Editor’s note: A national comprehensive research program launched in 2002 to trace the origins of Chinese civilization has led to the excavations and studies of key sites that are about 3,500 to 5,500 years old. It has revealed a host of secrets about ancient China, including how early civilizations were formed and how they merged to create unity in diversity. China Daily speaks to experts working at these sites to decode their recent discoveries.
A ceramic eagle recovered from Huangchengtai at the Shimao site. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Near the northern edge of the Loess Plateau on the west bank of the Yellow River stands the Shimao site, in Shenmu, Shaanxi province. History has played tricks in the past with its legacy and identity, which is now being better appreciated.
It is located in an area where a group of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) military structures remained along the Great Wall. This led to confusion. When people, in recent times, saw stone walls still standing meters high at the Shimao site, they sometimes confused them as a part of the Great Wall. However, documentation, actually written in the Ming Dynasty, said it was probably built during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
They were all wrong. Shimao is actually millennia older. This is beyond dispute as it has been verified by archaeologists. The capital, presumably, of a regional power was absent in ancient text records, but many mysteries and surprises lurk under its colossal structure.
Covering 4 million square meters on a terrace, and nearly six times the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the approximately 4,000-year-old Shimao site is the largest city ruins of its era in China. In the eyes of scholars, it is also probably among the biggest archaeological discoveries in recent decades and is closely connected to the birth of ancient Chinese civilization.
Sun Zhouyong, now head of the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, has been devoted to the excavation and studies of Shimao over the past decade. Recalling his first impression of the “crazy stones”, as he dubbed them half-jokingly, Sun said he was stunned, considering prehistoric cities in China were usually built up through the earth.
“The constructional components and walls were so well preserved,” he said. “And stone statues were still there, in the magnificent ‘palace’ atop the terrace.”
Its scale astounds all. The total length of the Shimao stone walls, at least 2.5 meters wide, exceeds 10 kilometers. The highest surviving section is 5 meters above the ground.
“To construct these walls, the human labor was much more than the number of people living in this settlement,” Sun said.
Stone reliefs on the foundation of Huangchengtai at the Shimao site in Shenmu, Shaanxi province. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
The site was first found by archaeologists in the 1950s, and preliminary research began in 1976 when precious pieces of jade were recovered. Nevertheless, it was only when Sun led his colleagues in the first formal excavation, beginning 2011, that scholars began to realize that their previous understanding of the site was only the tip of the iceberg.
“The site is so huge, but the local landscape is rugged,” Sun said. “We can hardly imagine the extent of the site when standing in it, but we can see relics from the period of Longshan Culture (2500 to 2000 BC) almost on every hill.”
Sun and his colleagues were lucky. In spite of erosion over millennia, the general layout of the stone city and local landscape amazingly remain intact. Continuous field research helped people to piece the puzzle together and unveil the “epoch-making” discovery.
“Based on research of unearthed artifacts and funeral customs, we can see the city was built by native people who had lived in this place for a long time,” Sun said. “As time passed by and society got increasingly complicated, such a core settlement of a prototyped state was formed in Shimao.”
Shimao is not alone. Through their studies, archaeologists can now gradually “rebuild” that ancient state, which was presumably from 4,300 to 3,800 years ago. About 100 smaller city ruins were also found in the nearby areas, just like satellite settlements surrounding a metropolis.
In Sun’s eyes they represent a community and society with a pyramidal structure. “Before further evidence is found, it’s better to call it the center of the regional regime controlling North China around 2000 BC.”
Once Shimao city was excavated, some scholars tried to connect Sun’s groundbreaking findings to existing documentation, and thus usher some legendary rulers like Huangdi (“Yellow Emperor”) and Yao from suspected mythology to actual history. But Sun thought it is still too early to credit Shimao to any famed rulers recorded in early Chinese history.
Jade pieces were found in the stone walls on the site. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Nonetheless, the city has already reshaped people’s understanding of history, on architectural development in particular. For instance, the previously known earliest physical evidence of bastions — a structure projecting outward from the city wall — was from the Han Dynasty (206 BC to AD 220), and barbicans — the outer defense perimeter of a city — were believed to first appear in China in the Tang Dynasty.
Shimao has both, a few thousand years earlier than previously believed.
Since 2016, the site of the 80,000-square-meter Huangchengtai, or “the terrace of a royal city”, has been the focal area of Sun’s studies. The exquisitely designed gates and protective walls, as well as ruins of grand high-level architecture, showed its core role in Shimao.
About 40,000 relics made of jade, bronze, stone and bones, as well as pottery items, may compose a kaleidoscope for today’s viewers to imagine the life of rulers in Shimao. Fragments of murals, pieces of silk and lacquerware are also enticing for researchers.
According to Sun, Huangchengtai is the best-preserved ruins of an early-stage palatial city in East Asia. But findings like the stone reliefs also vaguely portray a picture of a “holy city”. As Sun noted, walls were built in Shimao not only for safety, they also stand for kingship and theocracy.
About 20 ceramic eagles and numerous bones used for oracles further indicate the exceptional status of Huangchengtai in a religious system. Separately, over 10,000 needles made of bones show that the site was an economic hub.
And the discovery of 20 mouth harps, the earliest known evidence in the world, from Huangchengtai also broadens people’s knowledge of music. “The mouth harps also offer an important clue to study human migration and cultural exchange in early history,” Sun said.
Put into a bigger picture of communications, Shimao looks like a seat of power with a wide influence. But many mysteries still remain.
More and more clues, including comparative studies of relics and DNA analysis, have shown the close links between Shimao and the roughly contemporaneous Taosi site in nearby Shanxi province. Were they allies or enemies?
Frontal and rear view of a stone statue that was unearthed. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Some ceremonial jade artifacts from Liangzhu Culture were found in the walls of Shimao. Centered in present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, which is more than 1,600 kilometers away, Liangzhu Culture existed approximately 5,300 to 4,300 years ago. How communication spanned such long distances needs further research.
“The Shimao city ruins offer rich references for our studies on formation and development of early Chinese civilization,” Sun said.
In the ongoing national-level comprehensive research program to trace the origins of Chinese civilization, Shimao was listed as one of the core sites.
Wang Wei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Academic Division of History, believes studies on sites such as Shimao help form a more scientific system to evaluate a civilization.
“The supersized Shimao ruins make the northern Shaanxi province a focal area to study how civilization developed,” Wang said.
In 2020, the “Neolithic City of Shimao” was listed among the world’s top 10 archaeological findings of the past decade by the journal Archaeology, published by the Archaeological Institute of America.
In February, a paper titled Shimao and the Rise of States in China: Archaeology, Historiography and Myth was published in the US-based journal Current Anthropology and has been widely noticed in academia both at home and abroad.
Considering Shimao as a milestone marking the trajectory of urbanism, Sun, from the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, knows the significance of placing the site in a bigger picture, involving civilizations in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley.
“We can see some similarities among the stone structures of these regions, though there is no evidence to show contact,” Sun said. “But it is undeniable that Shimao benefited from a wide network of intercultural communications.
“Shimao, owing to its unique geographic location, has an advantage to be compared with its contemporaneous counterparts across Eurasia,” he said. “Seeing how they were formed and how they evolved, we can better reveal the contribution made by Chinese civilizations to the world.”
