China - Thousands of Rock Carvings - 240 LexiLine Journal

As written on December 22, 2003 in the English version of mainland
China's People's Daily at

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200312/22/eng20031222_130951.shtml

in an article entitled "Prehistoric oriental 'Venus' carved on cliff
discovered in Ningxia"

Chinese archaeologists in Zhongwei county, northwest China's Ningxia
Hui Autonomous Region, have found the figure of a pregnant woman
carved into a cliff on Beishan Mountain.

Zhou Xinhua, curator of the museum of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous
Region, stated that this stone carving was similar to Paleolithic
carvings of women found in Europe and was the first of its kind
found in China.

THOUSANDS OF ROCK CARVINGS on BEISHAN MOUNTAIN
(for one picture see http://faculty.risd.edu/faculty/pdematte/web/)

Beishan Mountain has no fewer than 3,000 groups of cliff carvings
and over 10,000 carvings of individual figures. Indeed, near
Damaidi, the county seat of Zhongwei, the mountain has a cliff area
containing 1,509 group cliff carvings and over 6,000 individual
figures with images of men, women, hunters, warriors, sun, moon,
rivers, "mountain stones", sheep, horses, oxen, deer, tigers, swords
and axes. They also have images of men and women, hunters and
warriors.

A concentration of 200 images is found in a 12-square meter area of
rock near the Zhongwei county seat, Damaidi area.

LEXILINE COMMENT

Zhongwei county is in northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous
Region of which the capital is Yinchuan - see
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/data/province/ningxia.html for a
map of the location of Ningxia.

As noted at page 362 of my book Stars Stones and Scholars

see http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/robots/03-1722.html
and http://www.starsstonesscholars.com/

the region of Yinchuan (Yin-CHUAN) represented the constellation
Cepheus on the Great Wall of China, which marks the Milky Way. CHUAN
in Chinese means "Central Point" - it was the protuberance of the
Milky Way around which the stars of heaven seem to rotate, as the
central "horn" of the celestial dragon of heaven.

CHINESE ROCK DRAWINGS ARE ASTRONOMICAL

We know from my previous decipherment of the Great Wall of China
that the rock drawings here are astronomical in nature. Indeed, due
to my decipherment of the Great Wall of China as representing the
Milky Way of heaven on the ancient "Silk Road", i.e. as a
terrestrial hermetic map, we know that many of the cliff carvings of
Zhongwei in Ningxia Hui will date to ca. 3117 BC reflecting an
ancient surveyor's system marking a planisphere of the heavens.

ZHONGWEI = "central star", "pole star"

In deciphering the rock drawings, what clues do we get from the
hermetic Chinese place names?

ZHONG in Chinese means "clock" or "central" and
the phrase ZI WEI means "polar star"
Hence, this region of China takes its name from that ancient
astronomical function.

BEISHAN = "North Mountain" = Northern Celestial Hemisphere ?

Bei or pei in the name Beishan means "north" and bai means "white"
Shan means "mountain"
So that this originally meant "north" or "white" mountain.
Presumably, the carvings represent the northern celestial hemisphere
or "mountain" of heaven.

For more information on these rock carvings see
Writing the Landscape: Petroglyphs of Inner Mongolia and Ningxia
Province (China) by Paola Demattè, Assistant Professor, Chinese Art,
Rhode Island School of Design, at the URL

http://faculty.risd.edu/faculty/pdematte/web/MyResearch/RA%20paper.htm