Archaeology & Adventurers...

In the wild and lawless no man’s land that was China’s western territories, there was a bounty of fame and fortune to be had. The territory was largely unmapped and any voyage undertaken could benefit from the cartographical information to be recorded; at most, abundant wealth and academic renown lay in store.

Before the invasion of the foreigners, the Celestial Empire was completely self-contained, bound in Confucian thinking and observant of the laws of feng shui. For millennia, construction was carried out by means of astrological and geomantic observation; fear of ancestral reprisal meant that these cities and palaces, once lost, were never unearthed. Once the first sinologists from Europe made this connexion, that there could be centuries of untapped wealth and knowledge lying waiting to be discovered in the central Chinese Plains or the distant Western Mountains, the hunt was on.

The vanguards for such expeditions were the translators of the many texts revealed for the first time to the Westerners. From various palace and temple collections in Canton, Shanghai and Peking the sinologists learnt, not only the background to thousands of years of culture, but of treasures untold. Of course, they had already accessed Marco Polo’s Account of his travels to ‘Cathay’ to whet their appetites, with its lurid descriptions of fantastic empires and great wonders.

Once the research had been completed, all that remained was to set forth with the right provisions and equipment. This was not always easy: territorial boundaries were constantly shifting throughout China’s turbulent history and passports were gained only through subtle negotiation and a lot of ‘squeeze’. The possibility of encountering bandits had to be factored in as well. Further, the thought of digging always caused a panic among the Chinese as the possibility of disturbing ancestral graves had dire consequences. The insistent Archaeologist always ensured a supply of ammunition and several dependable guns.

Along with these the eager archaeologist would also have copies of the following texts: Zuo Zhuan ‘Chronicle of Zuo’ (written from 722 to 468 BC), the problematic Bamboo Annals (which covers the period from 2497 to 221 BC) and the Shih Chi, ‘Records of the Grand Historian’ (written from 109 to 91BC), three texts which form the foundation of any investigation into Ancient China

With the modern-day difficulties insured against, the only thing to be done was to set out and make discoveries. High on any Adventurer’s list would be the following:

The First Emperor

Chin Shi-huang-di, the First Emperor was a visionary builder: he built strong and he built huge. The Great Wall of China was a breathtaking sight for the first European visitors: Samuel Johnson, unable to visit the edifice himself urged all of his friends to make the journey to see it. However, practical as this structure seems, the rest of the Emperor’s buildings had far less earthly outcomes in mind.

Chin Shi-huang-di was obsessed with the attainment of immortality. He collected alchemical texts and surrounded himself with Taoist wizards; he built mountains from which to discuss the management of his kingdom with Celestial beings and from which he hoped to be carried off to Heaven by a great dragon. In later times he feared lest Heavenly agents were spying on him: to circumvent this he built covered walkways between all of his palaces and randomised his daily routine so that no spies would learn of his whereabouts. Having survived several assassination attempts, he died whilst on a journey to the eastern coast where he contracted pneumonia while defeating a ‘sea monster’ (most likely a beached whale): his body was brought home behind a wagon of rotting fish so that any watchful spirits would be fooled into thinking that the Emperor still lived. His tomb, filled with the enigmatic Terracotta Warriors, was described in the Shih Chi or Historical Records of the time:

“As soon as the First Emperor became king of Ch’in, work was begun on his mausoleum at Mount Li. After he won the Empire, more than 700,000 conscripts from all parts of China laboured there. They dug through three underground streams; they poured molten copper for the outer coffin; and they filled the burial chamber with models of palaces, towers and official buildings, as well as fine utensils, precious stones and rarities. Artisans were ordered to fix automatic crossbows so that grave robbers would be slain. The waterways of the Empire, the Yellow and the Yang-tze rivers, and even the great ocean itself were represented by mercury and made to flow mechanically. Above, the heavenly constellations were depicted, while below lay a representation of the earth. Lamps using whale oil were installed to burn for a long time.

The Second Emperor decreed that his father’s childless concubines should follow him to the grave. After they were duly buried an official suggested that the artisans responsible for the mechanical devices knew too much about the contents of the Tomb for safety. Therefore, once the First Emperor was placed in the burial chamber and the treasures were sealed up, the middle and outer gates were shut to imprison all those who had worked on the Tomb. No-one came out. Trees and grass were then planted over the mausoleum to make it look like a hill.”

The Tomb of the First Emperor was discovered in the southern plains of Shensi in 1974. So far discoverers have unearthed four major pits, three containing formations of terracotta warriors in battle formations and one which is empty. The tomb described above has not, in fact, been unearthed but its location has been well hypothesized. This does not mean that the greatest of Chin Shi-huang-di’s works is therefore denied to Archaeologists searching in an earlier period: they may find it first only to lose it due to arcane barriers or agents, or may find another, less well-known edifice with greater rewards ... and dangers.

