The Caucasians in China Part 2
Linzi, originally called Yingqiu, was the capital of the ancient Chinese state of Qi during the Zhou Dynasty. The ruins of the city lie in modern day Linzi District, Shandong, China. The city was one of the largest and richest in China during the Spring and Autumn Period. With occupying Linzi in 221 BC, King Zheng of Qin completed his conquest of the Chinese rival states and declared himself the first emperor of China shortly afterwards. The ruins of the ancient city were excavated in 1926 by Japanese archaeologists and in 1964 by Chinese archaeologists.
The kings of Qi and the Qi state acted as patrons of the Jixia Academy (ca 315-285 B.C.) in Linzi, the earliest and largest (in its time) center of learning in China. The Academy, possibly named after the city gate (Ji) nearby, was made up of chosen scholars who received a handsome stipend from the government in return for advising the king on government, rites and philosophy. Among the Jixia Academy scholars were Mencius, Xun Zi (who taught Han Fei Zi and Li Si, among others), and Shen Dao.
The most noteworthy aspect of Shen Dao’s philosophy is the fact that it was a precursor of both Taoist and Legalist thought. While these two schools may seem quite opposed to each other in some regards, they both share a view of nature as a fundamentally amoral force, and by extension, reality as an arena without set moral imperative – a stance that differentiates both schools from Confucianism.
The ruins of the city are surrounded by over 100 tumulus, some as far as 10 km away. Many of the tombs around Linzi had been looted in antiquity. Over 600 horses were sacrificed in two rows, found in a tomb pit, near what is considered the tomb of Duke Jing of Qi. The sacrificial horse pit is now the site of a museum, the Museum of the State of Qi.
Prior to the expansion of Shang and Zhou culture through the region, many hundreds of tumuli were also constructed by the “Baiyue” peoples of the Yangtze valley and southeastern China.
Historian Luo Xianglin has suggested that these peoples shared a common ancestry with the Xia Dynasty. There is little evidence, however, that the Yue peoples held any common identity.
Evidence of wheeled vehicles appears from the mid-4th millennium BC, near-simultaneously in Mesopotamia, Indus Valley (Moenjodaro), the Northern Caucasus (Maykop culture) and Central Europe, so that the question of which culture originally invented the wheeled vehicle remains unresolved and under debate. The world’s oldest wooden wheel, dating from 5,250 ± 100 BP, was discovered by Slovenian archeologists in 2002.
The earliest well-dated depiction of a wheeled vehicle (here a wagon—four wheels, two axles), is on the Bronocice pot, a c. 3500 – 3350 BC clay pot excavated in a Funnelbeaker culture settlement in southern Poland.
The wheeled vehicle spread from the area of its first occurrence (Mesopotamia, Caucasus, Balkans, Central Europe) across Eurasia, reaching the Indus Valley by the 3rd millennium BC. During the 2nd millennium BC, the spoke-wheeled chariot spread at an increased pace, reaching both China and Scandinavia by 1200 BC.
A further expansion, into the lowland Near East and northwestern China, also happened around 2000 BCE, again apparently in conjunction with the chariot. Although ‘’Equus’’ bones of uncertain species are found in some Late Neolithic sites in China dated before 2000 BCE, ‘’Equus caballus’’ or ‘’Equus ferus’’ bones first appeared in multiple sites and in significant numbers in sites of the Qijia and Siba cultures, 2000-1600 BCE, in Gansu and the northwestern provinces of China.
The Qijia culture was in contact with cultures of the Eurasian steppes, as shown through similarities between Qijia and Late Bronze Age steppe metallurgy, so it was probably through these contacts that domesticated horses first became frequent in northwestern China. The wheel was certainly present with the adoption of the chariot in c. 1200 BC, although Barbieri-Low argues for earlier Chinese wheeled vehicles, c. 2000 BC.
The Kurgan hypothesis postulates that the Proto-Indo-Europeans were the bearers of the Kurgan culture of the Black Sea and the Caucasus and west of the Urals. The hypothesis was introduced by Marija Gimbutas in 1956, combining kurgan archaeology with linguistics to locate the origins of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) speaking peoples. She tentatively named the culture “Kurgan” after their distinctive burial mounds and traced its diffusion into Europe. This hypothesis has had a significant impact on Indo-European studies.
Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a “Kurgan culture” as reflecting an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC.
The Maykop and Yamna cultures were succeeded by the Srubna culture (1600-1200 BCE), possibly representing an advance of R1a1a people from the northern and eastern steppes towards the Black Sea shores.
In 1967 the first calibrated radiocarbon dates showed that our knowledge of early civilizations should be revised towards a much earlier time period. In an article entitled “Ancient Europe is Much Older Than We Thought” it is said (1): «We now know through radiocarbon dating that temples were under construction in Malta before 3000 BC, before the Pyramids of Egypt.”
The initial temples of Pharaonic Egypt were made of “mud bricks” (as in Mesopotamia), whereas building in stone came thereafter, “mimicking” the same style of architectural building previously used for building in mud brick. This fact led the Egyptologist Walter Emery to conclude that the Pharaonic Egyptian culture traced its origin back to an immigrant people, perhaps from south Mesopotamia.
The Kurgans provide us with an “earlier” people who buried their dead in a manner which must be regarded as a technological precursor to the later burial mounds of Babylon and Egypt, a people of Europe.
We find a clear correlation between the megaliths of Anatolia and the ones of Western Europe. Dolmens and Menhirs found in eastern Anatolia are similar to the ones found in western France and northern England.
The Pontic-Caspian steppe cultures can be divided in a western group, ranging from the Don River to the Dniester (and later Danube), and an eastern one, in the Volga-Ural region. The Pontic steppe was probably inhabited by men of mixed R1a and R1b lineages, with higher densities of R1b just north of the Caucasus, and more R1a in the the northern steppes and the forest-steppes.
R1b almost certainly crossed over from northern Anatolia to the Pontic-Caspian steppe. It is not clear whether this happened before, during or after the Neolithic. A regular flow of R1b across the Caucasus cannot be excluded either.
The genetic diversity of R1b being greater around the Caucasus, it is hard to deny that R1b settled and evolved there before entering the steppe world. Does that mean that Indo-European languages originated in the steppes with R1a people, and that R1b immigrants blended into the established culture? Or that Proro-Indo-European language appear in northern Anatolia or in the Caucasus, then spread to the steppes with R1b? Or else did Proro-Indo-European first appear in the steppe as a hybrid language of Caucasian/Anatolian R1b and steppe R1a?
