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Joya de Cerén, August, 660 A.D.—They knew what to do as soon as they felt the earth tremble.

It was time to get out of town, and quickly.

With not a moment to lose, they gathered what meant most to them—themselves and their families—and fled away as fast as they could. Anyone remaining would have heard the terrifying shrieking sound of the massive steam explosion as the hot magma made contact with the water of the nearby Rio Sucio river, along with the pyroclastic blast that eventually buried the town in a moist, hot volcanic ash.

Within days, where once stood their town amidst a lush green forest and agricultural fields, there was an ash-white desert. They would never return.

Evidence of a Disaster

The forgotten village of Joya de Cerén sits beneath a 17-foot layer of pyroclastic ash, exactly as it was left 1400 years ago in present-day El Salvador during a sudden volcanic eruption from the Loma Caldera volcano, just 600 meters distant. The results of archaeological excavations and research at this site testify to a rapid and desperate departure by the town’s inhabitants soon after their evening meal—tools and religious objects were left unceremoniously and randomly where they were last used, bed mats were left in place, and the fires in the hearths were still dying into embers. It was early August. The harvest was in and people were attending a ritual in one of the community buildings. That summer the farmers had made the decision to grow and harvest manioc, the roots of which are used to make cassava bread. It was feared that a drought might ruin their harvest and that the village would be short on food. Beans and corn fall victim to drought, but the manioc would save them from such desperate conditions. But these plans lost their meaning with the eruption.  

For the people of Cerén, it was not the first time their town had been abandoned because of natural disaster. They likely had already heard the stories of a different eruption generations before. Archaeological and geological evidence shows that no earlier than AD 405, the llopongo eruption, centered southeast of present-day San Salvador, had killed an estimated 30,000 people inhabiting a 1000 km area. Around 300,000 people were displaced. Those who repopulated Cerén would surely have told their grandchildren about the devastating event so that by 660 A.D., when the Loma Caldera earthquakes began, the villagers would not waste any time getting out of the way of the onslaught from the pyroclastic blast and the smothering ash.

Cerén, like ancient Pompeii, is an example rarely seen. Nature has made a vivid and detailed impression of life as it was being performed in a moment in time far into the past. In the case of Cerén, cool, fine particles of pyroclastic debris blanketed the community and preserved the forms of thatched roofs, wooden beams, woven baskets and blankets, tools, and adobe structures. Even bean-filled pots, the marks of finger swipes in ceramic bowls, human footprints in gardens and ash casts of corn stalks were left untouched by the effects of time.

Excavations, Manioc, and a Sacbe

Christine Dixon is co-director of the excavations at Cerén, but her career began there nearly a decade ago as a graduate student, assisting in the analysis of Ground-Penetrating Radar scans to identify buried structures. Since completing her Master’s thesis on her experience at Cerén, she has become a leading expert on the day-to-day life of its former inhabitants. But the earliest excavations at Cerén were led by University of Colorado Boulder professor Payson Sheets, who now, along with Dixon, co-directs the excavations. Some of the items he and his team found in a community building included a ceremonial deer headdress, a pot shaped like an alligator, and the bones of a butchered deer. They also recovered the remains of food and animal products. To date, researchers have excavated 12 buildings, including living quarters, storehouses, workshops, kitchens, religious buildings and a community sauna. Dozens of structures remain to be excavated, including the possibility of another settlement or two still buried beneath the Loma Caldera volcanic ash, which covers an area of about two square miles. So far, there have been no human remains recovered.

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 Excavations at Cerén in progress. Credit University of Colorado and Christine Dixon

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 An excavated household (left), storehouse (center) and community sauna (upper right) buried by volcanic ash at Cerén around A.D. 660. Credit University of Colorado

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 A community building at Cerén believed to have been used by elders to make decisions. Note the two large stone benches. Credit University of Colorado

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A domestic (house) structure. Structures at Cerén were buried in up to 17 feet of ash over a period of several days, freezing the 1,400-year-old village in time. Credit University of Colorado 

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 An ancient storehouse in the village of Cerén. Credit University of Colorado

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A structure at Cerén used by a female shaman. Credit University of Colorado 

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From their research, a remarkable picture of the life and activities of the people of Cerén has been reconstructed.  Based on the archaeological finds and their spatial relationships they determine that the eruption happened sometime near the end of the day. Moreover, beans had just been planted in the advanced stages of the rainy season so as not to disrupt the growth of maize, which was not yet mature. This would likely have been in early August. This latter finding demonstrates the almost unprecedented volume of information that archaeologists have been able to acquire at Cerén reflecting the details of Maya agricultural production.

