<< Our Photo Pages >> Shen Nong Gorge Hanging Coffins - Rock Cut Tomb in China
Submitted by C_Michael_Hogan on Sunday, 11 November 2007 Page Views: 34703
Site WatchSite Name: Shen Nong Gorge Hanging Coffins Alternative Name: Shen Nong XiCountry: China
NOTE: This site is 232.019 km away from the location you searched for.
Type: Rock Cut Tomb
Nearest Town: Yichang Nearest Village: Fengdu
Latitude: 31.200000N Longitude: 110.100000E
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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The coffins are carved from a single piece of durable wood and have been hung high in the vertical limestone cliffs, defying an understanding of exactly how the prehistoric peoples could have accomplished such an engineering feat. Human remains and burial objects have been found within the coffins. The coffins have been variously dated from 200 BC to 500 AD. The Shen Nong stream is a tributary of the Yangtze River and provides the setting of considerable early Chinese history, but is a feature adversely affected by the massive Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project.
HISTORY. The Shen Nong Gorge has been inhabited since at least as early as the Han Dynasty (206 BC - 220 AD); the primary ethnic group of the gorge being the Thuja people. Early settlement history in the Shen Nong Gorge is evinced by the hanging coffins stowed in clefts on the vertical rock faces; it is mysterious as to how the heavy coffins were deposited on such steep, inhospitable bluffs. The coffins themselves are characteristically carved from a single solid tree trunk, which was approximately 90 centimetres in diameter; although the lid section was split away from the base.
The Shen Nong Gorge is the site of a number of historical battles in early Chinese history. In a very early battle, Liu Bei, an emperor of the Three Kingdom Dynasty, burned the fleet of Lu Xum, Marshall of the Wu Kingdom,.. This naval battle took place in the downstream reach of Shen Nong Stream in the Longchang Gorge at the Rang Kou Xi tributary. (Chao, 2005) Parrot Gully, a side canyon of Shen Nong Gorge, is the site of several battles undertaken by Liu Chunjum, a Taiping Dynasty general.
THE MYSTERY. The suspended coffins can best be viewed by a boat excursion on the Shen Nong Stream. The coffins are typically positioned 30 to 150 meters from the bluff top above and 90 to 200 meters above the original pre-dam river surface. Characteristically a coffin rests on two substantial hewn wooden poles that have been wedged within a limestone cleft or cave to form an almost level platform. In some cases the tomb chamber is further incised to a more rectilinear form, whilst in some situations the rock cleft utilised is an almost natural formation.
A side gorge known as Yingwu Gorge along manifests a number of large rectilinear incisions carved high on the cliffs, which are vestiges of an earlier aerial plank road; moreover, these incisions from an earlier civilisation are a clue as to how the coffin tombs may have been accessed via an intricate network of aerial planks. Whether the coffins were lowered from above, raised from below or accessed via an aerial plankway is not known. A clue may be found in observing the trekkers who pull one's small boat over the low draft reaches of the river; they are wiry and muscular, even though slight of frame, and they use scant footwear to tread on the rocky streambed; presumably their ancestors were even more physically fit, and quite adept at rock climbing.
NATURAL ENVIRONMENT. Fifteen kilometres upstream from the river mouth the river depth diminishes to its virgin state prior to the Three Gorges Dam (roughly 30 centimetres in depth over riffles armoured with small rounded pebbles). After completion of the dam construction in 2009, the water level will rise a further 15 to 20 metres in height. The inundated reaches of Shen Nong Gorge are sluggish brown waters with little sign of aquatic life, although the uppermost reach retains some of the sparkling clarity manifested in the entire stream prior to the dam. I measured the Secchi disk depth penetration at 30 centimetres in the uppermost reach and the pH of the upper reach at 8.5.
IMPACTS OF THE THREE GORGES DAM PROJECT. Construction of the Three Gorges Dam has raised the water level of the Yangtze River and certain tributaries such as the Shen Nong Stream by more than 150 metres. (Jin, 2006) In addition to displacing 1.3 million people displaced, this project has destroyed numerous archaeological sites (PBS, 2007) and extensive areas of riverine ecosystem, (Yang, 2007) including wildlife habitat, and induced significant soil erosion and siltation. Many Shen Nong Gorge coffins have been lost or destroyed due to the three Gorges Dam construction, which has led to inundation of much of the Shen Nong Stream; some coffins, however, have been retrieved for cultural presentation and archaeological study. For example, one such coffin was retrieved about 10 kilometres west along the Yangtze River mainstem and is preserved on display in the White Emperor's Palace, within an ancient Daoist temple perched above the inundation level along the Yangtze.
REFERENCES
*Jin, Lu, (2006) ''Three Gorges Project in China'', Changjiang Press
*Chao, Zhou, (2005), ''Trackers of Shen Nong Xi''
*PBS (2007) "Three Gorges Dam: The Great Wall Across the Yangtze"
* Yang, Lin (2007) "Three Gorges Dam Project under Fire", Time Magazine
(The foregoing content is original work of C. Michael Hogan prepared for the Megalithic Portal.)
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