This question has no obvious answer, but based on the antiquity and archaic character of the Anatolian branch (Hittite, Palaic, Luwian, Lydian, and so on) an northern Anatolian origin of Proto-Indo-European is credible.
Furthermore, there is documented evidence of loan words from Caucasian languages in Indo-European languages. This is much more likely to have happened if Proto-Indo-European developed near the Caucasus than in the distant steppes.
Haplogroup R1b would consequently have been the spreading factor of PIE to the steppes, and from there to Europe, Central Asia and South Asia.
The Kura–Araxes culture, or the early trans-Caucasian culture, was a civilization that existed from 3400 BC until about 2000 BC, which has traditionally been regarded as the date of its end, but it may have disappeared as early as 2600 or 2700 BC.
The earliest evidence for this culture is found on the Ararat plain; thence it spread to Georgia by 3000 BC (but never reaching Colchis), and during the next millennium it proceeded westward to the Erzurum plain, southwest to Cilicia, and to the southeast into an area below the Urmia basin and Lake Van, and finally down to the borders of present day Syria. Altogether, the early Trans-Caucasian culture, at its greatest spread, enveloped a vast area approximately 1,000 km by 500 km.
The name of the culture is derived from the Kura and Araxes river valleys. Its territory corresponds to parts of modern Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and North Ossetia. It may have given rise to the later Khirbet Kerak ware culture found in Syria and Canaan after the fall of the Akkadian Empire.
Hurrian and Urartian elements are quite probable, as are Northeast Caucasian ones. Some authors subsume Hurrians and Urartians under Northeast Caucasian as well as part of the Alarodian theory. The presence of Kartvelian languages was also highly probable. Influences of Semitic languages and Indo-European languages are also highly possible, though the presence of the languages on the lands of the Kura–Araxes culture is more controversial.
Their pottery was distinctive; in fact, the spread of their pottery along trade routes into surrounding cultures was much more impressive than any of their achievements domestically. It was painted black and red, using geometric designs for ornamentation. Examples have been found as far south as Syria and Israel, and as far north as Dagestan and Chechnya.
The spread of this pottery, along with archaeological evidence of invasions, suggests that the Kura-Araxes people may have spread outward from their original homes, and most certainly, had extensive trade contacts. Jaimoukha believes that its southern expanse is attributable primarily to Mitanni and the Hurrians.
They are also remarkable for the production of wheeled vehicles (wagons and carts), which were sometimes included in burial kurgans. Other excavated kurgans include the Ipatovo kurgan revealed a long sequence of burials from the Maykop culture c. 4000 BC down to the burial of a Sarmatian princess of the 3rd century BC, excavated 1998–99.
Gamkrelidze and Ivanov, whose views are somewhat controversial, suggest that the Maykop culture (or its ancestor) may have been a way-station for Indo-Europeans migrating from the Armenian Highland to a secondary Urheimat on the steppe.
The culture has been described as, at the very least, a “kurganized” local culture with strong ethnic and linguistic links to the descendants of the Proto-Indo-Europeans. It has been linked to the Lower Mikhaylovka group and Kemi Oba culture, and more distantly, to the Globular Amphora and Corded Ware cultures, if only in an economic sense.
A total of 110 dolmens have been investigated in a large region covering from Ankara to Kars, in Turkey. It is difficult to give an exact date for these structures, because no organic remains were found within the dolmens, but they are older than the Egyptian pyramids.
This culture of building circular graves and cult centers has been recently discovered in Göbeklitepe – Southern Turkey. From the size and weight of these granite slabs we can guess that a lot of energy was spent to build these structures, which were important and special for these ancient people.
They may also be tomb sites built for important tribe leaders. Their pyramidal form is a clear symbol representing the memory of Caucasian mountains on which kurgans were built. The dolmen has a striking similarity to the Anatolian dolmens. They all have the same architectural structure of few uprights topped by a large covering slab.
The people from the kurgan culture were sun-worshippers and they quite naturally followed the trajectory of the sun in the sky moving towards the west. Wherever they went they kept the habit of building circular cult centers and spirals symbolizing the circular form of the sun. We find such circular forms and cult centers in Malta, Spain, France, Denmark, England, Scotland and Ireland.
We also find large circular structures which show that in time the dolmens were replaced by large cult centers. It is still believed that these cult centers were special places for sun-worshiping. Stonehenge, for example, is a location where thousands of people gather each year for celebrating the rising sun during the summer solstice.
Similar cult centers are also found on Mediterranean islands. The Brochtorff circle on the Gozo Island of Malta is a typical example of this ancient culture. The cult center of Gozo is bounded by a stone circle 45 meters in diameter, similar to the ones surrounding the kurgans found on the high peaks of the Altai Mountains. The worship-center shares clear similarities with the recent find at Göbeklitepe – Turkey.
Further proof that these circular structures were cult centers built by a sun-worshiping culture is the circular and spiral forms found all over the world. The tradition of kurgan burials touched not only the peoples who buried their deceased in kurgan structures, but also neighboring peoples without this tradition.
Various Thracian kings and chieftains were buried in elaborate mound tombs found in modern Bulgaria; Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, was buried in a magnificent kurgan in present Greece; and Midas, a king of ancient Phrygia, was buried in a kurgan near his ancient capital of Gordion
Haplogroup R1b1a2 (R-M269)and R1b1a1 (R-M73) is associated with the early spread of western steppe peoples (EWSP- relating to the early “Steppe Belt” formation/expansion as described by Chernykh) movement eastward. The trail for this early eastward migration is, initially to the Afanasevo culture of the Altay region, in which they would collect. The language of this culture is likely to have been a predecessor, or nearly so, to the latter documented Tocharian.
At a similar time EWSP tribes leaving the western end of the PC steppes (or very near to it) would eventually carry large amounts of R1b1a2 to Western Europe. They also spoke a Centum language, thus relating R1b and Centum to early migrations out of the PC steppes. The R1b that had settled in the Altay region during the earliest EWSP forays to the area had surely migrated to various regions of China which correspond the areas where R1b1a2 and R1b1a1 are, relatively speaking, concentrated.