“Studying agriculture at Cerén is very important because we have evidence that very rarely preserves in the archaeological record,” says Dixon. The Loma Caldera volcanic eruption deposited fine-grained tephra particles, packing around every object at the site, including the individual plants, in addition to covering entire fields of plants, or crops. When archaeologists arrived at the site 1400 years later, they excavated down through the volcanic ash, encountering hollow spaces where there once had been plants. After mixing and applying dental plaster to the exposed cavities, they then continued excavating the area. “The living surface was also preserved by the volcanic ash,” says Dixon. “Thus, in addition to the plants being in their exact location and form as 1400 years prior, we also see the fields where the plants were growing. We have documented the ridges and agricultural beds and can get an extremely detailed view of how plants were grown, in what types of fields and beds, and the cultivation techniques that were used.” Ancient pollen samples have also been taken, indicating the species of crops grown.

Dixon’s research at Cerén reached new levels when manioc fields were discovered. The pyroclastic debris that buried the village was so fine that it created detailed impressions of the plants, making it easy to distinguish them from maize and to identify their beds. These beds have given archaeologists a rare glimpse of the techniques and methods used for growing the crop. Archaeologists are often required to depend on microscopic data to paint a picture of ancient agriculture, but in this case, Dixon and her team also had convenient renderings in which they could actually ‘see’ the details of ridges and beds. 

“Since our initial 2007 discovery of manioc beds at Cerén, portions of four manioc fields have been identified to date, all of which had been harvested just prior to the Loma Caldera eruption,” says Dixon. “It is interesting that all of the manioc plants in these fields were harvested at one time, since manioc begins to rot approximately 24 hours after harvest and thus is typically just left growing in the fields until needed. We hypothesize there was a community effort underway to not only harvest, but then to process all manioc, possibly into a flour or fermented beverage.” Dixon and her associates suggest this because they know that today flour and fermented beverages are made from the root crop. It can also be stored indefinitely, and once it is ground up it can be used as a thickening agent in stews or used to make foods like tamales or tortillas. The flour is known today as “almidon”.

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Professor Payson Sheets, former doctoral student and co-director Christine Dixon and two Salvadoran workers excavating maize by filling ash hollows left by the plant stalks with dental plaster. Credit University of Colorado

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 Above: Pouring dental plaster. Credit University of Colorado and Christine Dixon

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 Professor Payson Sheets, shown here with ash casts of a vast manioc field at Cerén. Credit University of Colorado

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What does the manioc tell us about the Classic Period of Mayan culture? This period is often characterized by periods of drought, one of the reasons cited as a possible cause of the Classic Maya ‘collapse’. Manioc and other root crops are highly resistant to these conditions. Farmers at Cerén growing manioc as opposed to maize and other staple crops may indicate a regular precaution in agricultural communities to safeguard against crop failure. According to Dixon, “Scholars have hypothesized that root crops (specifically manioc) might have been an important part of ancient Maya diets and even agricultural insurance (Bronson 1966); however, the scarcity of direct archaeological evidence for manioc cultivation has greatly limited our understanding of the presence and uses of manioc in the past”……..until now. Sheets calculated that the manioc fields at Cerén would have produced about 10 metric tons of manioc every season. The village was not estimated to have had more than 200 inhabitants—not a large enough population to have consumed that much manioc. What were their reasons for producing so much of this die-hard and versatile crop? Perhaps the excess went to surrounding communities, or to the city center, fulfilling the villager’s obligation to the elite. Or perhaps the community kept it for themselves.

An unexpected feature discovered at the site was the sacbe, or road. This would have been constructed over a period of time. Archaeologists suggest from their analysis of archaeological remains that a variety of families would have contributed to building the sacbe—evidence of individuals who would have overseen the construction and maintenance of the road has been found within the preserved dwellings. “We have yet to locate the end of the sacbe either within the site center or to the south, but have learned a great deal about how it was constructed and where it was located,” says Dixon. “It appears multiple sections were likely built by different groups, possibly different families, and that it was a coordinated effort since the road all slopes in the same direction, which would control the water run off.”

