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How to escape education's death valley | Sir Ken Robinson | TED

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Which country does the most good for the world? | Simon Anholt

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The history of Chinese musical instruments - Part 1.2

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History of Chinese Music Instruments - 2/3 of Part 1

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Compilation of Chinese Instruments From Chinese Orchestra

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The history of Chinese musical instruments - Part 1.1

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History of Chinese Musical Instruments - 1/3 of Part 1

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A required part of this site couldn’t load. This may be due to a browser extension, network issues, or browser settings. Please check your connection, disable any ad blockers, or try using a different browser.

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Visit us at https://Smarthistory.org At Smarthistory, we’re on a mission to open museums and cultural sites up to the world, one video at a time. We’re creating world-class resources on art and cultural objects for learners from around the globe, for free. Smarthistory is the most-visited art hist…

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R.F.A. Riesco Collection of Important Chinese Ceramics

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www.kenney-mencher.com An analysis of the timelines concerning the history and art created during the Neolithic Period in China. Primarily at Banpo and Longshan For all the videos in order with a textbook and study guides please visit: http://art-and-art-history-academy.usefedora.com/

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Chinese History in 20 Minutes - A Summary History of China

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One of the oldest known Chinese civilizations disappeared approximately 3000 years ago. However, some evidence suggests it relocated, rather than collapsing, and a new theory suggests this was driven by a distant earthquake redirecting the river that once fed the valley in which the people once lived.

The first artifacts from the Sanxingdui civilization near Chengdu, Sichuan, were found in 1929, but it was only in 1986 that the astonishing richness of the culture came to light. Bronze statues 2.4m tall were larger than anything produced elsewhere in the world at the time, and a formidable set of canals provided irrigation and defence.

Sanxingdui would hardly be unique in reaching an awe-inspiring peak before being destroyed by war or environmental disaster. However, the cause in this case has not been clear.

"The current explanations for why it disappeared are war and flood, but both are not very convincing," Niannian Fan of Sichuan University told LiveScience.

The discovery of the ancient city of Jinsha 40km southwest of Sanxindui deepened the mystery, but may also help solve it. Objects at Jinsha have very similar images on it to those found at Sangxingdui, suggesting the two civilizations were at least connected, and their ages suggest Jinsha have been Sangxingdui's successor.

At the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union Fan presented evidence that Sanxingsui was watered by a river much larger than the one that now flows through its valley. The high walls over the valley would have required a powerful force to form them. There are geological signs of a major earthquake in the region, although the date cannot be placed more accurately than plus or minus 565 years.

However, historical records from neighboring civilizations record a major geological event in 1099BC, although of course at the time it was not possible to locate the exact epicenter.

Fan proposes that the 1099BC earthquake triggered a rockslide, which "beheaded" the Jian River, directing most of the into what is now the Minjiang River. Now draining a much smaller area, the Jian River was no longer reliably able to support Sangxingdui, leading the population to decamp to Jinsha on the new river's banks.
Fan et al. The current river systems around Chengdu (right) and the proposed paths prior to the 1099BC earthquake.
Such a shift would not have been easy, and Fan's theory would fit with the impression that Jinsha never obtained the heights of complexity of its predecessor.

To bolster their case, Fan and colleagues explored the Minjian river upstream of the two cities. The Yanmen Ravine, located 3800m above sea level was carved by glaciers towards the end of the last ice age. However, one stretch of the ravine is missing the basins known as cirques, which elsewhere serve as an indication of glacial formation. An avalanche would have buried the cirques, potentially rerouting the river at the same time.

Fan admits the theory needs more work, both from the geological side to demonstrate the changing river direction, and further exploration of the two cities to prove that one followed the other, rather than existing side by side.

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Why Did This Mysterious Ancient Chinese Civilization Disappear?

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One of the oldest known Chinese civilizations disappeared approximately 3000 years ago. However, some evidence suggests it relocated, rather than collapsing, and a new theory suggests this was driven by a distant earthquake redirecting the river that once fed the valley in which the people once lived.

