The Beauty Of Loulan
Cherchen Man and a swastika emblem from these ancient sites.
Posted on 09/12/2004 5:22:24 PM PDT by blam
Ancient pot with horse-taming picture discovered
www.chinaview.cn 2004-09-12 16:15:58
LANZHOU, Sept. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Archaeologists in the northwestern province of Gansu discovered a 3,000-year-old pot with a design showing a scene of horse-pasturing in Minqin County recently.
The painted design shows a man herding eight horses. Some of these horses are bucking and some stand quietly; some have tails and some do not. All of the horses have large buttocks, slender waists and thin legs.
Surrounded by the eight horses, the wide-shouldered, slender-waisted man is in a long gown. His physique and dress are quite similar to those of ethnic people living in the horse-taming area,said Wang Haidong, Vice Chairman of the Gansu Provincial Painted Pottery Research Institute.
The pot, 22 centimeters high and 24 centimeters in diameter, has a pair of symmetrical handles on each side of its body and a sunken bottom.
It's body is painted with complicated pictures and images, and alternating black and red broken lines. The most eye-catching of these pictures is the image of the man and the horses.
This is the first time that ancient painted pottery with a horse-pasturing picture has been discovered in China, Wang said, adding that the picture indicates that horses were domesticated inChina as long as 3,000 years ago.
Previously, only ancient painted pottery with images of donkeys,sheep, dogs and pigs had been found in China.
The images of horses and drawing lines on the picture are similar to those from the Tang Dynasty (618-907), indicating that horse drawing skills used in the Tang Dynasty might have been borrowed from ancient pottery painting, said Wang.
Wang said discovery of the horse-pasturing picture was significant not only in the study of development of human beings and painted pottery, but also in the study of the history of traditional Chinese painting.
The discovery provides support for the idea that traditional Chinese painting originates from patterns on ancient painted pottery, Wang noted. Enditem
And on the other side of the pot the word "Glue"?
There are records of the Han that the Yuezhi were split, the Greater Yuezhi allied with the Han and the Lesser Yuezhi were driven back west. Most were eventually assimilated. The Chinese skeletons did not begin appearing in the region until around 100-200BC. The Uyghurs adopted the reconstructed image (known as 'The Beauty Of Loulan') of one of the mummies as the mother of their country and her image is now on their money and etc. The great wall was built to keep these people out of China...the wall didn't keep anyone out.
Paul Ratchnevsky quoted the contemporary Chinese Zhao Hong as saying that Genghis Khan differed from other Tartars in that he was tall and had long beard, and quoted Marco Polo as saying that Khubilai did have black hair but fair complexion 'ringed with red'. Rashid ad-Din, in 'Collected Chronicles', said that Genghis Khan was amazed to see that Khubilai had black hair while the rest of their family had red hair and said his grandson must have taken 'his old uncles' features.
Genghis Khan belonged to the Borjigid clan which was a branch of the Kiyats to which the Jurchens (Jurchids), Changsi'ut and the Kiyat-Sayar also belonged.
The importance of the Borjigids lies in the legend that after the death of Dobun-mergen, the alleged ancestress Alan-ko bore Bodunchar after being visited by a strange 'golden glittering man'. Rashid ad-Din alluded to a foreign origin of the visitor and described him as having red hair and blue-green eyes.
Paul Ratchnevsky speculated that the mysterious visitor could be a Kirghiz since the Kirghiz people were said to be tall and possessed red hair and green eyes.
Note that Rashid ad-Din's writings came from secondary sources and rumors and that Yuan Shi (History of Yuan Dynasty) only recorded that Bodunchar had grey eyes against the chestnut-colored eyes of his brothers and half-brothers. Nothing is mentioned of hair or skin of Bodunchar or Genghis Khan."
Most interesting.
BLESS YOU BLAM. Love this stuff.
The Beauty Of Loulan
Cherchen Man and a swastika emblem from these ancient sites.
She is a beauty! Interesting that the Swastika, defiled by the NAZIs, is / was a some what universal symbol
Thanks BLAM. As a numismatist of sorts, I gotta get me some of that pinup currency!
I was expecting a picture of a stoned horse.
I wonder about these recents finds in China, they're coming too thick and fast recently, gets my spidey-sense tingling -- are the Chinese trying hard to emphasise their middle-kingdom status?
I'm sorry blam, I would respectfully disagree with the theory that Caucasians originated from what is now part of Western China. Caucasians would have arisen from the swathe of land from the Black sea to the Eastern edges of the steppes in Central Asia, but any finds in the Gobi or beyond would have been just forays or foraging parties.
Can't argue...I'm just quoting Victor Mair and Elizabeth Barber.
I'm not firmly committed to this idea. I am prepared to see some old assumptions about origins fall though.
Cronos,
Charts are, afterall, just a representation of scholars' best conjecture. Some past linquists have declared Tocharian to be a Celtic language based on word and grammar similarities between Italic and Celtic. I believe most linguists today don't go quite so far, but they do associate the word and grammar similarities more closely with European language groups (Greek, Armenian, Baltic among others).
Remember, there is no existing language today called Proto-Indo-European, and there are no written records of that language. It has been reconstructed by examining word similarities between related languages. The closer the match, the later the languages split from one another. Tocharian A and B show a very ancient relationship with European languages and later influence by Indic languages.
It is still not a settled question and may never be, but it is interesting none the less.
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