Measurements taken by a penetrometer indicated the sacbe was very hard. Archaeologists suggest that this characteristic was in part achieved by the ancient villagers compacting it by pounding sections of the sacbe with heavy objects. This was enhanced by their use of tephra, the angular grains of which could lock together in a tight matrix when compressed under moist conditions. Exposed sections of the sacbe showed that it was slightly grooved, a likely result of people walking single file as they traveled to their fields or the nearby town of San Andres, suggest Sheets and Dixon.

“The western canal of the sacbe was crisp and well formed and had apparently been worked on just days before the eruption,” said Sheets. “But it looks like the workers hadn’t got around to maintaining the eastern canal before the volcanic event.”

So far, several dozen footprints on the sacbe’s outer, softer edges have been revealed. “More than half of the footprints were headed south away from the village, away from the danger,” Sheets said. “I think at least some of them were left by people fleeing the eruption.”

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 Payson Sheets, right, confers with Salvadoran workers digging a test pit down to an ancient white road called a sacbe running in and out of the ancient village of Cerén. The sacbe is buried under 16 feet of volcanic ash. Credit University of Colorado

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 CU-Boulder Professor Payson Sheets casting a footprint found on the Cerén sacbe with dental plaster. Credit Rachel Egan, University of Colorado

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 Above and below: Views of the Cerén sacbe buried under about 16 feet of ash. The trenches were drainage canals to catch excess rainwater. Credit University of Colorado

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 Professor Payson Sheets points to the imprint of several toes from a footprint left on the Cerén sacbe. Footprints pointed away from village and may have been made by Mayans fleeing the volcanic eruption. Credit Rachel Egan, University of Colorado

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Autonomy in the Countryside

The ancient Maya have been typically depicted as a people ruled by royal elites wielding power and authority from their great monumental ceremonial centers, exacting tribute and controlling affairs much like many other “top-down” societies, where the elite class made most political and economic decisions. But at Cerén, based on Sheets’ and Dixon’s archaeological analysis, the villagers appear to have had significant independence regarding their architecture, crop choices, religious activities and economics. It could have implications for Maya town and village life generally.

“This is the first clear window anyone has had on the daily activities and the quality of life of Maya commoners back then,” said Sheets. “At Cerén we found virtually no influence and certainly no control by the elites.”

Instead, according to Sheets and Dixon, it appears that much power seems to have been vested collectively within the local community. They cite evidence that indicates the residents of particular households at Cerén were responsible for the upkeep of certain community structures, and other households responsible for other specialized activities. One household, for example, contained an inordinate amount of pots and firewood that the researchers speculated were used during activities in a local domed community sauna building. On the larger scale, how the people were organized and directed can also be seen in the style in which the harvest was decided upon and collected, including the layout of the roads. According to Dixon, “From the Cerén agricultural fields it is possible to question how fields were divided, the degree of control farmers had over crop choice and cultivation techniques, and the social and political forces involved……..Our analysis of the buildings, the sacbe, and agricultural fields all suggest that decisions were being made for the community, by the community, rather than imposed upon them by a larger regional force……there was a shared [local] governance at the site, possibility by community elders or a group of community leaders.”

Nevertheless, the archaeologists have deduced a relationship between the Cerén commoners and the Maya elite. It is reflected in the evidence related to public marketplace transactions. Cerén farmers likely traded surplus crops or crafts for coveted, high-end specialty items such as jade axes, obsidian knives and colorfully decorated polychrome pots, items the elites probably arranged to transport to the local market locations from a distance. This, according to the archaeologists, is evidenced in findings that indicated every Cerén household possessing a jade axe—a tool effective for tree cutting, building and woodworking. But even here, it appeared that the community had power and independence. “The Cerén people could have chosen to do business at about a dozen different marketplaces in the region,” said Sheets. “If they thought the elites were ‘charging’ too much at one marketplace, they were free to vote with their feet and go to another.”

“The Cerén community was no doubt in contact with and had a direct relationship with the much larger and more powerful regional centers in the area, like San Andres,” Dixon adds, “but it appears these data suggest that the Cerenians maintained a degree of autonomy and control over their own lives and daily activities.”

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A polychrome pot unearthed at Cerén. Such pots were prized by the villagers and had likely been obtained through trade at local marketplaces in the valley. Credit University of Colorado 

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What’s Next

As with most archaeological projects, the process of study and research could go on for years, and there is still work left to do in terms of excavation and investigation at the site location and its regional context. 

