Legend has it that hidden under the waves of the Atlantic Ocean
was a once highly civilized state called Atlantis. On the other
side of the world, a similar tale persists that an ancient city is
buried deep in a lake in Yunnan, a border province in Southwest
China.
But unlike the mythical tale of Atlantis, the submerged secret
in Fuxian Lake near Kunming, capital city of Yunnan, may be a
reality, as divers continue finding proof of its existence.
Eight years ago, a local diver named Geng Wei saw a slew of
large flat rocks scattered under the water 300 metres away from the
eastern bank of Fuxian Lake.
"These boulders have regular shape, each with more than 1.4
square metres. Many of them are broken into half, with clear
clefts," said the swarthy man, who led a large exploration into the
lake recently.
The seven-day underwater expedition that started last Friday and
ends today is a second one at the lake in the past five years. The
first exploration in 2001 was prompted after Geng submitted his
discoveries to the local government.
That venture was broadcast live by China Central Television
(CCTV), and divers found a stone wall and a shard of pottery.
The shard was later proved to date back to the Han Dynasty (BC
206BC-AD220), leading local archaeologists to believe the
underwater relics were at least 1,800 years old. Some of them even
assumed that what was actually beneath the water was Yuyuan, an
ancient city that disappeared mysteriously from historical
documents.
Old books have shown that there was once a city called Yuyuan to
the north of Fuxian Lake, which was never mentioned after the
Northern and Southern Dynasties (AD420-581).
These affirmations have led to great challenges upon new
contradictory findings in the recent exploration.
Interesting signs and patterns
Last Friday, divers used an underwater camera to show experts
their latest discovery: Three notches, each 1.2 meters long and 45
centimeters wide, on a moss-covered square rock, which made up a
shape that looked like "IY."
The notches are not natural, therefore supporting the hypothesis
that the stone relics were once part of man-made buildings,
according to Li Kunsheng, director of the Archaeology Research
Centre of Yunnan University.
"It must be a sign ancient people used to record something,"
added Li, who has kept his eye on the mystery for years.
More signs and patterns were discovered on the huge underwater
rocks 20 meters under the water's surface on the following day,
including some embossed signs, a carved sign consisting of a circle
and a straight line, and what looked like a carved human face.
Liu Qingzhu, director of the Institute of Archaeology at the
Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was particularly drawn to the
parallel signs of circle and straight line.
"If we know how this rock was placed originally, we could better
tell what this sign conveyed," said the archaeologist, who was also
present at the first Fuxian Lake exploration five years ago.
He explained that the sign of the circle was frequently used by
ancient people to represent the sun.
"If the original sign had the circle above the line, it no doubt
referred to the morning sun," Liu said.
However, two days after this discovery, divers did find "the
sun" on other rocks.
Two patterns, both of straight lines around a circle, were found
on the same rock on Tuesday. One pattern has four straight lines,
while the other has eight straight lines of different lengths,
surrounding the circle.
Li said the patterns probably meant to represent the sun and its
light.
The emergence of the signs, however, disproves the previous
hypothesis that the relics are 1,800 years old, two experts
said.
"In the Han Dynasty, Chinese characters were already popular.
Why would people bother to use more ancient signs in their
buildings instead of chiselling out characters?" Liu
questioned.
"The only explanation is that the construction was much older
than we previously thought."
If that is true, the age of the relics could be about 4,000
years old.
But, the scientist was still puzzled by his own conclusion, as
"there is little possibility that people 4,000 years ago could
build such large stone constructions."
The underwater building relics, as sonar detected, scatter in an
area of 2.4 square kilometers, more than double the size of the
city of Pompeii, which was swallowed by volcanic lava from Mount
Vesuvius.
"The only ancient stone city of that age we have found in Inner
Mongolia is much smaller than this. It is illogical that Yunnan had
the same old city with a much bigger size, let alone that the
province was less civilized than the northern area," Liu said.
"Also, ancient people in this area had no tradition of making
rock buildings. They used to construct with bamboo, wood or
mud."
Divers also discovered a pattern that looked like a stretched
human face on a flat rock. With two long "eyebrows," a small "nose"
and a corrugated "mouth," the pattern looks only partially
man-made, Liu said.
"It seems that someone produced it from some natural scratches,"
he added.
The senior archaeologist also cast doubt on its form, saying
that the "flat and disproportionate" face may be of an animal
instead of a human.
In theory, less civilized people drew pictures to depict real
things. Only in modern times did individuals add personal
imagination to portraits to express their unique style or ideas,
Liu explained.
"The pattern looks more like something from Pablo Picasso than
ancient Chinese," Liu joked.
Near this rock, there was another interesting discovery of a
flat rock with many holes.
There are five holes lined in a curve on one rock, about 15 to
20 centimeters apart.
"They have smooth walls and flat bottoms, suggesting they are
human-made," Geng said. "The two slates could have been
integral."
Though Li conjectured the holes might be related to sacrifice,
Liu was reluctant to draw a conclusion.
"If they were used to hold remains, how could people keep the
ashes? If they were used to hold flags, they could not have had
different sizes," Liu said.
"I never saw anything like this before. We need more evidence to
make a judgment."
An ancient city?
Divers all said that the layout of the underwater relics
suggests some stone buildings had collapsed.
"Over an edge of stone piles, the water suddenly expanded before
my eyes. A collapsed but still discernable stone staircase emerged
under my body, slanting into deep water," said Zhao Yahui, a
reporter with People's Daily who tried a 30-minute dive on the
second day.
He said on every two or three rocks were signs and patterns.
There is enough evidence to prove that there are old buildings
under the lake, archaeologists said.
But because preliminary analyses about the signs and patterns
oppose the previous inference that the underwater construction was
built 1,800 years ago, it could rule out the notion that the relics
were a part of Yuyuan.
Nonetheless, some local archaeologists argued that Yunnan had a
laggard civilization history compared to hinterland, so it is still
possible that Chinese characters were not that popular in this
place during that time.
Is it something older?
The stone structure contradicts both assumptions, but supports a
more wild theory put forward by Zhang Xinning, a senior local
archaeologist.
According to Zhang, the relics may only be several hundred years
old, when the place "had lots of stone buildings."
"There is a question we need to ask before jumping to a
conclusion," he said.
"Did the relics result from one collapse or several collapses in
different time?"
Sitting right on an earthquake-intensive belt, the Fuxian Lake
area may have swallowed more than one building more than once,
Zhang said.
All these questions remain puzzles since "no cogent evidence,
such as containers or instruments, were found," Geng said.
Liu said it is hard to imagine that it was a city, because "not
a single trace of human activities was left." But he added that
water flow must have flushed some evidence somewhere else in the
huge lake.
Also, to facilitate further examination, divers have not been
allowed to move the rocks until they label them and have a specific
map of their layout.
"Maybe something is hiding beneath these rocks," said Geng, who
has spent these years working together with other local divers
fixing labels and indicators on the relics.
He said the seven-day exploration only targets a small area of
the relics, about 800 square meters wide and less than 20 meters
deep.
A robot was dispatched on the third day to explore a deeper
area, but nothing new was found.
"It may take us no less than 10 years to conduct such a huge
underwater archaeological investigation. It is far more difficult
than doing on the land. More difficult for the fact that we
archaeologists cannot dive, and divers do not have the same
knowledge," Liu said.
(China Daily June 22, 2006)