The bulk of this probably occured during what has been called the “Karasuk penetration” by Chernykh probably occured during 1400-800 BC. In reference to this “penetration”, “It is obvious enough that the chain of Karasuk objects (or objects similar to Karasuk prototypes) stretched almost 3500km to the East: from the Sayan-Altay region, through Xingjang, Mongolia, Northern China (including Inner Mongolia) to the basin of Liao He and nearly to the Liaodong gulf.
The other line of distribution of the steppe forms has a more southern or southeastern direction. Similar products are known to us from semi-desert and desert foothills of the Altun-Shan and Shanxi-Shanxi Plateau. They approach right up to the territory on the Yellow River ruled by Shanghai governors.”
The regions show a clear correspondence to the regions where R1b1a2 and R1b1a1 are “concentrated” in China, with the exception of Inner Mongolia and perhaps Northwest China. Though, this is easily explained by replacement with latter steppe people higher in R1a1a (R-M17). Highly relevant is that a relatively large pool of R1b1a2 and R1b1a1 has been found in Siberia, possibly the descendants of the earliest EWSP tribes pushing eastward towards the Altay.
Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans were surface kurgans and underground wooden or stone tombs constructed on the surface or underground and then covered with a kurgan. The kurgans of Bronze culture across Europe and Asia were similar to housing; the methods of house construction applied to the construction of the tombs.
Kurgan Ak-su – Aüly (12th–11th centuries BC) with a tomb covered by a pyramidal timber roof under a kurgan has space surrounded by double walls serving as a bypass corridor. This design has analogies with Begazy, Sanguyr, Begasar, and Dandybay kurgans. These building traditions survived into the early Middle Ages, to the 8th-10th centuries \AD.
The Bronze Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian culture developed in close similarity with the cultures of Yenisei, Altai, Kazakhstan, southern, and southeast Amur regions. In the 2nd millennium BC appeared so-called “kurgans-maidans”. On a prepared platform were made earthen images of a swan, a turtle, a snake, or other image, with and without burials. Similar structures were found in Ukraine, in South America, and in India.
Some kurgans had facing or tiling. One tomb in Ukraine has 29 large limestone slabs set on end in a circle underground. They were decorated with carved geometrical ornamentation of rhombuses, triangles, crosses, and on one slab, figures of people. Another example has an earthen kurgan under a wooden cone of thick logs topped by an ornamented cornice up to 2 m in height.
The Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans in the Early Iron Age are notable for their grandiose mounds throughout the Eurasian continent. The base diameters of the kurgans reach 500 m in Siberia (Great Salbyk kurgan of the settled Tagar culture); in neighboring China they reach 5000 m (kurgan of the first emperor of China in the 3rd century BC near Sian) (Mason, 1997: 71). Kurgans could be extremely tall: the Great Salbyk kurgan is 22 – 27 m (the height of a 7-story building); the kurgan of the Chinese emperor is over 100 m.
The presence of such structures in Siberia testifies to a high standard of living and a developed construction culture of the nomads.
In the Bronze Age were built kurgans with stone reinforcements. Some of them are believed to be Scythian burials with built-up soil, and embankments reinforced with stone (Olhovsky, 1991).
The most obvious archeological remains associated with the Scythians are the great burial mounds, some over 20 m high, which dot the Ukrainian and Russian steppe belts and extend in great chains for many kilometers along ridges and watersheds. From them much has been learnt about Scythian life and art.
Females were buried in about 20% of graves of the lower and middle Volga river region during the Yamna and Poltavka cultures. Two thousand years later, females dressed as warriors were buried in the same region. David Anthony notes, “About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian “warrior graves” on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, a phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons.”
A near-equal ratio of male-to-female graves was found in the eastern Manych steppes and Kuban-Azov steppes during the Yamna culture. In Ukraine, the ratio was intermediate between the other two regions.
Kurgan barrows were characteristic of Bronze Age peoples, from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Burial mounds are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots. Kurgans were used in the Ukrainian and Russian Steppes but spread into eastern, central, and northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC.
The monuments of these cultures coincide with Scythian-Saka-Siberian monuments. Scythian-Saka-Siberian monuments have common features, and sometimes common genetic roots. Also associated with these spectacular burial mounds are the Pazyryk, an ancient people who lived in the Altai Mountains lying in Siberian Russia on the Ukok Plateau, near the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The archaeological site on the Ukok Plateau associated with the Pazyryk culture is included in the Golden Mountains of Altai UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Scythian-Saka-Siberian classification includes monuments from the 8th to the 3rd century BC. This period is called the Early or Ancient Nomads epoch. “Hunnic” monuments date from the 3rd century BC to the 6th century AD, and other Turkic ones from the 6th century AD to the 13th century AD, leading up to the Mongolian epoch. In all periods, the development of the kurgan structure tradition in the various ethnocultural zones can be distinguished by common components or typical features in the construction of the monuments.
Depending on a combination of elements, each historical and cultural nomadic zone has its architectural peculiarities. The structures of the earlier Neolithic period from the 4th to the 3rd millenniums BC, and Bronze Age until the 1st millennium BC display continuity of the archaic forming methods driven by the common ritual-mythological ideas.
Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans were surface kurgans and underground wooden or stone tombs constructed on the surface or underground and then covered with a kurgan. The kurgans of Bronze culture across Europe and Asia were similar to housing; the methods of house construction applied to the construction of the tombs.
Kurgan Ak-su – Aüly (12th–11th centuries BC) with a tomb covered by a pyramidal timber roof under a kurgan has space surrounded by double walls serving as a bypass corridor. This design has analogies with Begazy, Sanguyr, Begasar, and Dandybay kurgans. These building traditions survived into the early Middle Ages, to the 8th-10th centuries AD.
The Bronze Pre-Scythian-Saka-Sibirian culture developed in close similarity with the cultures of Yenisei, Altai, Kazakhstan, southern, and southeast Amur regions. In the 2nd millennium BC appeared so-called “kurgans-maidans”. On a prepared platform were made earthen images of a swan, a turtle, a snake, or other image, with and without burials. Similar structures were found in Ukraine, in South America, and in India.
