An ancient tomb dating back to the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD) has been discovered in a village in Xuwen county at the southern tip of Leizhou Peninsula, in south China's Guangdong Province.
A villager, named Mei Qinghua, came upon the tomb while digging in his courtyard. Workers and archeologists from the county's cultural bureau and museum arrived promptly to extract and preserve the contents.
More than 50 pieces of ancient relics, including exquisite pottery items and earthernwares with fine patterns, ancient pottery mugs, furnaces and spinning wheels, bronze ware, as well as coins and decorative objects made of agate and crystal, were found in the rectangular tomb chamber.
According to the archeologists' preliminary analysis, the tomb dates back to the mid or latter period of the Eastern Han Dynasty.
The arrangement of the rare, valuable objects buried with the dead differed from that of other Han dynasty tombs. An elegant three-legged pottery wine jar, decorated with strange monstrous beast stripes, was found at the end of the tomb chamber.
Xuwen County is believed to be the port where trade vessels embarked on the maritime Silk Road during the ancient Han Dynasty.
The discovery of the tomb has provided valuable new evidence in support of this theory, said the archeologists.
(Xinhua News Agency July 11, 2003)
