Posted on 06/24/2006 2:47:34 PM PDT by blam
30,000-year-old Relics Reveal Pre-historic Civilization along Qinghai-Tibet Railway
2006-06-24 13:59:42 Xinhua
Chinese archaeologists claim that relics 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, a habitat for Tibetan antelopes, and Qaidam Basin, where the railway runs through, during recent excavations.
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 kilometers to the north of Kunlun Mountains, said Xu Xinguo, head of the Qinghai Provincial Archaeological Institute.
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 of the Tibet Autonomous Region, southwest China.
"If we can find relics dating back to the same period at the stratum of the region, that will further prove that ancestors of the Chinese nation lived on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau 30,000 years ago and that the Kunlun Mountains is one of the cradles of the Chinese civilization," Xu said.
A Sino-U.S. joint investigation team also found ruins of the same age in the Kunlun Mountains several years ago, said Gao Xing, a research fellow with the ancient vertebrate and palaeoanthropology institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The 1,956-km-long Qinghai-Tibet railway starts from Xining, capital of Qinghai Province, crossing the Kunlun Mountains and ends at Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region.
The range of the Kunlun Mountains runs for 2,500 km from west to east at an elevation of 5,000 meters. The Kunlun Mountains is the origin of many Chinese legendary stories and it is mentioned in Chinese classics such as "Pilgrimage to the West" and "Canonization of the Gods" as well as in numerous novels.
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 the Old Stone Age (500,000-10,000 years ago), the Hulijia Ruins, Zongri Ruins and Lajia Ruins of the New Stone Age (10,000 to over 4,000 years ago), as well as Nuomuhong Ruins of bronze culture.
The Chinese are very proud of their illustrious history in the abstract, and even more happy to make money off it if Western tourists will come and look at its artifacts. However, if history gets in the way of progress, it's off to the trash heap with it.
-ccm
GGG Ping.
This area (Qinghai) was part of Tibet before Tibet was cut down in size by the Chinese Communists (judging from an early 20th-century map I have). I don't see anything in the story which links these artifacts to the ancestors of the ethnic Chinese, unless you want to count legends as evidence. The people who made the objects may have been unrelated to the Chinese--this is a long ways from the area where Chinese civilization arose much later.
This explains where they dug up Helen Thomas
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That's my suspicions too.
The Tibetians have myths and legends about mountain topping floods...these type myths are usually associated with island populations and are believed to represent huge tsunamis in the past when they were more common.
They probably migrated from coastal regions (or islands) that were flooded at the end of the Ice Age
They appear to be stretching conjecture to cover 25,000 years. Nobody will ever know who the ancient people were or what language they spoke.
The Kunlun Mtns. may have been the origion of an important element of what became Chinese culture. The people (as opposed to the party) tell of legends that the history of the Han Chinese is composed of continuosly moving eastwards, until they reached the sea.
Also, the Tibetans frequently raided and even invaded the lowlands. Again, one of the important ethnic groups making up China is from the West-Central foothills of the Kunlun Mtns.
Cheap, pirated copies?
The world's oldest outsourcing? : )
I recently read the following account of the early history of this part of the world. You might be interested in the reference to the red headed and blond Andites of central Asia.
PAPER 79 - ANDITE EXPANSION IN THE ORIENT
From the Urantia Book - 1955
http://www.urantia.org/papers/paper79.html
Asia is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this continent that Andon and Fonta were born; in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture that persisted for over one-half million years. Here at this eastern focus of the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield. Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians, Nodites, Adamites, and Andites, and from these regions the potentials of modern civilization spread to the world.
1. THE ANDITES OF TURKESTAN
For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eurasia was predominantly, though diminishingly, Andite. In the lowlands of Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to the northern lands of the yellow men. The Andite infiltration of India proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China.
For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself.
By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers.
When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites, they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade. Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was accelerated on both land and water.
But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia.
Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed descendants of Adam during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races.
Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central Asia nearly to the vanishing point.
But even in the twentieth century after Christ there are traces of Andite blood among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the presence of the red-haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet-Mongolian types in the Tarim basin of long ago.
The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of "one God in heaven." The early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic concept in Asia...
6. DAWN OF CHINESE CIVILIZATION
...Like the peoples of India and the Levant, victorious tribes of the yellow man established their earliest centers along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal settlements fared poorly in later years as the increasing floods and the shifting courses of the rivers made the lowland cities untenable....Twenty thousand years ago the ancestors of the Chinese had built up a dozen strong centers of primitive culture and learning, especially along the Yellow River and the Yangtze. And now these centers began to be reinforced by the arrival of a steady stream of superior blended peoples from Sinkiang and Tibet. The migration from Tibet to the Yangtze valley was not so extensive as in the north, neither were the Tibetan centers so advanced as those of the Tarim basin...
"They appear to be stretching conjecture to cover 25,000 years. Nobody will ever know who the ancient people were or what language they spoke."
I disagree, if they figured out that humans originated from bacteria living in muck then I'm sure they can figure out what language these people spoke. Possibly even what they ate for dinner if we get the right scientists on the job.
/sarc
DNA from bones can tell us who they are related to, and their artifacts can give us a pretty good idea what culture they belonged to.
It will be interesting to see if they can find some bones as this is likely before racial characteristics emerged. It would be informative if the Chinese would describe the "tool kit" to see if it is the same as Later Stone Age tools from elsewhere -- any "Venus" statues.
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