“We hope to continue working on documenting how this road articulates with the site center, to examine a key central structure that is likely associated with the road, and to have an opportunity to advance conservation of the building and artifacts at the site,” says Dixon. 

Most significantly, Sheets, Dixon and colleagues believe that Cerén is opening a vital window toward understanding ancient Maya life at the village level, an aspect of the Maya that has long missed the limelight due at least in part to the popular focus on the Maya royalty and elite.

A paper on the work at Cerén has been published in Latin American Antiquity, a publication of the Society for American Archaeology. The Cerén research area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.

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A few words from Christine Dixon

Dr Sheets is the central person who has propelled and carried the research of Cerén from its discovery to the present. Under his careful leadership and enthusiastic direction, there have been many successful projects over the past three decades of research that would not have been possible without his extraordinary efforts.

There are many individuals who have helped on this project before my arrival, such as Dr. Linda Brown, Dr. Rae Beaubien, Dr. Brian McKee, Dr. Andrea Gerstle, Dr. Scott Simmons, Dr. Inga Calvin, Dr. Stacy Barber, and many others.

My involvement in the site began in 2005 and in that time we have had some terrific teams of researchers aid in our excavations and analyses.

Dr. David Lentz has been a key project member, who helped to co-author multiple grant proposals and had led the paleobotanical analysis side of the project. Dr. Lentz is a renowned expert on the study of ancient plants in Mesoamerica and his work and the work of graduate students Venicia Slotten, Angie Hood, and Christine Hoffer have drastically expanded our knowledge of the huge variety of different plants being used at the site. Each of these students have written master’s theses on their examinations of the paleobotanical remains at the site.

Roberta Gallardo has served as a key project participant and liaison for many years and has facilitated our work at the site.

Our research at the site has included the work of many graduate students. Alexandria Halmbacher has been a terrific project member who has participated in multiple field seasons. Her MA thesis examined the storage practices at Cerén in a careful re-examination of the data from household excavations at the site. Rocio Herrera has been a keymember of our research team.

Celine Lamb is a doctoral student at the University of Kentucky and her Master’s thesis was an analysis of the gardens of Cerén households. Theresa Heindel is currently a doctoral student at the University of California, Riverside and her Master’s research examined the role of malanga at Cerén and in Mesoamerica. 

Rachel Egan has also participated in research at the site and is a current doctoral student at the University of Colorado, Boulder whose dissertation research is focused on the Ilopango eruption in El Salvador. Other graduate students who have been involved in our research include: George Maloof, Andy Tetlow, Adam Blanford, Dr. Errin Weller, Monica Guerra, and Joya Tetreault.

Additionally, we have been fortunate to have Dr. Nancy Gonlin join us for the portion of a field season and offer key insight as a consultant on the project. University of Colorado, Boulder professor Dr. Anne Shehaan has also contributed to our geophysical exploration of the site.  Finally, none of this research would be possible without the extraordinary efforts of the many Salvadoran workers who have aided us throughout these years of excavation. Their dedication and hard work has truly allowed this research to be possible.  The modern day community of Joya de Cerén has provided us a home and remarkable support as we have pursued this research. 

 — Christine Dixon

Photo image, above left: Christine Dixon excavating the manioc beds. Credit Christine Dixon and the University of Colorado

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The Tibetan Plateau is the highest inhabited place on earth. Situated in the heart of Asia, this vast expanse, larger than the states of Alaska and Texas combined, averages 14,000 feet in elevation. Yet despite its great altitude, humans have been living in Tibet since remote antiquity. Not content with a mere subsistence livelihood, ancient Tibetans founded a civilization of epic proportions.

My introduction to Tibet began more than three decades ago when, as a youth, I began exploring the Plateau. As a young traveler, I was attracted to the wilderness and the isolated groups of people living in their traditional manner. For months at a time, I wandered across the Tibetan Plateau on foot and by hitchhiking, eating whatever there was and sleeping wherever I could find a decent place to lay down my bedroll.

I began my explorations in Ladakh and Zanzkar, regions perched on the western edge of the Tibetan Plateau. In the spring of 1984 I managed to enter northeastern Tibet, a restricted area known as Amdo. After the opening of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to international tourism, I then moved on to the central and western portions of Tibet, spending 15 months there on my first sojourn. At first, I had no particular aim to satisfy. My objectives were to simply see novel places, meet new people and learn as much as I could about the culture and history of Tibet.

