Zoumalou bamboo slips () refers to cultural relics that were unearthed at Zoumalou, the urban central area of

Changsha Changsha (; ; ; Changshanese pronunciation: (), Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is the capital and the largest city of Hunan Province of China. Changsha is the 17th most populous city in China with a population of over 10 million, an ...

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to ...

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 ...

in 1996. The discovery was one of the most important archaeological finds in China during the 1990s. All the historical artifacts from Zoumalou are displayed at the Changsha Bamboo Slips Museum.about the quantity of slips, according t
Changsha Bamboo Slips Museum
The important archaeological site of

Mawangdui Mawangdui () is an archaeological site located in Changsha, China. The site consists of two saddle-shaped hills and contained the tombs of three people from the Changsha Kingdom during the western Han dynasty (206 BC – 9 AD): the Chancellor Li ...

is also located in Changsha. Zoumalou () is located on the southeastern corner at the crossroad of Huangxing and Wuyi Road. In October 1996, at the construction site for the Japanese department store Heiwado () more than 140,000 pieces of

bamboo and wooden slips Bamboo and wooden slips () were the main media for writing documents in China before the widespread introduction of paper during the first two centuries AD. (Silk was occasionally used, for example in the Chu Silk Manuscript, but was prohibit ...

were unearthed. The historical relics are bamboo slips (), wooden slips (), wooden tablets (), hand slip scripts () and seal slips (); they are documents which were mainly used to record administration and judicatory conditions in the

Eastern Wu Wu ( Chinese: 吳; pinyin: ''Wú''; Middle Chinese *''ŋuo'' <

Eastern Han Chinese

: ''*ŋuɑ''), known in h ...

of the

Three Kingdoms period The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Eastern Han dynasty and was followed by the West ...

(220–280 AD). Because of this, the wooden and bamboo slips were also named ''Zoumalou Wu bamboo slips'' (). The quantity of bamboo and wooden slips found numbered more than all of those previously discovered in China. This was the most important discovery of Chinese historical

archives An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

in the 20th century along with the

Oracle bone script Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or Turtle shell#Plastron, turtle plastrons used in pyromancy, pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millen ...

, the

Dunhuang manuscripts Dunhuang manuscripts refer to a wide variety of religious and secular documents (mostly manuscripts, but also including some woodblock-printed texts) in Chinese and other languages that were discovered at the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China, durin ...

and the discovery series of bamboo and wooden slips in the northwest. The Changsha Bamboo Slips Museum was established in 2002. From their discovery in 1996, to the final clean up in 2015, archaeologists spent 19 years completing the arrangement of the cultural relics. From 1996 to 2015, there were three other similar discoveries near or at Zoumalou. In 2003, more than twenty thousand bamboo slips were discovered at Zoumalou. These slips belonged to the Western Han period (202 BC – 8 AD). In 2004, 206 bamboo slips were discovered, with characters at Dongpailou (), that belonged to the Eastern Han period (25–220 AD). On June 22, 2010, thousands of bamboo slips were found in an ancient well uncovered at a construction site at the southeast in the interchange of Wuyi road and Zoumalou lane, where the

Metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urba ...

Line 2 Wuyi Square station is located. It was determined that the bamboo slips belonged to the Eastern Han period.voc.com (2010-06-20)

,

an

References

{{reflist Bamboo and wooden slips Archaeological artifacts of China Han dynasty History of Changsha 1996 archaeological discoveries Eastern Wu