Damaidi (; ''literally: Big wheat field''), is the location of 3,172 sets of early Chinese

petroglyph A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

s, carved into the cliffs which feature 8,453 individual figures. Cliff carving expert Li Xiangshi stated that "The pictographs are similar to the ancient hieroglyphs of Chinese characters and many can be identified as ancient characters," Another expert said " "Through arduous research, we have found that some pictographs are commonly seen in up to hundreds of pictures in the carvings," said Liu Jingyun, an expert on ancient Oracle Bone characters. The size, shape and meanings of the pictographs in different carvings are the same." These pictographs may be the origin of Chinese characters. Damaidi itself is a small village located in

Zhongwei Zhongwei (, Xiao'erjing: جْووِ شِ) is a prefecture-level city of Ningxia, People's Republic of China. It has an area of and a population of 1,174,600 in 2019. The city is known for its wolfberry and Gobi watermelon cultivation. One of the ...

in Central

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, set amid the

Weining Mountains Weining may refer to: * Li Weining (born 1959), acting mayor of the city of Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China *Lin Weining (born 1979), female Chinese weightlifter and Olympic gold medalist *Frederick Weining (born 1965), role-playing game designe ...

on the north bend of the

Yellow River The Yellow River or Huang He (Chinese: , Standard Beijing Mandarin, Mandarin: ''Huáng hé'' ) is the second-longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, and the List of rivers by length, sixth-longest river system in the world at th ...

Cliff carvings

The dates of these carvings is uncertain. The latest were made during the

Western Xia The Western Xia or the Xi Xia (), officially the Great Xia (), also known as the Tangut Empire, and known as ''Mi-nyak''Stein (1972), pp. 70–71. to the Tanguts and Tibetans, was a Tangut-led Buddhist imperial dynasty of China tha ...

dynasty (1032-1227). Dates for the first carvings are disputed, with Zhou Xinghua from the

Ningxia Museum The Ningxia Museum () is a museum in Jinfeng District, Yinchuan, Ningxia, China. History The original museum building was prepared in 1959 and built in 1973. Construction of a new museum building started in November 2006. The museum was re-open ...

suggesting a

paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

date and Professor of Archaeology at the Central University of Nationalities in Beijing suggesting 3000 years, adding that modern technology was needed to be used to prove any dates. They feature environmental as well as social themes. There are carvings of the sun and moon along with other celestial bodies as well as of people hunting, herding and fighting. Archaeologists believe that some of these symbols (over 1,500) bear a resemblance to ancient

hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...

s of

Chinese character Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...

s. If dating estimates of the carvings are correct, this would push back the origins of Chinese writing (previously dated only as far back as the

Jiaguwen Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or turtle plastrons used in pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millennium BC, and is the earliest kno ...

Oracle Bone Oracle bones () are pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron, which were used for pyromancy – a form of divination – in ancient China, mainly during the late Shang dynasty. ''Scapulimancy'' is the correct term if ox scapulae were used for th ...

inscriptions found at

Anyang Anyang (; ) is a prefecture-level city in Henan province, China. The northernmost city in Henan, Anyang borders Puyang to the east, Hebi and Xinxiang to the south, and the provinces of Shanxi and Hebei to its west and north respectively. It had a ...

) from 1250 BC to 6600 BC-6200 BC.

References

External links

Cliff Carvings May Rewrite History of Chinese Characters
– another copy of the ''Xinhua'' article, with images. {{coord missing, Ningxia Paleolithic sites in China Rock art in China Buildings and structures in Ningxia