Some kurgans had facing or tiling. One tomb in Ukraine has 29 large limestone slabs set on end in a circle underground. They were decorated with carved geometrical ornamentation of rhombuses, triangles, crosses, and on one slab, figures of people. Another example has an earthen kurgan under a wooden cone of thick logs topped by an ornamented cornice up to 2 m in height.
The Scythian-Saka-Sibirian kurgans in the Early Iron Age are notable for their grandiose mounds throughout the Eurasian continent. The base diameters of the kurgans reach 500 m in Siberia (Great Salbyk kurgan of the settled Tagar culture); in neighboring China they reach 5000 m (kurgan of the first emperor of China in the 3rd century BC near Sian) (Mason, 1997: 71). Kurgans could be extremely tall: the Great Salbyk kurgan is 22 – 27 m (the height of a 7-story building); the kurgan of the Chinese emperor is over 100 m. The presence of such structures in Siberia testifies to a high standard of living and a developed construction culture of the nomads.
In the Bronze Age were built kurgans with stone reinforcements. Some of them are believed to be Scythian burials with built-up soil, and embankments reinforced with stone (Olhovsky, 1991).
The most obvious archeological remains associated with the Scythians are the great burial mounds, some over 20 m high, which dot the Ukrainian and Russian steppe belts and extend in great chains for many kilometers along ridges and watersheds. From them much has been learnt about Scythian life and art.
The Scythians were diverse groups of militaristic Iranic pastoralists. These groups inhabited the western and central Eurasian steppe lands during the Iron Age, the area known to classical Greek sources as “Scythia”. Their historical appearance coincided with the rise of equestrian semi-nomadism from the Carpathian Mountains of Europe to Mongolia in the Far East during the 1st millennium BC. The “classical Scythians” known to ancient Greek historians were located in the northern Black Sea and fore-Caucasus region. However, other Scythian groups encountered in Near Eastern and Achaemenid sources existed in Central Asia. Moreover, the term “Scythian” is also used by modern scholars in an archaeological context, i.e. any region perceived to display attributes of the “Scytho-Siberian” culture.
The Pazyryk culture is an Iron Age archaeological culture (ca. 6th to 3rd centuries BC) identified by excavated artifacts and mummified humans found in the Siberian permafrost in the Altay Mountains and nearby Mongolia. The mummies are buried in long barrows (or “kurgans”) similar to the tomb mounds of western Scythian culture in modern Ukraine. The type site are the Pazyryk burials of the Ukok Plateau. Many artifacts and human remains have been found at this location, including the Siberian Ice Princess, indicating a flourishing culture at this location that benefited from the many trade routes and caravans of merchants passing through the area.(State Hermitage Museum 2007) The Pazyryk are considered to have had a war-like life.
The Pazyryk burials are a number of Iron Age tombs found in the Pazyryk Valley of the Ukok plateau in the Altai Mountains, Siberia, south of the modern city of Novosibirsk, Russia; the site is close to the borders with China, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. Numerous additional Pazyryk burials have been found in neighboring western Mongolia.
Other kurgan cemeteries associated with the culture include those of Bashadar, Tuekta, Ulandryk, Polosmak and Berel. There are so far no known sites of settlements associated with the burials, suggesting a purely nomadic lifestyle.
The tombs are Scythian-type kurgans, barrow-like tomb mounds containing wooden chambers covered over by large cairns of boulders and stones, dated to between the 6th and 3rd centuries BCE. The spectacular burials at Pazyryk are responsible for the introduction of the term kurgan, a Russian word of Turkic origin, into general usage to describe these tombs. The region of the Pazyryk kurgans is considered the type site of the wider Pazyryk culture.
The bearers of the Pazyryk culture were horse-riding pastoral nomads of the steppe, and some may have accumulated great wealth through horse trading with merchants in Persia, India and China. This wealth is evident in the wide array of finds from the Pazyryk tombs, which include many rare examples of organic objects such as felt hangings, Chinese silk, the earliest known pile carpet, horses decked out in elaborate trappings, and wooden furniture and other household goods. These finds were preserved when water seeped into the tombs in antiquity and froze, encasing the burial goods in ice, which remained frozen in the permafrost until the time of their excavation.
Rudenko initially assigned the neutral label Pazyryk culture for these nomads and dated them to the 5th century BC. The Pazyryk culture has since been connected to the Scythians whose similar tombs have been found across the steppes. The Siberian animal style tattooing is characteristic of the Scythians. Trading routes between Central Asia, China and the Near East passed through the oases on the plateau and these ancient Altai nomads profited from the rich trade and culture passing through. There is evidence that Pazyryk trade routes were vast and connected with large areas of Asia including India, perhaps Pazyryk merchants largely trading in high quality horses.
It has been suggested{who} that Pazyryk was a homeland for these tribes before they migrated west{fact}. There is also the possibility that the current inhabitants of the Altai region are descendants of the Pazyryk culture, a continuity that would accord with current ethnic politics.
The Tagar culture was a Bronze Age archeological culture which flourished between the 7th and 3rd centuries BC in South Siberia (Republic of Khakassia, southern part of Krasnoyarsk Territory, eastern part of Kemerovo Province). The culture was named after an island in the Yenisey River opposite Minusinsk. The civilization was one of the largest centres of bronze-smelting in ancient Eurasia.
The Tagar tribes are thought to have been Caucasoids of the Scythian circle.[1] They lived in timber dwellings heated by clay ovens and large hearths. Some settlements were surrounded by fortifications. They made a living by raising livestock, predominantly large horned livestock and horses, goats and sheep. Harvest was collected with bronze sickles and reaping knives. Their artifacts were heavily influenced by Scythian art from Pazyryk. Perhaps the most striking feature of the culture are huge royal kurgans fenced by stone plaques, with four vertical stelae marking the corners. The Tagar culture is preceded by the Karasuk culture and succeeded by the Tashtyk culture.
Ancient DNA extracted from the remains of six males who dated back to the Tagar culture were determined to be of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a. Extracted mtDNA from two female remains from this cultural horizon revealed they possessed the T3 and H lineages. The study determined that the majority of the individuals had light hair and blue or green eyes.
Tashtyk culture was an archaeological culture that flourished in the Yenisei valley in Siberia from the first to the fourth century CE, perhaps equivalent to the Yenisei Kirghiz. Located in the Minusinsk Depression, environs of modern Krasnoyarsk, eastern part of Kemerovo Oblast, it was preceded by Tagar culture.
