Discoveries shed light on past, and the present

The end of the five-year excavation of the tomb of Liu He, an aristocrat who died in China in 59 BC, means archeologists on site are no longer getting their hands dirty, but it will be a long time before the muddied waters of history settle down again because the dig has caused us to rethink much of what we thought we knew.

Among the haul of more than 10,000 artifacts found at the fantastic Haihunhou (Marquis of Haihun) tomb in Jiangxi province are 2,000-year-old bronze, gold, silver and jade relics that have led the experts to deduce that distilled wine was being made and drunk in China 1,000 years earlier than previously thought.

And other artifacts point to the fact that the famous Chinese hot pot dish – which, like distilled wine, is still popular today – was being eaten much earlier than was previously known.

And we have learned that the ancient Chinese were also great innovators who grappled with the problem of air pollution. This nugget of information comes from the discovery of two ancient bronze lamps buried in the tomb that would have had the ability to “swallow” smoke produced by the burning wick. It was consumed by a reservoir of water hidden within the lamp.

It’s highly likely that the experts will make other important discoveries as they sift through the treasure trove of items found on the 40,000-square-meter site that contains eight tombs in total and a chariot burial that evokes memories of the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial in the UK. There, Raedwald, the ruler of the East Angles, was interred in the 7th century within a wooden warship buried in the Suffolk heartland of his kingdom.

The exciting discoveries in Jiangxi province have told us much about the ancient Chinese but they are not the only excavations that have recently been causing the rewriting of some of the history of ancient China.

Excavations last month of a small Roman cemetery in south London that was in use between the 2nd and 4th centuries have unearthed the remains of two people who were certainly Asian and most probably Chinese.

The skeletons surprised experts who had previously believed the Chinese and Roman civilizations, which were both massively influential at the time, had only minimal contact with one another. Now, the experts are wondering whether the ancient civilizations had more interaction that was previously thought.

While the discovery is fascinating because of what it tells us about ancient China, I was also interested to learn just how cosmopolitan London was, almost 2,000 years ago.

Of the 20 sets of bones unearthed in the cemetery in the capital’s Southwark neighborhood, there were four African people in addition to the two Chinese. Previous excavations of other Roman sites in London also suggest it was a very cosmopolitan city and home to one of the most advanced civilizations of the time.

People wanted to live in the Roman Empire’s Londinium, as it was known then, because it was a major commercial and bureaucratic center and because they were attracted to its dynamism.

The discoveries made at the Marquis of Haihun tomb in Jiangxi province and in the Roman cemetery in London tell us a lot about the ancient past but, with the realization that the ancients liked alcohol, hot pot, clean air and civilized life in a fast-paced vibrant city, and that they were mobile and interactive, they tell us that our ancestors were actually much the same as we are today.