My travels took a scientific turn in the early 1990s when, while collecting geographic and ethnographic data in northern and western Tibet, I noticed strange formations of stones that obviously were not naturally occurring. Pursuing my research further, it dawned on me that these stone alignments and elevations were evidence of an unread chapter in Tibet’s past. They tell the tale of a remarkable people and way of life, vestiges of a civilization that existed before the Buddhist religion took hold in Tibet in the 7^th and 8^th centuries CE.

In time, I turned up a wide web of ruined fortresses and temples, necropolises and menhirs in the uppermost part of the Plateau—hard evidence for Tibet’s first civilization. In my first scholarly article published in the Tibet Journal in 1996, I sketched what I had found. Thirsting to know more, I returned to the field every year, searching the mountains, valleys and plains of the highest reaches of the Tibetan Plateau for a world largely forgotten and buried. Each new discovery shed additional light on what Tibet was like before the arrival of Buddhist monks and monasteries, yielding information on its technological and cultural capabilities and relationships with other ancient peoples.

My research has since shown that pre-Buddhist monuments and art are best preserved on the northern and western parts of the Plateau, the vast territory known as Upper Tibet or Tö. It is in this region of approximately 250,000 square miles that I have concentrated my efforts.

This is the story of that civilization’s first and most mysterious manifestation.

Northwest of Tibet’s capital Lhasa, beyond the lofty Transhimalayan ranges, is a vast tableland averaging more than 15,000 feet in elevation. This portion of Tibet is sparsely populated, with shepherds and a few farmers in the far west.  Nonetheless, of all places, it was here in an icy land of interminable plains and high peaks that Tibetan civilization took root in its most dramatic form. This highland branch of civilization can now be associated with a kingdom, culture and language traditionally called Zhang Zhung (pronounced: Shang Shung) by the Tibetans………

In the Dawn

Thousands of years of a human presence preceded the development of high civilization in Tibet. To place this grand epoch in perspective, a summary of Tibet’s earlier prehistory is necessary. Studies of the Tibetan genome suggest that ancestors of today’s Tibetans established a foothold on the Plateau as much as 32,000 years ago. These early settlers not only inhabited the lower river valleys. They ventured out to occupy the vast highlands that blanket most of Tibet. Through genetic changes over millennia, Stone Age Tibetans acquired special physiological mechanisms to cope with hypoxia, the inadequate oxygenation of blood due to high altitude. 

Flaked choppers and axes and other tools dating to the Old Stone Age have been found in sundry parts of Tibet. These types of tools have been interpreted in different ways by archaeologists, leading to divergent views on their age. Estimates range from 12,000 to 35,000 years ago. Follow-up studies to scientifically date tools by analyzing the contexts in which they occur are eagerly awaited.

The Neolithic

To date, Chinese and Tibetan archaeologists have documented more than two dozen New Stone Age [Neolithic} sites, stretching from one end of the Tibet Plateau to the other. These sites have been dated to 3500 to 5500 years ago. Some five millennia ago, villages with sizable stone and timber houses and a variety of crops appeared. At early Neolithic sites like Kharub, near the city of Chamdo in eastern Tibet, different species of millet were grown as staple crops. Millet was already being grown in the Yellow River valley of northwestern China at least two thousand years earlier, and it is probably from there that this crop spread to Kharub and other places in eastern Tibet. By the late Neolithic, barley and wheat were being cultivated in Central Tibet, a drier region than eastern Tibet. These crops were part of a suite of domesticates of west Asian origin that made their way across the continent to Tibet. Barley, wheat and peas reached western Tibet by circa 1500 BCE, probably through contact with Central Asian peoples who had already progressed to the Bronze Age stage of development.

The houses, cultivated fields, ceramics, textiles and polished stone tools of Neolithic Tibet set the backdrop for the technologically more advanced societies to follow. The progression from the Stone Age to the Metal Age seems to have progressed more slowly on the Tibetan Plateau than in some other regions of Eurasia. A large supply of wild herbivores like wild yak and antelope may have forestalled the transition from big game hunting to farming. Also, much of Tibet is only fit for pasturing livestock, a way of life at variance with agriculture. Thus, well-established economic and cultural traditions may have played a part in the ostensible prolonging of the Neolithic on the Plateau.