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This tomb was uncovered recently in Xiangyang China.

Credit: Chinese Archaeology

About 1,800 years ago, at a time when China was breaking apart into three warring kingdoms, a warrior was laid to rest.

Buried in a tomb with domed roofs, along with his wife, he was about 45 years old when he died. Their skeletal remains were found inside two wooden coffins that had rotted away. Archaeologists don't know their names but, based on the tomb design and grave goods, they believe he was a general who had served one or more of the country's warring lords, perhaps Cao Cao and his son Cao Pi.

His tomb was discovered in Xiangyang, a city that, in the time of the Three Kingdoms, was of great strategic importance. Rescue excavations started in October 2008 and now the discovery is detailed in the most recent edition of the journal Chinese Archaeology. (The report had appeared earlier, in Chinese, in the journal Wenwu.)

The rescue operation, carried out by the Xiangyang Municipal Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, uncovered many treasures in the tomb. One of the biggest finds was a life-size bronze horse, the largest ever found in China.It measures 5.3 feet long and by 5.3 feet tall (163 cm by 163 cm). "The horse figurine is in standing posture, has erected ears, protruded eyes, opened mouth, long and broad neck, upright mane and drooped tail," writes archaeologist Liu Jiangsheng. [ Photos of Three Kingdoms' Tomb & Grave Goods]

The horse's face displays a lot of character, was it based on a real life mount the general rode?

Credit: Chinese Archaeology, cropping by Owen Jarus

The tomb also held a highly detailed glazed pottery model of a two-story mansion surrounded by an enclosing wall with a gateway. The gate has two main doors, each decorated with a door knocker ring and two "feathered" human figurines. Bear motifs were found in many decorations on the house.

Pottery houses like these are well known from the preceding Han Dynasty, although detailed multi-story houses are rare. Architect Qinghua Guo, a professor at the University of Melbourne, writes that models like these are helpful in reconstructing what houses in ancient China may have looked like.

Miniature models like this gives clues as to what ancient houses in China may have actually looked like.

Credit: Chinese Archaeology

"Literary descriptions of the buildings of ancient China lead us to believe that it (had) a highly developed architecture, but actual remains are rare and fragmentary," Guo writes in the book "The Mingqi Pottery Buildings of Han Dynasty China 206 B.C. - A.D. 220" (Sussex Academic Press, 2010). "The images of those perished buildings were not totally lost, surviving as miniature models in ancient tombs."

More treasures - beautiful and gross

The treasures found in this tomb go on and on, gold and silver disks, crystal and agate beads, gold bracelets, just to name a few.

Among the finds is a jade pig figurine, his snout finely detailed, the tiny animal having apparently gone to sleep. Another work of art shows a glazed pottery figurine of a dog barking furiously while standing on all fours.

Yet another piece shows a beastly tomb guardian, his long tongue sticking out and, grossly enough, "a crawling animal is attached onto the tip of the tongue," Jiangsheng writes. [ 10 Weird Ways We Deal With the Dead]

There's much more.

A bronze mirror was found with a round knob in the center. The mirror is decorated with elaborate patterns that include depictions of the phoenix and even a kui, or a one-legged demon. Two inscriptions were found on the artifact, one reads (in translation) "To benefit the Descendents Forever," while another reads, "May the Holder Get the Position of the Three Dukes." The Three Dukes were the three most powerful officials, below the emperor, in ancient China.

Like any good warrior, the general made sure he was well equipped for the afterlife. Bronze and iron sabers were found in the tomb along with a bronze crossbow trigger still, after 1,800 years, in good condition.

The Three Kingdoms

The Three Kingdoms period is one of the most celebrated periods of Chinese history. It saw the end of the 400-year-long Han Dynasty and the emergence of the kingdoms of Wei, Wu and Shu.