Layered Palaces

The adherence to geomantic principles which the Chinese displayed meant that all of their major cities had features in common: all of them had square surrounding walls with north-south and east-west main streets dividing the city into four quarters. There was a central palace and temples to various powers in the south and north (depending upon appropriate positioning). This basic pattern (which still holds true for the older sections of modern Peking) means that most searchers can gain an instant understanding of the layout of a buried Chinese city.

The tricky bit is that new emperors often abandoned old cities to create newer ones with better feng shui. These new headquarters were often not far from the previous cities and sometimes overlapped them, in order to correct some trifling geomantic principle. This means that archaeologists often hit serious paydirt, but sorting through it and determining which parts came first and which later, was a real headache!

Forgotten Texts

Not all archaeological finds are buried under the earth. Ancient scrolls are valuable in their own right, not just for the information that they contain. During the Burning of the Books in 213 BC, many ancient and valuable texts were hidden, buried in clay jars or pipes, or beneath slabs of stone. After the establishment of the Han Dynasty many of these precious works were unearthed and returned to the Imperial libraries – but not all of them. While, no doubt, some still lie waiting to be discovered, many others became family treasures passed on through generations.

The greatest library in Chinese history was the Han lin (literally, ‘Forest of Pencils’) library in Peking. The best literary works of the ages were sent there, along with all the winning essays of every bureaucratic entrance exam. During the Boxer Rebellion, the Moslem general, Tung Fu-siang, burnt it down. Since the library was next door to the British Legation headquarters, many of the besieged broke through the adjoining walls and rescued what scrolls and documents they could – sadly it was officially not that much, but was this the real state of affairs? How much of this material was actually restored to the Chinese people? How much of it was secreted away into saddle bags and bedrolls for later evaluation?

There is a steady demand for such old texts, either legitimately sold or stolen from private collections. Some are considered so valuable that potential owners would even kill to obtain them. Given such a scenario, it is possible to become embroiled in an archaeological hunt without ever leaving the Shanghai city limits.

Niya, City of the Wastes

In the middle of the newly-obtained Chinese province of Sinkiang is a terrifying emptiness, ringed at its extremities by a series of struggling, lonely oases. This is the Taklamakan Desert; the name means ‘place from which no living thing returns’. Doesn’t that sound like just the spot for a Mythos adventure? The lost city of Niya supposedly lies beneath this waste.

Apocryphal stories state that this city is mentioned in Pomponius Mela’s De Situ Orbis – if it is, then it occurs in an earlier translation than is currently extant. The legends state that there are dragons buried beneath the city and that the settlement was a black haven of blasphemous teachings. In the 1980s, excavations discovered the remains of many pagodas dotted around the desert: in geomantic lore, pagodas are ‘correctional features’ bringing mountain energies to places where they are normally absent. What would be so important and deadly that you would need to weigh it down with the energy of a mountain? To this day no-one knows.

Investigators should not be confused by the fact that there is an oasis on the edge of the Taklamakan, between Cherchen and Keriya, also called ‘Niya’; this place is possibly a holdover of the original city, or possibly only the name has survived in local currency to be assigned to a new habitation. In any case, the oasis of Niya is a straggle of run-down buildings surrounding a pitiful water supply and a pathetic grove of tamarisk trees: surely no lost city here...

The Xia Dynasty (2100 to 1600 BC)

After a great confusion amid the Miao peoples, the sun came out at night, it rained blood for three days, a dragon appeared in the temple, dogs howled in the street, summer water turned to ice, the earth cracked until water gushed forth and the ‘five grains’ were subject to mutation. Heaven issued an order to overthrow the Miao and a bird-bodied man killed the Miao leader with an arrow. Thus the Xia came to power.

Most of the above is probably propaganda dispensed by the Zhou Dynasty to justify the takeover of the previous Shang Dynasty; however, all that is known of the Xia Dynasty, which follows hard on the heels of the rule of Huang-di, is taken from ancient texts and documents: no edifices and few ruins, objects or remains have ever been found. According to histories written by later commentators, there were 17 rulers of this dynasty ranging from 1739 BC to 1687 BC, the last being Chieh Kuei, who surrendered his rulership of the country to the new rulers of the Shang Dynasty. Only the repetition of information from disparate writers confirms this state of affairs. What’s really going on?

Some commentators claim that the Xia were an invented people, whose stereotypical traits were the direct opposite of those of the Shang. This is seen as proof that they did not really exist but were created to justify the actions of the Shang Dynasty in seizing control. Archaeologists are in two minds as to whether those fragments unearthed as ‘Xia remnants’ are actually that, or are in fact the remains of a Bronze Age community known as the Erlitou Culture, so named after the village where their first artefacts were discovered in 1959.