Chinese archeology ready to lay bare untold secrets of Silk Road
Print Edition
WANG Jianxin knows the ancient Silk Road like the back of his hand. He has visited hundreds of sites along the routes in the past 20 years and believes he is almost ready to lay bare the secrets of the Greater Yuezhi, also known as Greater Rouzhi, an ancient nomadic kingdom.
Wang, 64, is a professor at the Northwest University of China in Xi’an, capital of the country during the peak years of the Silk Road’s glories. He specializes on the corridor of territory which stretches from the city, then known as Chang’an, across thousands miles of Central Asia, home to many minority ethnic groups that have since vanished, often leaving very little trace.
Wang has been passionately committed to the study of ancient nomads for many years, and his resume is packed with notable archeological research on the subject.
The disappearance of the Greater Yuezhi people has been a mystery to historians, anthropologists and linguists for many years, he said.
The ancient nomads were a branch split from the Yuezhi people, who were first recorded in Chinese histories as living in the west of the modern Chinese province of Gansu.
An answer to their whereabouts is also about the ethnic origin and composition in Central Asian countries.
Wang found the ruins of the Greater Yuezhi’s royal palace and tombs and some community sites, one of China’s 10 most important archeological finds of 2007, but he was shocked when he first visited Central Asia in 2009.
“You should have come earlier,” a Uzbek archeologist told him. “Why do you Chinese archeologists come to join us so late?”
Archeologists from all over the world have flocked to Central Asia for archeological or art purposes since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Wang knew Chinese archeologists could never take their proper place on the world stage without overseas experience. So, in 2013, in the arid wilderness on the border of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, he set up his research base and began working with Uzbek colleagues. They have found a large tomb believed to belong to the royal family of the Kangju Kingdom in southern Uzbekistan.
Amriddin, director of Institution of Archaeology under the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, is optimistic about cooperation with China. Chinese archeologists know the importance of protecting sites after excavation, and their working methodology should be promoted, he said.
But despite substantial international acclaim for his work, Wang has endured plenty of difficulties in his search for final destiny of the Greater Yuezhi.
He has trekked for hours across harsh terrain to reach inaccessible sites.
Yet he and his team have been widely praised for their work in the western Tianshan Range and lead the way in archeological cooperation along the Silk Road, said Arnayev, a Uzbek professor at Termez State University in Uzbekistan.
The Silk Road is a great treasure of human civilization. With looming development expected to proceed more quickly than ever, the need to protect cultural heritage and the many unique, often fragile, environments of the countries along the road has never been more important.
Wang believes more overseas archeological centers and Silk Road-related archeological centers should be established to attract experts from fields such as geology, biology and environmental planning, so as to come up with more academic achievements to benefit the mutual learning among different civilizations along the Silk Road.
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