Archaeologists say they excavated over 7,000 articles at the cultural site of the Neolithic Age in Karuo Village, Qamdo County of the Qamdo Prefecture in southwestern Tibet Autonomous Region during the third excavation of the site beginning in 2002.

The articles, dating back some 5,000 years, including 1,060 stone wares, 1,284 pottery fragments, 4,755 pieces of bone ware and nearly 100 other articles.

"All those discoveries will be valuable for the research on the lifestyle, production mode, social organizational form, belief and conventions, environment and cultural communication of the local prehistoric people," said Yongzhong Dawa, who is in charge of the cultural relics administration of the Qamdo Prefecture.

As the oldest site of the ancient people ever discovered in the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Karuo site was discovered in 1977. The first two excavations of the site were made in 1978 and 1979 respectively, during which house relics and a large amount of stone wares, pottery and bone wares were unearthed.

"From the millet about 2,000 to 3,000 years old unearthed during the first two excavations, it can be concluded that farming was the major economic mode of the local people in the past," said Yongzhong Dawa.

"Together with the earthen houses, the bar-shaped zax and the painted pottery, remnants of millet and human-raised pigs all prove that in the prehistoric age, the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau had close communication with the agricultural civilization of the Central Plains," said Yongzhong Dawa.

Containing abundant cultural and historical messages, the Karuo site is considered by archaeologists as the most typical and the best preserved cultural mode of the ancient people ever living in the Qinghai-Tibet Plain, said Yongzhong Dawa.

The Karuo site was listed as a major cultural relics site under state protection in 1996.

(Xinhua News Agency June 1, 2004)