Guangdong Cultural Relics and Archaeological Institute has confirmed that the three tombs recently unearthed in Fengkai County of Zhaoqing City dated back to the Han (BC206-220AD) and Jin (265-420) dynasties.

Fengkai was the capital of Lingnan, Guangdong Province, for 300 years during the Han Dynasty and is known as the "cultural capital of Lingnan". It is the birthplace of many famous persons, including the earliest economist Chen Qin, who was said to be the teacher of Wang Mang, founder of the short-lived Xin Dynasty (8-23AD); Chen Yuan, the Confucian ancestor of Lingnan; the earliest scholar of Buddhism Mou Rong; and the scholar and politician in the Three Kingdoms period Shi Xie. Experts say the Cantonese dialect now popular in Guangdong originated here.

Fengkai is also a cradle of China's ancient civilization. The skull fossil of homo sapiens discovered in this area in the 1960s is 20,000 years earlier than the "Maba People" found in Shaoguan of the same province.

The three tombs are all at the halfway up the mountain, and were discovered last year due to rain erosion. They are all made of bricks. Sixty of them were inscribed with characters or carved with designs of flowers, grass, birds and beasts. Also, there are a group of porcelain bowls, pottery pieces and ironware.

Archaeologists believe the unearthing of the three tombs will add new materials to the study of the period between Han to Jin dynasties.

(www.china.org.cn 06/04/2001)