Chinese historians and relics experts claim they have discovered pictorial evidence for the study of ancient Chinese sciences and technologies from the frescoes inside the world-renowned Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang City, in northwest China's Gansu Province.

The Mogao Grottoes, also popularly known as the Thousand Buddha Caves, consist of some 500 man-made caves that have survived some 1,600 years of volatile climate changes and other damage. Dunhuang's frescos, painted on the ceiling and walls of the caves, carry the best preserved trove of Buddhist art in the world.

"We discovered frescos containing scientific and technological content in almost all of the caves which have frescos," said Wang Jinyu, a noted expert of Dunhuang's science and technology and an associate research fellow with the Dunhuang Research Academy.

Wang said, Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes' frescos date from the 4th to the 14th centuries, containing scientific and technological inventions by ancient Chinese in the spheres of math, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geography, agronomy, architecture, textiles, traffic and transportation, arms and military equipment and medical sciences.

A number of frescoes showing how craftsmen made pottery in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the Five Dynasties period (907-960 and Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), fill in blanks in the written historical record of Chinese pottery-making. Another fresco depicting wine production by distillation dates back to the Western Xia Dynasty (1038-1227) providing material evidence proving China could make distilled liquor in the tenth century.

Researchers also found the earliest pictures of weaving machines, tooth-brushing and boiling milk, which had dated back to more than 1,000 years ago.

Based on the rich and rare pictures of scientific and technological inventions, Chinese relics experts have called the Dunhuang frescoes "the largest scientific and technological gallery of ancient China."

"Though some academic works have been published, the study of the pictorial evidence for ancient Chinese science and technology in the Dunhuang frescoes is still very limited and we long for more finds and achievements as this study is furthered," acknowledged Wang Jinyu, the associate research fellow with Dunhuang Research Academy.

The Dunhuang frescos, along with Buddha figurines, were made to help promote and spread Buddhism, though the themes varied with the passage of times. The frescoes also reflected some aspects of ancient Chinese people's living, thus providing pictorial evidence for the study of ancient Chinese society. They would stretch for more than 20 kilometers if all of them were linked together and made into a single scroll of two meters tall.

The Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang were carved out of the rocks, 25km to the southeast of the 2,000-year-old Dunhuang town, once a vital caravan stop on the ancient Silk Road linking Central Asia with China. They were added to the World Heritage List by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1987.

(Xinhua News Agency September 24, 2004)