3,000-Year-Old Noble Tomb Discovered in Northwest China

YINCHUAN, CHINA—Northwest China’s Ningxia’s region might have been under imperial rule 1,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a report by Xinhua News Agency. The tomb of a marquis-level ruler was found during the excavation of a 3,000-year-old necropolis in the Yaoheyuan Ruins in Ningxia’s Pengyang County. The tomb did not contain inscribed bronze vessels that might have identified the tomb’s owner, but the excavation team did recover two jade mantises. “[They] provide strong evidence of the tomb owner’s relationship with the imperial governments during the period from the late Shang to the middle of Western Zhou [1046 B.C. to 771 B.C.] dynasties,” said Zhang Tian’en of the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute. Two horse burial pits and a chariot burial pit were found near the tomb. A bronze casting workshop, moats, roads, and a water drainage system have also been uncovered at the site. To read in-depth about Chinese archaeology, go to "Tomb Raider Chronicles."