Findings display an organized community

From pits and broken artifacts, heritage professionals are attempting to piece together the life of people living about 7,000 years ago in what is now Shenyang in Liaoning province.

Covering an area of 178,000 square meters, the Xinle Site is a Neolithic settlement dating back over 7,000 years. More than 3,000 artifacts and 40 house foundations have been found at the site during the course of six archaeological digs.

The Xinle Site Museum, founded in the mid-1980s, will be upgraded into an archaeological ruins park to continue to demonstrate the significance of the site, according to Zeng Yang, director of the museum.

"About 7,000 years ago, the Xinle people lived on a platform situated to the north of the ancient Hunhe River," Zeng says. "They engaged in various activities, such as digging holes, building thatched cottages, crafting stone tools and creating pottery vessels, and devoted themselves to the development of the area and to creating splendid Xinle Culture with their wisdom and labor."

According to Zeng, most of China's archaeological site museums focus on sites within a time span of 5,000 years and often have intact artifacts, complete moats and well-preserved city layouts. Few are as old as Xinle, which contains a plethora of mysteries waiting to be solved.

The site has also turned up its own wonders, among them a carbonized wooden pole with a bird's head carving and exquisite double-faced carvings on the body from 7 millennia ago.

"This is one of the earliest carved wooden artifacts ever found in China," Zeng says. "Wooden artifacts are hard to preserve, and it has survived because it was carbonized in a fire. It's really amazing that ancient people were able to make the same exquisite carvings on both sides of the sculpture without the use of modern tools."

Unfortunately, the artifact broke into three parts when it was unearthed, but it remains a precious object, and has been inferred to be the scepter of a tribal leader.