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 Tibet (in red) within its geographic context. To its north and east, China, and to its south and west, India. Wikimedia Commons, TUBS

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 Map of Upper Tibet and adjoining regions. Courtesy Brian Sebastian and John Vincent Bellezza.

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The Buddhist monastery of Stag Rock (Shawa Drak) in the eastern portion of Upper Tibet. On the summit of the formation are the ruins of early structures associated in Tibetan texts with the 8^th century CE Bonpo religious master Nangsher Löpo.

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 Man at the horseraces in a village of northwestern Tibet.

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 Diagram of houses in the Neolithic village of Kharub, Tibet Museum, Lhasa.

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 Polished stone chisels from Kharub, Tibet Museum, Lhasa

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Bronze Age influences in Upper Tibet

Very little is known about how and when Upper Tibetans acquired Bronze Age cultural and technological traits typically associated with the wider Eurasian world. The search for these origins do not lead east or south, because Chinese and Indian influences from the Bronze Age are virtually absent in the archaeological record of Upper Tibet. In fact, China and India only began to exert a significant cultural influence on the central and western thirds of the Plateau with the rise of the Tibetan empire in the 7^th century CE. To pinpoint Upper Tibet’s Metal Age origins, one must instead look north towards Central Asia. 

However it precisely occurred, Tibetans picked up knowledge of Bronze Age chariots, a technological innovation closely connected to the Eurasian steppes. In the rock art of both northwestern and northeastern Tibet, chariots in a Central Asian mode of depiction are well represented. It is in Upper Tibet, the highest part of the Plateau, that chariot rock art is most numerous. To date, I have discovered more than two dozen chariot carvings. Some of the Upper Tibetan chariots are beautifully rendered with many technical details, including spoked wheels, box, pole, and draught horses. It is not clear if Upper Tibetans actually built chariots for practical or ritual use or if they were merely artistic depictions with symbolic functions. Either way, the chariot petroglyphs of the region demonstrate that Upper Tibetans were deeply influenced by Bronze Age technologies emanating from Central Asia. Chariot rock art also intimates that religious traditions and social customs associated with this technology had an effect on Upper Tibetans. Though it appears they simply aped Central Asian culture, the Upper Tibetans made it their own by positioning chariots among carvings of wild yaks, mounted archers with prominent headgear, swastikas and other subjects that epitomize their own culture and way of life. The direct dating of rock art is still not technologically feasible, but based on cross-cultural comparisons, chariot rock art in Upper Tibet is likely to have been made sometime between 1200 and 300 BCE.

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 The author surveying chariot rock art on the Northern Plains (Changthang) of Upper Tibet.

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 Highly detailed carving of a chariot in Upper Tibet. Note the charioteer standing in the square car and what appears to be a groom in front of the horses.

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 Chariot petroglyph depicted with round car and without draught animals. This chariot is located at a rock art site in the central part of Upper Tibet.

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Of all Bronze Age peoples, the Andronovo, a group of interrelated cultures spread over much of Central Asia, was best placed to have a major impact on Tibet. The Andronovo may have spoken Indo-Iranian languages and in their various cultural permutations were active from circa 2000 to 900 BCE. Among the many physical traces the Andronovo left behind is chariot rock art in styles reminiscent of Upper Tibet. This shared chariot art can possibly be attributed to a vanguard of Andronovo stockbreeders reaching the northwestern borders of the Plateau, initiating a period of intensive interaction with the Upper Tibetans. Even more likely is that ideas, methods and materials propagated by the Andronovo filtered southward into northwestern Tibet, brought there by a chain of localized groups. Either through direct contacts or a multicultural diffusion from Central Asia to the Plateau, the Andronovo appears to have injected Bronze Age technologies and ideologies into Upper Tibet, radically altering its culture. 

The Bronze Age cultures responsible for the famous mummies of the Tarim Basin (in the Chinese province of Xinjiang) may also have had a bearing on Upper Tibet. In the Yanbulaq cemetery of Xinjiang around 76 graves were excavated by Chinese archaeologists and 29 complete skulls recovered; these date to circa 1300 to 500 BCE. Analysis of these skulls indicates that 21 of them are close in form to Tibetan populations. This evidence implies that there were long-standing ethnic links between Xinjiang and Tibet, regions separated from one another by a single mountain range, the Kunlun.

