibet, and has taken measures to enforce its protection of minority cultural relics and heritage and issued a circular on minority culture protection, according to Tondrub Wangden, vice director of the Chinese State Minority Affairs Commission.

The Chinese government project to maintain the cultural relics and ancient complex in Tibet started in early 2002. The Chinese central government allocated 330 million yuan to amend three ancient relics in Tibet, including the Potala Palace, Norbu Lingka and Sagya Monastery.
The Potala Palace, built in the 7th century, has already enlisted in the world cultural heritage list.

Source Xinhua

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L

Posts: 131433
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Tibetan Fire
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A fire is raging in a virgin forest in Tibet, but no casualties have been reported.

According to Gyaincain, deputy chief of the local fire brigade, the fire broke out at about 2:50 p.m. Wednesday in the virgin forest near the county seat of Bomi in Nyingchi Prefecture. Local firemen immediately rushed to the site.
The fire was not very big when they arrived at the site, but it rapidly gained strength and started to spread.

"It hasn't rained in the past few days and the air is dry under the blazing sun, which gave the fire momentum" - Gyaincain.

Nyingchi has had rare high temperatures over the past month. On July 17, the temperature hit 31.2 degrees Celsius in Bomi, equalling the historical record.
All the local firemen in the county seat as well as a number of citizens are combating the fire, he said.
But with the fire gathering strength, they failed to put it out with water and are now digging a ditch and cutting down nearby trees in a effort to stop it from spreading.

"We do not know how much forest has been burnt. It's lucky there's no wind in the virgin forest, or else the fire would be out of control" - Gyaincain.

Bomi is about 680 km east of Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
The cause of the fire is not known.

Source: Xinhua

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L

Posts: 131433
Date:
Tibetan Archaeology
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Chinese archaeologists claim that findings unearthed in the areas along the Qinghai-Tibet railway proved that human beings lived there at least 30,000 years ago.
Archaeologists with the Qinghai Provincial Archaeological Institute said they collected large number of chipped stone tools including knives and pointed implements dating back 30,000 years in the Tuotuo River valley, Hoh Xil, and Qaidam Basin, where the railway runs through, during recent excavations.
According to Xu Xinguo, head of the Qinghai Provincial Archaeological Institute, more than 30 stone implements were also discovered at the site of Sancha River bridge on the Qinghai-Tibet railway, located in Golmud, a city over 70 kilometres to the north of Kunlun Mountains.
Xu said these stone tools might reveal an important link of the cultural exchanges between Hailar, a city of northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and Nyalam County in Tibet.
Additionally, archaeologists have unearthed many sites of historical interest in Xining, the starting point of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, and in the eastern part of Qinghai. These sites include Xiaochaidan Ruins and Layihai Ruins of Palaeolithic (500,000-10,000 years ago), the Hulijia Ruins, Zongri Ruins and Lajia Ruins of the Neolithic (10,000 to over 4,000 years ago), as well as Nuomuhong Ruins dating to the Bronze Age.

Source Crienglish

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