Travelogue: Why Ningxia is heaven for archaeologists

[Music] this episode of travelogue we dig deep into things as past to discover a region steeped in history a vanished Kingdom enigmatic rock carvings and a dinosaur that challenges our theory of evolution for thousands of years this region of Nisha was the site of cultural collisions but also connections between farmers and nomads Imperial China and their invaders however links Earth's history dates even further back with much of its legacy buried deep beneath the ground and this time around I'm here to discover the mysteries of Ming sir I'm Taryn and welcome to this episode of travelogue located in northern China nice out we oughta know miss region is a place of contrasts on one side desert dominates the landscape but on the other fertile plains flourish for centuries Ning sale was a frontier land when nomadic tribes clashed with Imperial China to put a stop to this the Great Wall of China was built in nice as Yin Xiu County are the remains of walls built across several dynasties and while we normally picture the great wall is made of bricks its earliest sections were built using rammed earth Sanatana so tell me on the cool kiz good for watchmen delay cut the English 800 does he open in candy room is this Hodgins ha ha ganado charger also each had Anya data it's pretty incredible I mean we're standing on something that's about 1,500 years old and it's still around at 1 what kind of legacy will leave for the people in the future hopefully it's good despite its name the Great Wall of China was in fact a series of walls and fortifications eager it's Armada fighting the future Fangio judges the Tartan temple to topple to salute lee jiae is working for society change bomb telling me all through the tuned into a polymer could fill this 21,000 kilometers long if its various sections were put together the great wall was stretched halfway around the world it incorporated natural defensive features such as rivers and mountains this 500 something year old wall for example housed a network of tunnels built into the cliffs that could accommodate up to 200 soldiers all this was necessary to defend against the Empire's greatest threat with their nomadic tribes dominated the Eurasian steppe snort of Ming Sarah they terrorized the borders of Imperial China raiding settlements for supplies and livestock whether it was the summer of 2000 years past or the Mongols there was a constant danger of invasion from the north [Music] but it wasn't always conflict and bloodshed living so close to each other meant there was also communication and trade between nomads and settlers eventually the lines became blurred with some nomads putting down roots and becoming farmers these days besides its great walls Yin Xiu County is also known for a particular breed of sheep some entire her beauty on a severe pseudo poodles we are to do for you what is it saying shining and go do part sitting with a radiant the change did you shine in a lot of people prefer their lamp ruled on the Barbie but here it's all about boiling that mutton little Charles Welsh economy the Chinese Way of cooking lamb chops is pretty simple take chopped leeks star anise e peppercorns ginger and chilies then chuck it all into a boiling pot with the lamb the most important thing here is to have good quality meat tada now Georgia deer smell is really good hmm this is actually a surprisingly good I mean a lot of people can't eat lamb because of the the game Eunice but there's none of that here super super tender I see what he means with them you know that the fat being in between the lean meat it's not the least bit chewy really taste amazing after walking down a couple more chops I'm meeting a master of meaning flower power is a type of folk song with the lyrics improvised Negron slash single single arrow fire position if I put our country too [Music] Karla anyone's always you it's really good work could take eternity or no I'm plus like there are so many different kinds of rich tones and melodies who use this now is incredible I was quite literally blown away I was kind of like singing like this the whole time really good [Music] Hey Oh [Music] yo [Music] coming up next we explore the remains of a brilliant Kingdom that was virtually erased from history I meet the men trying to revive its legacy [Music] [Music] among the foothills of the hurlan mountains some 40 kilometers away from Ning Xia's capital in Turin why the Imperial tombs of the ccr a Western Sam King de ma [Music] these giant beehives are all that's left of a once glorious Empire whose territory was twice the size of France that is until it was almost literally wiped off the map [Music] shishah hashirama year Townshend's boutique shows I mean Janet /oz means Katya Thompson's were taxis are finally woman until King John Boyer said he could be Giuliana once you've landed here we are so there's a yard to tell you the moment you were hugging me the mongos raised this entire kingdom to the ground slaughtering its citizens and all but in raising CCR's legacy 12 oh my dear - hydrocity prepared we're both ready to go mucho go down to the fire do you want a yacht with scientists at each end random shooting wow GG another fate of hidden from what in its brief less than 200 year existence seas had developed into a wealthy and technologically