The earliest of the Bronze Age cultures of the Tarim Basin dates to circa 1800 BCE and appears to have historical links with another major cultural complex of Central Asia, the Afanasevo (circa 3500–2500 BCE). The Afanasevo culture, a Copper Age people, had a formative impact on the cultural and demographic complexion of Eurasia. Like the Andronovo culture, they appear have been versed in some equestrian arts. Through intermediary cultures, the Afanasevo culture may also also have had some influence on the development of Upper Tibet.

In Upper Tibet I also discovered ‘mascoids’, a kind of anthropomorphic rock art in emblematic form. This art only occurs in Ruthok, a district in northwestern Tibet. Among the earliest propagators of mascoid carvings was the Okunevo, a complex of related cultures centered in southern Siberia (circa 2000–1500 BCE). Through long-range migrations or more plausibly through transmission from one people to another, this art of the steppes and taiga seems to have been transferred to Upper Tibet. But unlike the chariots of Upper Tibet, which faithfully reproduced Central Asian examples, local inhabitants created their own genre of mascoid rock art. Rather than only a mask or face, some mascoids of Upper Tibet have tiny legs and arms attached to the head and wield spears, bows and other weapons. The head still dominates the composition, but in styles peculiar to Upper Tibet. As with chariot carvings, the Upper Tibetans stamped their cultural identity on mascoid rock art, making it their own.

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 Mascoid carving with arms and legs and a complex array of elements inside the face, northwestern Tibet.

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 Mascoid with large eyes, northwestern Tibet.

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Interestingly, the mascoid rock art of Upper Tibet is most similar to that of Ladakh, a Plateau region situated immediately to the west. However, some types of mascoids in Ladakh are closer in style to those of Siberia. These stylistic affinities suggest that Ladakh acted as a conduit for the flow of cultural and artistic traits of the steppes and taiga to Upper Tibet. The rock art of Ladakh in general was strongly influenced by Central Asia, Siberia and Mongolia, betokening links between these regions beginning no later then the Bronze Age. Like the Tarim Basin, Ladakh appears to have been a major gateway for entry of Bronze Age customs and traditions onto the Tibetan Plateau.

The peoples of the northern steppes and forests who influenced the creation of chariot and mascoid rock art in Upper Tibet were probably also agents of other kinds of innovations on the Plateau, extending well beyond rock art. Chariots and mascoids embody seminal ideas, customs and traditions of a religious, social and political nature to which the Upper Tibetans were exposed. We can infer that a cultural revolution of sorts took place on the Plateau in the Bronze Age. The single most important technological introduction likely to be associated with chariot rock art is bronze metallurgy, for the two go hand in hand in Central Asia. The widespread production of copper alloy tools and weapons in Central Asia seems to have coincided with large-scale migrations of Indo-Iranian speakers eastwards around 2000 BCE, with climate change likely a big factor.

The cultivation of crops in the middle of Asia can be traced back to the Neolithic, endowing it with sedentary cultural patterns that evolved over millennia. Irrigation systems were highly evolved in southern parts of Bronze Age Central Asia, allowing for the spread of agriculture to many oases and glacially fed river valleys. The presence of agriculture and metallurgy in Central Asia must have acted as a springboard for the transfer of these formative technologies to Tibet. The planting of crops and the smelting of copper alloys can be correlated with crucial cultural changes, as users developed the vocabulary, mythology, rituals and ideologies to exploit and understand the implications of these material advances.

No settlements or tombs that conclusively exhibit Bronze Age features have been unearthed in Upper Tibet, and evidence elsewhere on the Plateau for the Bronze Age is weak. This could be because divisions between the Bronze Age and Iron Age characterizing Central Asian archaeology were weak or absent in Tibet. The result of a prolonged Neolithic in Tibet may be that smelting of copper and forging of iron arose there within the same timeframe. Parallels with ancient China might be relevant here, as there is still some ambiguity over the nature and duration of its Bronze Age.

The Iron Age and Zhang Zhung in Upper Tibet

Whether or not there was actually a discrete Bronze Age period in Upper Tibetan prehistory, ideas and materials connected to it permeated the cultural fabric of this part of the Plateau. This set the stage for a sedentary way of life and the citadel settlements that characterize the next phase of prehistory in Upper Tibet. It was during this period, as part of Tibet’s first great civilization, that the Zhang Zhung kingdom arose. These fortresses burst forth in the Iron Age (600–100 BCE) and continued to be constructed during Tibet’s Protohistoric period (100 BCE to 600 CE). They are especially numerous in far western Tibet where I have surveyed around 50 different sites.

