Nanjing now has a problem, namely every instance that cites the City as having a history of 2,500 years. That’s a lot of tour guides, signage, websites, etc. For 600 years needs to be added to every last one, while we also have a new original name for our City; Changgan.
Those 2 and a half millennia are generally considered to be the founding history of Nanjing’s main urban area. But now this history has been refreshed by the archaeological community; Nanjing now dates back to around 1100 BCE.
In 2017, the Nanjing Archaeological Research Institute began to carry out archaeological excavations at the Changan Ancient City-Nanjing West Street Site, located outside Zhonghua Men and to the west of the Dabao’en Temple ruins.
To date, some 12,000 square metres of land has been excavated, more than 500 ruins have been discovered and over 10,000 archaeological specimens unearthed.
As The Paper reports, Changgan Ancient City has been found to comprise a moat, the foundations of walls, as well as doorways, wells, and pits thought utilised for the sacrifice of pigs.
Of particular interest is the moat, indicating even 3,000 years ago, that we now call Nanjing was already a military fortress.
From 18-19 December, a 2-week meet of the professional committee of the Chinese Archaeological Society and the Nanjing Archaeological Research Institute made public the West Street Site excavation results. Experts were in agreement that the Changgan Ancient City discovery advances the founding history of Nanjing to at least 3,000 years.
Therein was revealed that as the excavation widened, evidence collected increasingly points to the conclusion that the earliest part of Nanjing can be traced back to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties.
The wells discovered are thought to have been built in the late Shang Dynasty, while pottery unearthed at the site with triangular scratches and other patterns has obvious Shang Dynasty characteristics. Meanwhile, the many nearby relics such as pig bones and charcoal have been carbon-14 dated, providing for a time frame that falls within the late Shang and early Zhou dynasties.
It is further reported that Changgan Ancient City shall be opened to the public in the form of an archaeological site park in the future, presumably with the correct signage.
