China's south-to-north water diversion project will endanger a huge number of cultural relics and urgent salvation is required, archaeologists said.
The project will divert water from the mighty Yangtze River through the eastern, central and western reaches of the river to solve a water shortage in the country's arid northern areas.
Archaeologists raised their concerns following the planned construction of the central line of the project in central China's Hubei province.
"Many cultural relics sites in the Danjiangkou Reservoir area, where ancient culture was highly developed, need rescuing," said Wang Hongxing, director of the provincial archaeology research institute.
The source of the project's central line, the Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Hanjiang River, is a main branch of the Yangtze.
The water levels will rise from the current 157 meters to an expected 170 meters in 2008, and the submerged area will expand to about 370 square kilometers, covering many sites that contain dinosaur egg fossils dating back 60 million years, human skeletons from the Old Stone Age 800,000 years ago, as well as buildings from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), according to the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee.
Many of the archaeological discoveries in this area belong to the same culture as those salvaged at the Three Gorges, said Wang.
(Xinhua News Agency July 18, 2002)