Tashtyk settlements and hill-forts have been unearthed throughout the Yenisei region, particularly the Sayan canyon area. Their most imposing monuments were immense barrows-crypt structures; these have yielded large quantities of clay and metal vessels and ornaments. In addition, numerous petrographic carvings have been found.
During his excavations of the Oglahty cemetery south of Minusinsk, Leonid Kyzlasov discovered a number of mummies with richly decorated plaster funerary masks showing Western Eurasian features, though this would not rule out some East Asian admixture, as revealed by ancient DNA (see below). There were also intact fur hats, silk clothes, and footwear (now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg).
Some of the graves contained leather models of human bodies with their heads wrapped in tissue and brightly painted. Inside the models there were small leather bags probably symbolising the stomach and containing burned human bones. Scaled-down replicas of swords, arrows and quivers were placed nearby.
Extracted mitochondrial DNA from five female Tashtyk remains of 100–400 AD from Bogratsky region, Abakano-Pérévoz I, Khakassia Republic, revealed that four possessed the Western Eurasian HV, H, N9a, and T1 haplogroups, while the other carried the East Asian haplogroup C. The Western Eurasian Y-DNA haplogroup R1a1a was extracted from one male. The same haplogroup was found among the remains of the preceding Tagar culture. The study determined that the majority of the individuals had light hair and blue or green eyes.
Ancient influences from Central Asia became identifiable in China following contacts of metropolitan China with nomadic western and northwestern border territories from the 8th century BC. The Chinese adopted the Scythian-style animal art of the steppes (descriptions of animals locked in combat), particularly the rectangular belt-plaques made of gold or bronze, and created their own versions in jade and steatite.
Following their expulsion by the Yuezhi, some Scythians may also have migrated to the area of Yunnan in southern China. Scythian warriors could also have served as mercenaries for the various kingdoms of ancient China. Excavations of the prehistoric art of the Dian civilization of Yunnan have revealed hunting scenes of Caucasoid horsemen in Central Asian clothing.
Scythian influences have been identified as far as Korea and Japan. Various Korean artifacts, such as the royal crowns of the kingdom of Silla, are said to be of Scythian design. Similar crowns, brought through contacts with the continent, can also be found in Kofun era Japan.
The religious beliefs of the Scythians was a type of Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion and differed from the post-Zoroastrian Iranian thoughts. Foremost in the Scythian pantheon stood Tabiti, who was later replaced by Atar, the fire-pantheon of Iranian tribes, and Agni, the fire deity of Indo-Aryans. The Scythian belief was a more archaic stage than the Zoroastrian and Hindu systems. The use of cannabis to induce trance and divination by soothsayers was a characteristic of the Scythian belief system.
The “Scythian languages” are essentially unattested, and their internal divergence is difficult to judge. They belonged to the Eastern Iranian family of languages.
The Scythian languages may have formed a dialect continuum: “Scytho-Sarmatian” in the west and “Scytho-Khotanese” or Saka in the east. They were mostly marginalized and assimilated as a consequence of the late antiquity and early Middle Ages Slavic and Turkic expansion. Some remnants of the eastern groups have survived as modern Pashto and Pamiri languages in Central Asia. The western (Sarmatian) group of Scythian survived as the language of the Alans and eventually gave rise to the modern Ossetic language.
What is nowadays called the Saka language is the language of the kingdom of Khotan which was ruled by the Saka. This was gradually conquered and acculturated by the Turkic expansion to Central Asia beginning in the 4th century. The only known remnants of the Khotanese Saka language come from Xinjiang, China. The language there is widely divergent from the rest of Iranian belongs to the Eastern Iranian group. It also is divided into two divergent dialects. Both dialects share features with modern Wakhi and Pashto, but both of the Saka dialects contain many borrowings from the Middle Indo-Aryan Prakrit. The Middle Indo-Aryan stage in the evolution of Indo-Aryan languages is thought to have spanned more than a millennium between 600 BC – 1000 AD.
The Kingdom of Khotan was an ancient Buddhist kingdom that was located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim basin. (The area lies in present day Xinjiang, China.) The ancient capital was originally located to the west of modern day Hotan at Yotkan. From the Han Dynasty until at least the Tang Dynasty it was known in Chinese as Yutian. The kingdom existed for over a thousand years until it was conquered by Muslim invaders in 1006.
According to legend, the foundation of Khotan occurred when Kushtana, said to be a son of Asoka, the Mauryan emperor, settled there about 224 BCE.
However, it is likely to have existed much earlier than this. As early as 645 BCE, the Yuezhi (known later as the Kushans) were mentioned as suppliers of the famous nephrite jade to China, and the excavations of the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BCE) tomb of Fu Hao showed that all the jade originated from the oasis area of Khotan. The first inhabitants of the region appear to have been Indo-Europeans from the west, and well-preserved mummies of European origin have been found in the Tarim area.
Khotan, throughout and before the Silk Roads period, was a prominent trading oasis on the southern route of the Tarim Basin – the only major one “on the sole water course to cross the desert from the south”. Aside from the geographical location of the towns of Khotan it was also widely renowned as a significant area of nephrite jade production for export to China. Frances Wood provides a number of examples of Khotan jade trade by referring to: jade on sale there in observations of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang in 645 as well as long-established jade sales to Chinese carvers in Xinglongwa and Chahai. She notes that these carvers had been carving ring-shaped pendants “from greenish jade from Khotan as early as 5000 BC”.
It would seem, from secondary sources, the prevalence of jade from Khotan from east to west is due to the relative lack elsewhere and to its quality. Evidence for the extent of the jade trade can be seen from archaeological remains as “polished and finished jade pieces were far more durable than ceramics and have survived for many millennia” . The jade from the rivers of Khotan continues to be transported along the southern Silk Road route to this day.
In the second century BCE a Khotanese king helped the famous Kushan Emperor Kanishka to conquer the key town of Saketa in Middle India.In Sanskrit, Saket means Heaven, thus a place where God resides. Saket can be alternatively used for Heaven. Saket was the ancient name of the city of Ayodhya, an important Hindu religious place, said to be the birthplace of the Lord Vishnu Hindu avatar Rama, and setting of the epic Ramayana. It is of seven holy places for Hindus in India.
