Zhoukoudian Locality 1 in danger of collapse!

A news article came out today that rescue excavations will commence immediately at the Zhoukoudian Cave Site that is located 50 kilometers SW of Beijing.

Location of of the Zhoukoudian Cave Site

According to the report, the excavation will last for 4 months, and is intended not only to shore up a large fracture that has appeared on the ceiling of the cave due to natural erosion, but also to answer some important research questions that had not been fully explored when the cave was last excavated in the 1980s.

The Zhoukoudian site is most well known was being the place where Peking Man was discovered in the 1920s, first by Swedish archaeologist Johan Gunner Andersson, and later on by Chinese scholars. Peking Man is considered to be one of the oldest hominid fossils yet discovered in China, and puts human occupation in north China as early as 500,000 years ago.

Gao Xing, a Paleoanthropologist from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) says that:

The excavation will help us understand in a more detailed way when humans settled down in the cave, when they began to use fire, what and when major climate changes occurred.

One of the most debated and interesting aspects of Peking Man, and Locality 1 at Zhoukoudian, is Peking Man’s supposed use and mastery of fire. This is an idea that is still widely accepted and believed in China, though some western scholars have begun to doubt this claim’s validity. In the late 1990s, a team of archaeologists lead by professor Paul Goldberg of Boston University conducted micromopholocial analysis on the soil layers of the site, and found that the ashy deposits that scholars had until then been believing were evidence of hearths and fire burning activities at the site were in fact washed in by water, and not evidence of burning at all. The report of what they found can be read HERE, at Boston University’s website for their Department of Archaeology.

Image of Zhoukoudian Locality 1. Taken from:http://people.bu.edu/paulberg/china_zh.html

The archaeologists working at the site this time around hope that by conducting rescue archaeology, they will be able to prove, once and for all, whether or not these deposits are evidence of fire usage, and if fire was ever mastered by Peking Man.

It should be noted that the Zhoukoudian site IS listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, and thus its protection should be of the highest priority.

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[BELATED UPDATE] Terra Cotta Warriors to be excavated for a third time.

A June 10th news post on Xinhua.net has announced that a third excavation shall begin this weekend at the world-famous Qin Terra Cotta Warriors site near the ancient capital of Xian in Shaanxi Province, China. The site is a recognized UNESCO World Heritage Site, which means that it fulfills UNESCO’s criteria for being a shining example of “human creative genius.”

Location of the ancient city of Xian, Shaanxi Province, China. (Map courtesy of airexpresstravel.net)

Image inside Pit No. 1

The first day of excavation began on June 13th, and is intended to uncover and preserve approximately 2,152 square feet (~2000 square meters) of Pit No. 1, the largest of three pits containing the famed life-size terracotta warriors over the course of 5 years. This year, China’s State Administration of Cultural Relics has approved the opening of approximately 200 square meters of the site.

Pit No. 1 in the center of the image

According to CBS news, “special care will be taken to preserve the figures’ painted details, which have faded almost entirely in those already taken from the earth and exposed to air.”

The first day of excavation, on June 13th, 2009, began at 1:00 pm and lasted for approximately 5 hours. During this time, Chinese archaeologists uncovered 2 four-horse chariots.

One of the main problems with excavating these pottery sculptures is that preservation of their pigmentation has been notoriously difficult. when the warriors were first discovered in 1974, they were supposedly richly colored, though exposure to the air has caused much of this original painting to corrode. According to Xinhua news, preservation has been taken into consideration much more carefully this time around, and is currently “better than thought.”

Poor conservation methods has also been one of the reasons why the rest of the terracotta warriors were not excavated earlier in time. In addition, the bulk of Qin Shihuang‘s actual tomb and burial chamber remains untouched, and it is unsure when or how archaeologists in China plan to excavate it.

Exterior image of the mound that is Qin Shihuang's unexcavated mausoleum

Qin Shihuang’s tomb site is one of the most important archaeological and cultural heritage sites in China (and in the world), and it is certainly one of the most frequented and well-known. This new excavation is sure to bring in quite a large amount of new tourists, and probably boost the popularity of this site in the coming years.

Hopefully the plans for preserving the color on these newly excavated warriors will be successful.

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