There are frequent references to it in popular culture. A 14th-century historical novel called "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is considered one of the most popular works ever written in Chinese. Also movies like "Red Cliff" and a series of video games produced by Koei have brought this period further attention in both China and the West.

While researchers do not know who this general was, or who he fought for, they believe from the artifacts and architecture found that he was laid to rest early in the Three Kingdoms period, which formally started in A.D. 220. Furthermore accounts by historians indicate that Xiangyang where he was buried occupied a strategic area that allowed armies access between northern and southern parts of the country.

Toward the end of the Han Dynasty the city was controlled by Liu Biao, technically a governor of Jing Province, although in practice he was independent of the Han court. He held onto the city until his death in A.D. 208, after which the armies of Cao Cao approached the city and the governorship was surrendered. Cao Cao would then use the city as a base for his drive south, a campaign that would end in his defeat at the hands of Liu Bei and Sun Quan at the Battle of Red Cliffs.

Even after the defeat the city of Xiangyang remained in Cao Cao's hands although an attempt to take it was made in AD 219 by Guan Yu, a Chinese general still revered today.

In A.D. 220 Cao Cao died and was succeeded by his son Cao Pi, who proclaimed himself emperor although his forces did not control the whole country. The fighting between the three kingdoms would go on for several decades more and long after Cao Pi's early death in A.D. 226.

Yet throughout Cao Pi's rule Xiangyang appears to have remained in his hands, leaving open the possibility that the general buried in the newly discovered tomb was one of his retainers, allowed to have a grand tomb, with treasures, for the afterlife.

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Three Kingdoms' Tomb Holding Warrior Discovered

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About 1,800 years ago, at a time when China was breaking apart into three warring kingdoms, a warrior was laid to rest. Buried in a tomb with domed roofs, along with his wife, he was about 45 years old when he died. Their skeletal remains were found inside two wooden coffins that had rotted away.

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Laolongtou Great Wall, Old Dragon's Head, Hebei

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Great Wall at Laolongtou in Qinhuangdao city, 5km south to Shanhaiguan, is the east end of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall and is where the Wall meets the sea.

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The remains of the palace are at the Erlitou Bronze Age site in the country's north-central Henan province, according to the People's Daily. Archaeologists discovered the rammed-earth foundation, with at least three courtyards. The palace covers a total area of more than 2,100 square meters.

Head of the archaeological team at the site and director of the Department of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xu Hong, said:

"The Erlitou palace complex is an amazing discovery, and is the earliest imperial palace in China."

The report says this is the best-preserved palace on the site and may be a prototype of the next dynasty, the Shang. The earliest Chinese dynasties are usually considered legendary, but archaeological finds in recent decades show the legends had a basis in fact.

The Cultural China website says the Erlitou site comprises some four million square metres and contains the oldest bronze items found in China. The Xia Dynasty is dated from 2,100 B.C. to 1,600 B.C., according to Wikipedia. It was replaced by the Shang Dynasty, which was overthrown by the Zhou. It was during the Zhou that China's oldest records were written, and was also the time of Kung Fu Tze (Confucius).

Chinese scholars have been working since 1996 on a project aimed at establishing an accurate chronology for these early, legendary dynasties.

Archaeological team leader Xu added:

"Built about 3,700 years ago, the neatly designed palace complex, along with surrounding buildings, forms the center of the ancient capital. Although it is only one-seventh the size of the Imperial Palaces of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Erlitou palace complex is the prototype of all later imperial palaces in China."

It seems the "legendary" records of ancient China contain quite a bit of fact, after all.

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Archaeologists find China's first imperial palace

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The remains of the palace are at the Erlitou Bronze Age site in the country's north-central Henan province, according to the People's Daily. Archaeologists discovered the rammed-earth foundation, with at least three courtyards. The palace covers a total area of more than 2,100 square meters.