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The Baiyue, Hundred Yue or Yue is a loose term denoting various partly Sinicized or un-Sinicized peoples who inhabited southern China and northern Vietnam between the first millennium BC and the first millennium AD.
In the Warring States period, the word “Yue” referred to the State of Yue in Zhejiang. The later kingdoms of Minyue in Fujian and Nanyue in Guangdong are both considered Baiyue states.
Although people of Yue had a knowledge of agriculture and technology of shipbuilding, Chinese writers depicted the Yue as barbarians who had tattoos, lived in primitive conditions, and lacked such technology as bows, arrows, horses and chariots.
According to the Shiji (c.123) and the Hanshu (c.96), a daughter from the Han prince, Liu Jian, was sent to the ruler (kunmo or kunmi) of the Wusun between 110 BCE and 105 BCE. She describes them as nomads who lived in felt tents, ate raw meat and drank fermented mare’s milk.
Some early Chinese descriptions of the people were pejorative, describing them as “bad, greedy and unreliable, and much given to robbery”, but their state was also described as very strong. On the other hand, the Wusun were notable for their harmony towards their neighbours, even though they were constantly raided by the Xiongnu and Kangju.
The Yue were assimilated or displaced as Chinese civilization expanded into southern China in the first half of the first millennium AD. Variations of the name are still used in both the name of Vietnam and the abbreviation for Guangdong (Yuht).
The modern term “Yue” comes from Old Chinese *wjat. It was first written using the pictograph “戉” for an axe (a homophone), in oracle bone and bronze inscriptions of the late Shang dynasty (ca. 1200 BC). At that time it referred to a people or chieftain to the northwest of the Shang. In the early 8th century BC, a tribe on the middle Yangtze were called the Yángyuè, a term later used for peoples further south. Between the 7th and 4th centuries BC “Yue” referred to the State of Yue in the lower Yangtze basin and its people.
From the 3rd century BC the term was used for the non-Chinese populations of south and southwest China and northern Vietnam, with particular states or groups called Mǐnyuè, Nányuè, Luòyuè (Vietnamese: Lạc Việt), etc., collectively called the Bǎiyuè (“Hundred Yue”).
In the 5th millennium BC, the lower Yangtze area was already a major population centre, occupied by the Hemudu and Majiabang cultures, who were among the earliest cultivators of rice. By the 3rd millennium BC, the successor Liangzhu culture shows some influence from the Longshan culture of the North China Plain.
From the 9th century BC, two northern Yue peoples, the Gou-Wu and Yu-Yue, were increasingly influenced by their Chinese neighbours to their north. These two states were based in the areas of what is now southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang respectively. Their aristocratic elite learned the written Chinese language and adopted Chinese political institutions and military technology. Traditional accounts attribute the cultural change to Wu Taibo, a Zhou prince who had self-exiled to the south. The marshy lands of the south gave Gou-Wu and Yu-Yue unique characteristics. They did not engage in extensive agrarian agriculture, relying instead more heavily on aquaculture. Water transport was paramount in the south, so the two states became advanced in shipbuilding and developed riverine warfare technology. They were also known for their fine swords.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, the two states, now called Wu and Yue, were becoming increasingly involved in Chinese politics. In 512 BC, Wu launched a large expedition against the large state of Chu, based in the Middle Yangtze River. A similar campaign in 506 succeeded in sacking the Chu capital Ying. Also in that year, war broke out between Wu and Yue and continued with breaks for the next three decades. In 473 BC, the Yue king Goujian finally conquered Wu and was acknowledged by the northern states of Qi and Jin. In 333 BC, Yue was in turn conquered by Chu. After the fall of State of Yue, the ruling family moved south to what is now Fujian and established the Minyue kingdom.
The kings of the state of Yue, and therefore its successor state Minyue, claimed to be descended from Yu the Great of the Chinese Xia dynasty.
The Yuezhi, or Rouzhi were an ancient Indo-European people often identified with the Tókharoi (Τοχάριοι) of Classical sources. They were originally settled in the arid grasslands of the eastern Tarim Basin area, in what is today Xinjiang and western Gansu, in China, before they migrated to Transoxiana, Bactria and then northern South Asia, where one branch of the Yuezhi founded the Kushan Empire.
The name is formed from yuè “moon” and shì “clan”. According to the Kangxi Dictionary, it referred to a country beyond China’s borders. Since the character can stand for the character ròu in pictograms, it may not mean “moon” here. The character seems to have derived originally from ròu, “meat”, as a character component.
According to the linguist J. Derakhshani the Yuezhi are linked to the Kuchis of Afghanistan, formerly Guci.
The first known references to the Yuezhi are contained in the Yizhoushu, Guanzi (73, 78, 80 and 81) and Tale of King Mu, Son of Heaven. The dates of the most common version of this book are disputed, however, and it may date to as late as the 1st century BCE. Unlike the neighbouring Xiongnu dynasty, who were also nomadic, the Yuezhi did not engage in conflict with the nearby Chinese states. Rather, the book described the Yuzhi, or Niuzhi, as a people from the northwest who supplied jade to the Chinese.
The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is indeed well documented archaeologically: “It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BCE the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China.” As well as maintaining this friendly trading relationship with China, the Yuezhi also acted as ‘middlemen’ between China and Central Asia.
During the Warring States period, the Chinese also turned to the Yuezhi for the supply of good horses. Moreover, the Yuezhi supplied the Qin Empire with crucial military mounts. The suffix Di or Zhi was generally used to describe the Di people, called “Western barbarians”, in Han Dynasty-era Chinese annals.
The Yuezhi resided on the border of agricultural China even earlier that the Xiongnu. While the Xiongnu were famous in history because of their conflicts with Chinese empires, the Yuezhi were better known to the Chinese for their role in long-distance trade.
The Wūsūn (literally “Grandchildren of The Crow”) were either a Turkic speaking or Indo-European speaking nomadic or semi-nomadic steppe people who, the Chinese histories say originally lived in western Gansu in northwest China, near the Yuezhi people. After being defeated by the Xiongnu (circa 176 BCE) they fled to the region of the Ili river and (lake) Issyk Kul where they remained for at least five centuries and formed a powerful force.
