Xu Xinguo, director of the Qinghai Archeology Research Institute, said some 30 stoneware pieces made between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago and 311,000-year-old tombs had been found in the Kunlun Mountains area, 120 km to the north of Golmud city in northwestern China's Qinghai Province.

Xu noted that sharp, fine stoneware such as those in the shape of knives was typical of the microlithic period, between 10,000 and 30,000 years ago. And the newly-found objects resembled what has been previously discovered in Tibet and Inner Mongolia.

"This shows their cultures are somehow linked. If we find similar stoneware in the stratum in later expeditions this year, it would be strong evidence that our ancestors lived there between10,000 and 30,000 years ago and the Kunlun Mountains are a source of Chinese civilization," he said.

Some 15 tombs are spread over six sites, with their biggest 70 m in diameter and 20 m in height. Another 16 tombs piled up with white stones of varying sizes were found near the south bank of the Golmud River.

Xu and his team members made those discoveries along the railway which is to connect Golmud and Lhasa. The railway, whose track is to be laid by the end of this month, is 1,118 km long.

With some 960 km of the railway at 4,000 meters above sea level, it is the longest and highest plateau railway in the world, and also a bench mark of China's development strategy for its western regions.

(Xinhua News Agency June 10, 2002)