advanced Kingdom it's progressive leaders successfully navigated alliances with its neighbors they also encouraged its people to learn from other cultures while retaining their individual identity they even created their own written language CCR script to this day it still hasn't been completely deciphered so of the four greatest inventions of ancient China woodblock printing was one and the problem with it was that if one character gets worn out the whole thing would need to be changed which is why movable type printing was also invented whereby one character was its own wooden block and that vastly improved the speed of printing and the first physical evidence of wooden movable type printing bit of a mouthful was actually from the time of the ccr kingdom and it was a piece of Buddhist text that was printed completely using seat our script passed their hands of the chief of Ultron's oversee down through your wife and sort it's ongoing your CCR script is notoriously complex but much headway has been made into deciphering it the most usable three characters in the Chinese language let's go with I love you I'm tired of what or anybody has a pedestrian the script was invented and introduced in a very short period of time the CCA kingdom was originally a vassal state of Imperial China at home but in order to promote its independence the first king of CC had decreed that official documents were to be written in both CCR and Chinese schools were founded to teach the new written language and many classical Buddhist and Chinese texts were translated into CCR though the kingdom was short-lived its script continued to be used for a few centuries longer okay look at that not bad not bad at all haha there we go I love you in CSS script but it looks nothing like the Chinese characters I think it's quite interesting because it is actually quite easy to print whatever you want using these wood blocks but it's not as easy as it looks it is very easy to mess up aside from its own written language there was something else that helped the Cecil Kingdom retain its strong sense of identity [Music] I've come to lingual County to meet an expert in recreating CCR pottery [Music] Siana humans or travel cinema you can draw is your say to you auntie juju visual Yahoo idea some Canada Graham John Petrucci to you mu sigma shamans so it has a fun new they changed the question room kai o p3 peach very to achieve with a shadow from BIA as you some random children dancing Archana Zambia cumbia she she tragically Shunzhi cease our pottery was virtually unknown until a major kiln sites was discovered in the 1980s the decoration is simple and is engraved using the technique popular in northern China involving the negative space around the design being shaved off before being glazed Jaime's angry shyama khurshid co-anchor te kuru saturday each PNG venado serum Julianna Paso Trejo the answer is your daughter Joel didn't come to me try a more thorough conservatism Julia shisha is your tuile determine yourself the peony flower appears on many of these ceramics a symbol of fortune and longevity though later dynasties produce more sophisticated ceramics there's a rough beauty about these wares that leaves a lasting impression [Music] voltage at Alinea two shots the chief Luigi was hosting Munna to see shall co-teaching ecology budget ready with sheesh this reality the tiger you Serena a human father nomological she shall it hurts son fertilized silicon [Music] coming up next we go prehistoric as we uncover relics from a time when Lisa was ruled by cavemen and before them dinosaurs so as if the great wall and ruins at the seaside Kingdom weren't already Ward's away of concert places even more ancient even more mysterious because here within the hill and mountains itself there are thousands of rock carvings almost ten thousand years old but hated an hour's drive from the intron these rock carvings known as petroglyphs line the sides of a gorge that cuts through the Ferland mountains many of them depict scenes of hunting and hurting their sadly many more have weathered away that's why I found a guide to show me around like I know that if we have our minds our sheets Outland you cook then they sound young artful Hutchings up these are the masked faces of shaman's carved three to ten thousand years ago the ccr inscriptions were obviously much later which goes to show that this area was important for thousands of years interestingly many of the petroglyphs depict masterda faces the most striking is located high above the others they call it the Sun God those difficult are so now they get to kind of have a way of Allah surely all cofactors and essential have a huge carnassial Charcot uh-huh so your bio baby tell me your Charlotte's little kinda went down one month despite their relative crudeness there's an unexpected level of depth to these rock carvings [Music] ah this is super interesting so this is quite literally a contract sealed in stone and you see that round face there that's the face of a deity so it's a contract sealed in stone with God as their witness and basically this is the result of two tribes that went to war 1:1 and that's why you have a bigger handprint on the right hand side and when they won the smaller tribe had to give all of their animals to the bigger tribe and then move away which is why the smaller