They are mentioned in Chinese historical sources in 436 CE, when a Chinese envoy was sent to their country and the Wusun reciprocated. Their later fate is connected with the Turkic Kaganates and the sudden reversals of fortune that fell on Central Asia and, specifically, the Zhetysu area. Considerable traces of their impact on surrounding peoples and events were left in Persian, Muslim, Turkic, and Russian sources extending from the 6th century CE to the present. The modern Uysyn who number approximately 250,000 people, are regarded by some as the modern descendants of the Wusun. The Uysyn have two branches, Dulat and Sary Uysyn (“Yellow Uysyn”).
Originally, Wusun probably sounded more like Asman suggesting that they may have been the Asii of Geographica. Asii, also written Asioi, were one of the Indo-European tribes mentioned in Roman and Greek accounts as responsible for the downfall of the state of Bactria circa 140 BCE. These tribes are usually identified as “Scythian”, “Saka” or Tocharian peoples.
Around 107 BCE a Han princess married to the Usun Hunmo composed a song that called the Wusun country a Sky (Tian) country, and in China the Wusun horses (Usun ma) were called heavenly horses (Tian ma). Ptolemy (VI, 14, 177 CE) knew an Asman tribe, located east of the Volga River.
The Chinese name (‘Wusun’) literally means Wu = ‘crow’ or ‘raven’ + Sun = ‘grandson’. Through the legend of an infant son, left in the wild, miraculously saved from hunger by suckling from a she-wolf, and being fed meat by ravens, they shared a similar ancestor myth with the ruling Ashina clan of the Göktürks (Asena legend), and many other Eurasian peoples. See, for example, the legend of Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome.
Early Chinese histories such as Shiji and Hanshu recorded that the Wusun had previously lived near the Yuezhi people in the Qilian and Dunhuang areas in Gansu (different locations however have been suggested for these toponyms.) According to Shiji, Wusun was a state located west of the Xiongnu. Hanshu described them as occupying land that previously belonged to the Saka (Sai). To their north-west the Wusun bordered Kangju, located in modern Kazakhstan. To the west was Dayuan (Ferghana), and to the south were various city states.
Chinese records first mention the “Ushi” in Andin and Pinlian (modern Pinlian and Guüan in the Peoples Republic of China), between the Lu-hun and Kuyan tribes. The transcription of Ushi means “raven generation”, and is semantically identical with U-sun – “raven descendants”. In Wusun legend their ancestors were a raven and a wolf.
The first historical records concerning the Wusun name them as a separate and distinct tribe of the Xiongnu confederacy, living on the territory of the modern province of Gansu, in the valley of the Ushui-he (Chinese Raven river). It is not clear whether the river was named after the tribe or vice versa.
The Royal Court of the Wusun, Chigu (literally “Red Valley”), was located in a side valley leading to Issyk Kul.
Early in their history, the Wusun migrated in three stages, lasting near two hundred years. The first exodus from Shaanxi to the Qilian Mountains in around 410 BC was forced by the Yuezhi. Between 410 BC and 177 BC, the Wusun were vassals of the Tocharic Yuezhi coalition.
The second migration in about 178 BC, was connected with the Xiongnu prince Modu Chanyu’s campaign against the Yuezhi, and resulted in the reconquest by the Wusun of their Sichen homeland. According to Zhang Qian, the Yuezhi were defeated by the rising Xiongnu empire and fled westward, driving away the Saka (Sai). Before this, they overran the Wusun, whose ruler Nandoumi was killed. His infant son Liejiaomi was left in the wild. He was miraculously saved from hunger being suckled by a she-wolf, and fed meat by ravens.
The Wusun left multiple diaspora islands along their centuries-old trek. As a rule, part of a tribe remained in the old habitats and later on participated in new ethnic unions. Wusun principalities are known in the Ordos Desert. Separate Wusun princedoms existed for a long time in the Khangai Mountains and along the Bogdoshan ridge (eastern Tian Shan).
According to Chinese archaeologists, the excavated skeletal remains of a people presumed to be the Wusun are of the short-headed Europoid Central Asian interfluvial type. On the basis of six skulls from the first century BC/AD found at Semirech’e (Zhetysu) and presumed to be those of the Wusun, Soviet archaeologists have described them ranging from primarily Europoid with some Mongoloid admixture to pure Europeans.
A later 7th century commentary to the Hanshu by Yan Shigu says: “Among the various Rong in the Western Regions, the Wusun’s shape was the strangest; and the present barbarians who have green eyes and red hair, and are like macaques, belonged to the same race as the Wusun.”
For some time, it was theorized that the Wusun spoke a Proto-Turkic language. Some scholars, including Chinese scholar Han Rulin, as well as G. Vambery, A. Scherbak, P. Budberg, L. Bazin and V.P. Yudin, noted that the Wusun king’s name Fu-li, as reported in Chinese sources and translated as “wolf”, resembles Proto-Turkic “böri” = “wolf”. Other words listed by these scholars include the title “bag/beg” = “lord”.
However, this theory is disputed by some Turkologists, including Peter B. Golden and Carter V. Findley, who explain that none of the mentioned words are actually Turkic in origin. Carter V. Findley notes that the term böri is probably derived from one of the Indo-European Iranian languages of Central Asia, while the title beg is certainly derived from the Sogdian baga (“lord”), a cognate of Middle Persian baγ (as used by the rulers of the Sassanid Empire), as well as Sanskrit bhaga and Russian bog.
Chinese sources name the Scythian Sai (Saka), and the Yuezhi who are often identified as Tocharians, among the people of the Wusun state in the Zhetysu area, but it is very difficult to place the Wusun with the Tocharian category of Indo-European.
Some scholars have proposed that the Wusun may have been identical with the people described by Herodotus (IV.16–25) and in Ptolemy’s Geography as Issedones. Their exact location of their country in Central Asia is unknown. The Issedones are “placed by some in Western Siberia and by others in Chinese Turkestan,” according to E. D. Phillips.
The Asii/Asiani may simply be a transcription of the Issedones of Herodotus. Taishan Yu proposes that Asii were “probably” the dominant tribe of the confederacy of four tribes “from the time that they had settled in the valleys of the Ili and Chu” who later invaded Sogdiana and Bactria. “This would account for their being called collectively “Issedones” by Herodotus.” He also states that the “Issedon Scythia and the Issedon Serica took their names from the Issedones.” Yu believes that the Issedones must have migrated to the Ili and Chu valleys, “at the latest towards the end of the 7th century B.C.”
