Chinese archaeologists are once again excited over new discoveries -- a 6,000-year-old village and a 2,000-year-old imperial palace. They have also found an inscription that records how the ancient Chinese built roads across the faces of cliffs.

In Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, they have discovered a village that has existed fro more than 6,000 years.

The vivid and colorful relics unearthed in Yuyang Village, not far from Anyang, in northern Henan, reveal a picture of the development of the village over a period of more than 6,000 years, said Tang Jigen, head of the Anyang Work Station under the Archaeological Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Tang said most of the items unearthed in the village are the remains of implements used by common people in their daily lives, such as cooking utensils, pottery jars, and other kinds of pottery and porcelain ware.

Ruins of irrigation canals and ditches built in the Warring States Period (475-221 BC) and pottery kilns from the Northern Dynasties (AD 386-581) were also discovered in the village.

Tang said the relics unearthed in the village date back to as early as the Yangshao Culture period (5000-3000 BC) and the Longshan Culture period (3000-1700 BC).

Human beings began moving into this area possibly before the Yangshao Culture period, Professor Wang Yingxi, a noted historian, says in his "General History of Anyang."

Covering 4 square kilometers, Yuyang is situated on a highland 500 meters from the Zhanghe River, which flows from northern Henan into neighboring Hebei Province.

The Zhanghe River flooded many times in recorded history, but Yuyang Village has remained intact.

Based on his discovery of the ruins of a ferry landing beside the river and a stretch of government-built road leading to the landing, Wang concluded that the village was a major ferry terminal and a booming commercial center from ancient times.

The village now has a population of more than 3,200 people, and the local residents have 24 different surnames, which Wang cites as eloquent evidence the inhabitants of Yuyang came from far and wide and were probably the descendants of ancient merchants, who came to the village to trade and settled down there.

Han Baochen, a 90-year-old villager, recalls that in his childhood Yuyang was a bustling town with a bigger population than it has at present, with many hostels, stores and agencies involved in transportation of commodities.

2,000-year-old palace

In the neighboring province of Shaanxi, after six months' of excavation, archaeologists claim that the imperial palace site they discovered last October in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi, is of great significance in the study of the imperial palaces of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).

The unearthed ruins of the imperial palace, covering an area of 2,000 square meters, are located in the northern suburbs of Xi'an, once the capital of the Western Han Dynasty, when it was called Chang'an. The ruins lie in the northwestern part of the Changle Palace complex, the imperial palaces of the Western Han Dynasty.

At the center of the terrace ruins, an underground palace was discovered, the main body of which is 24 meters west-to-east and 10 meters wide north-to-south.

"The palace probably had two floors, one above ground and one below," said Liu Zhendong, a researcher with the Archaeology Research Institute of CASS, who is leading the archaeological team investigating the Chang'an city site.

From the relics, it can be surmised that the main hall was exquisitely furnished. The floors of the main hall and its northern and southern passages are made of wooden planks, which were 50 to 60 centimeters above the earth to prevent dampness.

On the eastern part of the terrace, there are six connected rooms. The largest of them is square in shape with an area more than 40 square meters. Its floor was painted bright red. Bright red steps leading down from the north side of the room were discovered as well.

"Historical records indicate that red steps like this on the north side of a palace were reserved for the use of the emperor," said Liu.

Road construction

Meanwhile in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, archaeologists have found an inscription on a mountain cliff in southwestern Sichuan Province that tells how a road was built across the face of the cliff nearly 2,000 years ago, before explosives had been invented.

The inscription was discovered by Liu Dajin and Mou Jian, two primary school teachers in Yingjing County while swimming in a local river, said Gao Jungang, curator of the county's museum.

According to Gao, the inscription, which is still complete and legible, was found in a cavern on the mountain, about 20 kilometers from the county seat.

"The 52-character inscription tells how a local official surnamed He had a road built across the cliffs in AD 57, during the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 24-220)," he said.

The characters were written in the official lishu script, an ancient style of calligraphy popular in the Han Dynasty. "Each character is clear, concise and forceful," he said.

Experts say the road built by He was of the type known as "zhandao," plank roads built across the faces of cliffs by fixing wooden brackets into the stone, which served as "State highways" through the mountains in ancient times.

According to Mao Yisheng, one of China's leading bridge designers, "zhandao" are ancient China's third architectural marvel, after the Great Wall and the Grand Canal, both of which were built later than the first zhandao.

Cultural heritage officials say the inscription provides important information on the building of ancient roads, the history of communication in the southwestern region, as well as on the evolution of the Chinese language and calligraphy.

(Xinhua News Agency April 14, 2004)