Roaring engines rudely interrupted the tranquility of Ayong
Village on a fine day in December 2004.
The driver of an excavator was trying to lift a 5-ton boulder
and put it on a truck. But it was obviously too big. Finally, the
driver managed to raise the boulder and let it crash onto a smaller
one.
Although the huge rock cracked in two, it remained difficult for
the workers to load and carry it away.
The boulder was just one of many that archaeologists had to
remove before they could excavate six ancient tombs to be affected
by the Xichang-Panzhihua Highway under construction in this village
in Dechang County of Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in
Southwest China's Sichuan Province.
If it proved so difficult to remove such boulders with modern
machinery, how did the builders of the tombs manage over 2,000
years ago? Where did the boulders come from? Did the tombs really
belong to the little-known Qiong people?
These are just a few of the many myths that continue to puzzle
experts from Sichuan Provincial Archaeology Institute, Liangshan
Prefecture Museum and Xichang Cultural Relic Administration who
excavated the tombs.
"There are no similar boulders nearby, and it would have been
almost impossible for ancient people to carry them up to the tombs
from the Anning River," said Liu Hong, curator of Liangshan
Prefecture Museum, who has years of experience in dealing with such
tombs.
"We are still looking for the origin of these boulders, so we
can estimate the production capacity of the time and the number of
people who took part in their construction."
Cultural channel
Liu's introduction to the Boulder Tombs provided more clues to
the country's experts trying to piece together the history of the
Hengduan Mountains that lie on the border of Sichuan and Yunnan
provinces and the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Over 60 experts from across the country discussed the importance
of the Hengduan Mountains, also known as the Tibet-Yi Corridor, at
a seminar held last month in Xichang, seat of the Liangshan
prefecture government.
The concept of Tibet-Yi Corridor was first raised in 1980 by
renowned Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005).
"We can outline a corridor from north to south with the centre
at Kangding (a county in Sichuan). This corridor, which lies right
between the Yi and the Tibetan people, has rich deposits of
historical remains. This ought to be a precious source of history
and linguistic sciences," Fei wrote in the first issue of Social
Sciences in China.
Besides Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet, the Tibet-Yi Corridor also
spans Gansu and Qinghai provinces to the north.
The area's huge mountain range about 1,200 kilometers long and
750 kilometers wide is crossed from north to south by six rivers
Nujiang (Salween in Myanmar), Lancang (Mekong in Southeast Asia)
and Jinsha, Yalong, Dadu and Minjiang, four tributaries of the
Yangtze River.
Professor Duan Yu, director of the Bashu Culture Centre in
Sichuan Normal University, said that Liangshan was a transportation
hub for people in ancient times, moving along the deep valleys
between the northwestern plateaus of China to Southeast Asia.
"Archaeologically speaking, Liangshan is a complex region," Duan
said. "Ancient tribes in Liangshan had developed individual
cultures before they were converged into bigger cultures."
He pointed out that cultural relics found in Liangshan have
several origins, notably the Bashu culture in the Chengdu Plain and
the grassland culture of northern China. Their clash with the local
culture resulted in great diversity.
Apart from the Tibetan and Yi minorities, Qiang, Nu, Pumi,
Dulong, Lhoba, Monba, Hani, Naxi and dozens of other ethnic groups
have been living in this region for centuries. Due to a lack of
contact with the outside world, most of these ethnic groups have
retained strong identities.
Among more than 4 million people in Liangshan, 1.8 million, or
nearly 45 per cent, are Yi people. According to Li Xingxing,
research fellow with the Sichuan Ethnology Research Institute, the
Yi's ancestors arrived in Liangshan from Yunnan's Zhaotong via the
Jinsha River, establishing a unique paternal clan society.
Without forming any political system in Liangshan, they ruled
themselves with the clan system. Each clan, or jiazhi, had its own
woods, pastures and hills. Members of a clan were required to
support each other and join in battles against other clans. An
assembly of chieftains decided all matters.
An interesting tradition of the Yi people was that the name of
the son contained the last words of his father's name for example
the son of Apu Jumu was Jumu Denglun. This enabled the Yi to
distinguish clan members and carry on the lineage.
Little-known history
But researchers still know very little about the history of this
area, Professor Sun Hua, vice-director of Peking University's
School of Archaeology and Museology, told a meeting of local
archaeologists in 2004.
Sun and his colleagues have started researching the bronze ware
in the Eastern Yunnan Plateau. Liangshan, which borders Yunnan, is
an important part of this area.
Sun said that Sima Qian of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC - AD
24) recorded that Dian, Yelang and Qiongdu were three major
agricultural regions outside the Bashu region in Southwest
China.
Some work has been done about Dian and Yelong and little about
Qiongdu, because researchers haven't pinpointed the location of any
of the three regions.
The Boulder Tombs discovered in the past few decades in Xichang
could be related to the Qiong people, Sun said, but more studies
are needed to make breakthroughs in this field.
"Liangshan is archaeologically important as it is the origin of
many rivers in eastern Yunnan and links surrounding regions," Sun
said. "Studies of this region will not only enrich local history,
but also help us understand the culture and the minorities of
Southwest China."
Li Xingxing said that Liangshan is gifted with a very special
geological location, making it a centre of ancient cultures.
The banks along the Anning River, a smaller tributary of the
Yangtze which flows across Liangshan, have been inhabited by Qiong
people since ancient times, Li said.
The Anning River valley, a flatland of 1,800 square kilometers,
is the second-largest plain in Sichuan. Many historical annals
record that its early inhabitants were farmers.
More than 200 Boulder Tombs have been found in Dechang County
and other parts of Xichang. The oblate boulders were placed in
front of or at the back of the tombs. They were also used to cover
or make walls for the tombs.
Small pebbles were placed at the feet of the boulders to keep
them erect. But it's hard to imagine how the huge boulders were
lifted to cover the tombs, said Liu Hong.
Only a few bronze and iron knives and arrowheads were found,
indicating the scarcity of metal when the tombs were
constructed.
Liu said they found a slope laid with pebbles and pottery shards
between two tombs. But it's still too early to determine how the
boulders were dragged up such slopes.
"Since we found this slope, we are one step closer to unraveling
the myths," Liu said, adding that more evidence has been found to
prove that the tombs were built by early inhabitants of the
region.
(China Daily July 11, 2006)