hand has a little arrow pointing away showing that they had to migrate and this is sealed in stone for eternity and it's fantastic it's it's such a poignant piece of rock carving nearby the petroglyphs stood an altar here sacrifices would have been made to the gods who were represented by totems while this performance is a modern day interpretation it gives us an idea of how Stone Age people might have lived 10,000 years ago over in Lenoir County history don't go one of the most important Paleolithic or old Stone Age sites in China first excavated by two Frenchmen in 1923 the site has yielded artifacts dating from 30,000 to 10,000 years ago ranging from animal bones and shell beads to stone tools title track with on Trinity Senate informants head-on collision no washer fluid not sure if my short all she find Tony beets and Turner even judo Shana session top MC time Tae Bo you don't see no should see chief after good Sifu now have two trees on a strategic a farm who are poly lapilli llevarlo a police officer not actually not gonna fight anytime you don't usual if you're from inside most time of I should see your tongue she found I you don't see who found each other that's roughly a hundred and sixty thousand to forty thousand years ago the Lovano our technique allowed humans to create much better stone tools and blades by using to strike another there we go see if we can get lunch campfire started this is a proper workout I was wondering why there were so many like blackened holes in this piece of wood it's just because probably they spend the entire day doing this never wiser that's why you need subordinates you should look at his hands you make fire yes we're getting close like a caveman taco whoa oh wow well dad just that just that just said it like straight away amazing look at that the caveman taco this is fantastic aside from letting tourists get hands-on with history sridham goal continues to be an important archaeological site today students from across China come here to do fieldwork their task is to literally dig up pieces of the past in order to put them back together say no go yeah color you came true - I don't know - member lenita mojito to each other you gotta find unifier can have two champion can hand the portal Jemma would you go shooter Shantae feel free of your heart even like many archaeological sites sri dongho went through periods of peak occupation when I was home to a larger number of people who have so much dirt to excavate how do you even get started so the first thing about archaeology is knowing where to dig and if you look at the rocks behind me the red layer is from roughly ten million years ago whereas the top layer the sort of coffee colored one is roughly tens of thousands of years old which means there is no point to look for human civilization here because if you look at the middle of this as grey band field of rocks which means that there was once a gigantic flood which covered this entire area with water turning it into a lake for millions of years but if you go towards that way or that way you'll see the red band and the gray band drop off which means that was the edge of the lake which means there would have been vegetation and a more speeding on the vegetation and people feeding on the animals so even when you're kind of just sitting there digging sand and dirt and you know looks a bit boring if you come here and you look at the big picture it really is or inspiring but what if we take an even bigger step back to a time when dinosaurs ruled the land all right so this is going to be a huge treat for those of you who like Jurassic Park here in Lyon County they have the remains of a sauropod a kind of dinosaur like the Diplodocus that has never previously been found in the northern hemisphere oh my word that is as spectacular I mean I've obviously you know who hasn't been to a Natural History Museum but this is this really is something else to actually see an entire dinosaur excavated buried beneath the ground and you know I'm walking on something else these are the remains of what's been dubbed the link dragon die creo soros discovered by accident by this gentleman man who fashioned granted Kabir London ago Pasha it's a woman in Geneva terrible and Russia who tinkers a London and younger condescension reinvent original photo that your entire eastern Congo pancake is true but I'm a functional young with your phone and CCT from the remains of the Great Wall to the ccr Kingdom and Stone Age humans we've made some truly astonishing finds here in Excel really is incredible and for me this trip through Nature has really been like traveling through time I mean you can quite almost see in its soil the migration of dinosaurs and humans away from this area but also coming back together concentrating in this region and I guess I've come to realize that throughout time there were always collisions and connections being made whether it was cultural or historical even continental and for me that has been my greatest discovery about Ningxia I'm Duran and I hope you've enjoyed watching this episode of travelogue [Music] you

Channel: CGTN

Views: 9,950

Rating: 4.9000001 out of 5

Keywords: CCTV, CGTN, CCTVNews, News, ChinaNews, WorldNews, Politics, Ningxia

Id: eihljyAFb4o

Length: 29min 3sec (1743 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 02 2019