Two 500-year-old shipwrecks in the South China Sea, filled with Ming-era porcelain and stacked timber, provide significant clues about the maritime Silk Road trade routes, Chinese archaeologists have said. The two shipwrecks were discovered in October, and cultural and archaeological authorities have now begun a year-long process of deep-sea exploration and excavation, government officials announced. Marine researchers found the two vessels in the north-west region of the South China Sea, about 1,500 metres below sea level. The officials said the wrecks were “relatively well preserved, with a large number of…
Tag: Archaeology
Some of the first humans in the Americas came from China, study finds
Some of the first humans to arrive in the Americas included people from what is now China, who arrived in two distinct migrations during and after the last ice age, a new genetics study has found. “Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, the northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors. Li added that during the second migration, the same lineage of people settled in Japan, which…
‘A new culture’: discovery in China reveals ochre processing in east Asia up to 41,000 years ago
A 40,000-year-old archaeological site in northern China has unearthed the earliest evidence of ochre processing in east Asia, researchers say. The site was discovered at Xiamabei in the Nihewan Basin, in the northern Chinese province of Hebei. Ochre pieces and tools found in the area suggest that the clay earth pigment was processed there, via grinding and pounding, to produce powders of different colours and grain sizes. Near lumps of ochre, archaeologists unearthed a hammer stone as well as a flat limestone slab that showed signs of battering. In a…