Largest excavation in history launched at Peking Man site - REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

05/19/2011

Largest excavation in history launched at Peking Man site

Chinese archaeologists have launched the largest protective excavation since the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site was first excavated in 1921.

The protective excavation of the No.1 site at the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site was launched on May 16.

The No.1 site of the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site is located on the northeastern slope of Longgu Mountain and is the most important site of the Zhoukoudian Peking Man relics. A total of more than 200 "Peking Man" fossils were excavated at this site since 1921. Currently, the Ape-man Cave still holds one-third of the original accumulations. This is very important for further studies on paleoanthropology, paleogeology and paleoenvironment.

The excavation is being supervised by the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site Administration and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, which falls under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Officials from the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site Administration said that the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Relics Museum began constructing scaffolding for the excavation in February 2011 and the excavation was officially launched on May 16.

According to the Daily Mail, the current excavation is the largest protective excavation since the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Site was first excavated in 1921.

"The excavation will last at least one or two years," officials said. (ANI)

China National News

May 19, 2011 11:28:45 AM | Current Affairs, History

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