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Mixed graveyards filled with exceptionally well-preserved dinosaurs, mammals, early birds, fish, and reptiles in northern China are the result of lethal volcanic flows, according to new work by an international team of geologists and paleontologists, including Museum Curators Jin Meng and George Harlow. The finding helps unravel the mystery behind the preservation history of the Jehol Biota-an ancient ecosystem that existed between 130 to 120 million years ago. The research is published today in Nature Communications.

"Excavation work in this area has uncovered exquisitely preserved specimens ranging from plants and insects to fishes and non-avian dinosaurs," said Jin Meng, a curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Division of Paleontology and an author on the paper. "This study provides an alternative mechanism on how organisms, particularly terrestrial species that presumably occupied different niches, can be preserved with aquatic and tree-dwelling taxa in sediments in such a form of completeness."

The Jehol Biota is preserved in the Yixian and Juifotang rock formations in what was once a landscape of lakes and conifer forests, surrounded by volcanoes. Although scientists have long predicted that volcanism played a role in shaping the remarkable fossils there, the cause of the mass mortalities and preservation history was a mystery.

Meng, along with George Harlow, a curator in the Museum's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Baoyu Jiang, a former postdoctoral fellow at the Museum and researcher at Nanjing University, and colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, collected samples from fossil birds and dinosaurs from several locations and analyzed them and the sediments in which they were preserved.

Using scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and computed tomography (CT) at the Museum, the team found that each of the skeletons had been directly embedded within pyroclastic flows, incredibly fast-moving currents of hot gas and rock that accompany some explosive volcanic eruptions.

Although the preservation of organisms during volcanic eruptions may differ, the Jehol vertebrates examined in the study were characterized by entombment poses and showed evidence of charring, similar to those associated with victims in Pompeii and Herculaneum, Italy, who were killed during the 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The findings suggest that pyroclastic flows led to the mass mortality, entombment, transportation, and ultimate preservation of the Jehol Biota.

"Pyroclastic flows are lethal, have occurred throughout time and, based on these findings, could be responsible for the preservation of other fossil groups that are closely associated with ash deposits," Harlow said. "The fresh, hot, dry volcanic ash promoted burning, charring, or mummifying of soft tissues, which, as a result, became more resistant to decay and better preserved."
You can read the paper here.

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Researchers Describe 'Animal Pompeii' in China

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Mixed graveyards filled with exceptionally well-preserved dinosaurs, mammals, early birds, fish, and reptiles in northern China are the result of lethal volcanic flows, according to new work by an international team of geologists and paleontologists, including Museum Curators Jin Meng and George Harlow.

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Everyone "knows" that China is badly polluted. I've written over the years, and still believe, that environmental sustainability in all forms is China's biggest emergency, in every sense: for its people, for its government, for its effect on the world. And yes, I understand that the same is true for modern industrialized life in general. But China is an extreme case, and an extremely important one because of its scale.

Here are two simple charts, neither of them brand-new but both easily comprehensible, that help dramatize how different the situation is there. The first, by Steven Andrews for China Dialogue via ChinaFile, compares official Chinese classifications of "good" air conditions with those in Europe or North America.

Here is the point of this graphic: The green and yellow zones in the left-hand column, showing official Chinese government classifications, are for "good" or "OK" air-while those same readings would be in the danger zone by U.S. or European standards. When you're living in China, it's impossible not to adjust your standards either to ignore how dire the circumstances are, so you can get on with life, or to think that any day when you can see across the street is "pretty good."

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2 Charts That Put the Chinese Pollution Crisis in Perspective

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Everyone "knows" that China is badly polluted. I've written over the years, and still believe, that environmental sustainability in all forms is China's biggest emergency, in every sense: for its people, for its government, for its effect on the world. And yes, I understand that the same is true for modern industrialized life in general.

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china ban

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R.F.A. Riesco Collection of Important Chinese Ceramics

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www.kenney-mencher.com An analysis of the timelines concerning the history and art created during the Neolithic Period in China. Primarily at Banpo and Longshan For all the videos in order with a textbook and study guides please visit: http://art-and-art-history-academy.usefedora.com/