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To examine temporal changes in population genetic structure, a team consistent of Wang L, Oota H, Saitou N, Jin F, Matsushita T, and Ueda S. by the Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of three populations that lived in the same location, Linzi, China, in different periods: 2,500 years ago (the Spring–Autumn era), 2,000 years ago (the Han era), and the present day.
Two indices were used to compare the genetic differences: the frequency distributions of the radiating haplotype groups and the genetic distances among the populations. The results indicate that the genetic backgrounds of the three populations are distinct from each other. Inconsistent with the geographical distribution, the 2,500-year-old Linzi population showed greater genetic similarity to present-day European populations than to present-day east Asian populations.
The 2,000-year-old Linzi population had features that were intermediate between the present-day European/2,500-year-old Linzi populations and the present-day east Asian populations. These relationships suggest the occurrence of drastic spatiotemporal changes in the genetic structure of Chinese people during the past 2,500 years.
The results suggest that there are definite differences in the genetic affinities between the ancient populations of Linzi in northern China and Egyin Gol in Mongolia. The Linzi material seems to bear a stronger affinity with Near Easterners and Europeans rather than with the present-day populations of northern China, although there is a definite component of East and/or Southeast Asians within Linzi as well (as evidenced by haplogrouping; see later discussion).
The team suggest that rather than a “European-like population” in the ancient Linzi region, the Linzi material may be at least partially related to Indo-Iranians (a branch of Indo-Europeans, although more precisely just “Iranian” by this time period), who were, during that period or at least shortly before it, probably inhabiting areas across Central Eurasia. More precisely, the Linzi population was quite possibly related to the Karsuk or Saka (putative Iranian groups who fit temporally and spatially) or also more distantly to the Andronovo, Afanasievo, Scythians, Sarmatians, or even the Sogdians.
The Karsuk and Saka are the most likely, given their existence in the first millennium B.C. in the central and possibly eastern parts of Central Eurasia, although these ethonyms are a little ambiguous and precise connections are not really possible. However, Harmatta (1992) argued that early Iranian groups were spread across Central Eurasia from Eastern Europe to north China in the first millennium B.C., and Askarov (1992) pointed out the existence of cist kurgan burials (with “Europoid” remains bearing some “Mongoloid” admixture, they suggest) in northwestern Mongolia in the same millennium.
Although speculative, this line of reasoning fits in with other lines of evidence from archeology and linguistics for the aforementioned changes in Chinese Bronze Age culture-the loan words in Old Chinese (Pulleyblank 1996; Kuzmina 1998; Beckwith 2002; Di Cosmo 2002) and possibly sites such as Zhukaigou and the Qijia culture (Linduff 1995)-as well as evidence of Iranians on the steppe and possibly the Altai region at that time.
The suggestion that actual European populations may have been in northern China at that time conflicts with general evidence of population movement on the steppe (*), which sees gradual movement of putative Indo-Iranians and Indo-Aryans throughout the steppe and associated areas around Central Eurasia from the Indo-Aryans in India, the western Iranians on the Iranian plateau, and the Scythians and Sarmatians (and related groups) on the south Russian steppe and Eastern Europe in the second and first millennia BC.
There is some evidence of them being on the Mongolie steppe [see Askarov (1992)], as well as evidence of their inhabitance of Xinjiang (such as Khotan) and possibly the Altai region (also the Tokharians, although they were not Indo-Iranian).
An early group of R1b1b people is thought to have migrated from Caspian Sea region to Central Asia, where it evolved into the R1b1b1 (M73) branch. This variety of R1b occurs almost exclusively in very specific Central Asian populations. The highest percentages were observed among the Uyghurs (20%) of Xinjiang in north-west China, the Hazara people of Afghanistan (32%), and the Bashkirs (55%) of the Abzelilovsky district of Bashkortostan in Russia (border of Kazakhstan).
Central Asian R1b1b1 could correspond to the Tocharian branch of the Indo-Europeans. It is possible that the Tocharians split from the main R1b body as early as 7,000 BCE. Over the centuries some groups of these nomadic tribes ended up around the southern Urals, others in the Tarim Basin (Xinjiang) or in southern Central Asia.
Mummies of fair-haired Caucasian people were found in the Tarim Basin, the oldest of which date back to 1800 BCE. The modern inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Uyghurs, belong both to this R1b-M73 subclade (about 20%) and to R1a1 (about 30%). This could mean that they had become a hybrid R1b-R1a society by the time they reached the Tarim Basin. But R1a1 could also have arrived independently during the Indo-Iranian migrations, or much later through some nomadic Scytho-Iranian tribes.”
Archaeologists in southwest China’s Chongqing municipality have unearthed more than 20 pieces of brick reliefs from a tomb of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 A.D.-220 A.D.). according to Lin Bizhong, a noted archaeologist with the Chongqing Municipal Archaeological Team, this was the first time that bricks withmolded designs had been unearthed in Chongqing.
Previously, such tomb bricks had been excavated from Sichuan province, southwest China, and have been included as relics under state key protection. Lin acknowledged that the brick-and-stone-structured tomb, fromwhich brick reliefs were unearthed, had been robbed, so they did not find anything valuable in the tomb besides the bricks.
Designs on the bricks include horse-drawn carriages accompaniedby honor guards, the image of Fuxi, or the sun god in ancient China, and images of high-nosed and hollow-eyed people, who might be from varied ethnic groups or foreigners. Moreover, archaeologists also found traces of red color on these bricks and held that might be traces of color painting.
According to experts, designs of horse-drawn carriages with honor guards indicated that the tomb owner was of high social status, bricks with the image of Fuxi were important materials forstudying religion and culture at that time, and the images of foreigners reflected cultural exchanges between the East and West in Eastern Han dynasty.
Jinsha is an archaeological site in Sichuan, China. Located in the western suburbs of Chengdu, Jinsha was accidentally discovered in February 2001 during real estate construction. Located about 50 kilometers away from Sanxingdui, the site flourished around 1000 BC and shares similarities in burial objects with the Sanxingdui site. Ivory, jade artifacts, bronze objects, gold objects and carved stone objects were found at the site. Unlike the site at Sanxingdui, Jinsha did not have a city wall.
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