Relics revealing aspects of the ancient Yellow River Valley civilization have been found in Shanghai’s Guangfulin Ruins, providing further proof of common links between the development of civilization along the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys.
The Guangfulin Ruins are located near Sheshan in Shanghai’s Songjiang District, covering a total area of over 10,000 square meters. Since their discovery at the end of the 1950s, the ruins have been explored three times. During the third excavation, archaeologists found new kinds of relics from the later period of the Neolithic Age, which were totally different from other cultures discovered in the area. Since it is the first such find around Taihu Lake, experts termed it as “Guangfulin Remains.”
According to archaeological experts, the Guangfulin Remains belong to the Longshan culture of Henan Province. The unearthed pottery is basically the same as that found in Henan’s Yongchengwang usually used in oil mills.
Why did these ancestors of central China come such a long way to get to the Taihu Lake Valley? Experts think there are two possibilities: These people left their native area to avoid violent internal disputes or to avoid disasters due to great changes in the natural environment.
(CIIC 01/15/2001)