The most distinctive large edifice in the Iron Age and Protohistoric period was the all-stone corbelled building. The stone elements in this type of architecture are extremely heavy, requiring specially designed walls to support them. Massively built walls supported roofs composed of stone corbels and bridging stones covered in stone sheathing. The corbelled arch was not employed in Upper Tibet; rather corbels and bridging stones overlap one another, progressively reducing the open space above them. The resulting gap is enclosed by thick slabs. These various roofing appurtenances are up to 8 feet in length.

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A portion of a large citadel mostly composed of all-stone corbelled structures. It was built on a summit overlooking a large lake in the middle of Upper Tibet. The structural components of these ruins suggest that the site was established in the Protohistoric period.

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The corbelling technique used in ancient Tibet was only effective in creating small rooms, typically less than 100 square feet.  To construct large edifices (up to 200 feet in length) individual rooms or suites of rooms forming structurally self-sufficient units were joined together. These rambling structures often feature a meandering plan. The tallest edifices consisted of only two or three floors. To create towering structures, buildings were stacked on the ledges of steep rock formations.  

The walls of the pre-Buddhist citadels and temples are usually windowless, creating dark, cavernous interior spaces. Entranceways are usually less than 4 feet in height, spurring folktales about these edifices being inhabited by an ancient race of dwarfs. Many structures are set deeply into the ground, creating a semi-subterranean aspect. This means that the all-stone corbelled buildings were not only easy to heat, but may have been associated with the pantheon of chthonic (underworld) spirits noted in Tibetan literature. The presence of shrines and deep recesses in the rear of some structures appear to have had ritualistic and mythological dimensions. 

The citadels of Upper Tibet were planted on isolated peaks or ridge tops, conferring a defensive advantage. Evidently, protection was a major preoccupation for the builders, hinting at a militaristic social order. With the rise of nomadism in Central Asia, circa 1000 BCE, social tensions, mass migration and armed struggle was rife. This unsettled state of affairs seems to have affected Upper Tibet.

The impact of Iron Age Central Asia on Upper Tibet is also vividly recounted in its rock carvings. One of the most pervasive forms of rock art is the so-called ‘Eurasian animal style’, characterized by the sinuous depiction of predators, herbivores and birds using a variety of media. Rock art in the Eurasian animal style is commonplace in Central Asia, Siberia and Mongolia, as well as in northwestern Tibet and Ladakh. Dozens of lithe predators and prey in Upper Tibetan rock art document the penetration of Central Asian influences onto the Plateau. The complex of Iron Age cultural groups known as the Saka-Scythians was well placed to have brought the Eurasian animal style to Upper Tibet. The exact reasons are not yet known, but war, trade, diplomacy, proselytization or any number of other factors may have been involved in this artistic borrowing. If foreign invasion is indeed implicated, it would help to explain why ancient Upper Tibetans favored fortified settlements.

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A deer in the Upper Tibetan genre of the Eurasian animal style, northwestern Tibet.

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The pre-Buddhist citadels of Upper Tibet stand over agricultural enclaves, most of which have been long abandoned due to a chronic shortage of water (Upper Tibet lies in the rain shadow of the highest mountain ranges in the world). Unlike Central Tibet, Ladakh or other places where prime sites have been redeveloped over the course of history, the pre-Buddhist residential architecture of Upper Tibet was often left untouched after its demise. Only the natural elements have conspired to efface these structures from the landscape. Unfortunately, the loss of glaciers and general climatic degradation continue to this day in Upper Tibet, exacerbated by global human-wrought changes.

Along with fortified settlements, all-stone corbelled temples and hermitages were built on out-of-the-way slopes. These concealed buildings appear to have been hubs of religious life in Iron Age and Protohistoric Upper Tibet. The citadels and temples constituted nuclei of elite social life in the pre-Buddhist period, the haunts of chieftains and high priests and their families and retainers. Regarding the humble or commoner sectors of ancient Upper Tibet society, the remains of villages with much smaller and more rudimentary residences have been detected at some agricultural sites; and most of the population likely dwelt in mobile shelters like the black yak hair tent. This spider-like structure was the most popular abode in this mainly pastoral region until 25 years ago.

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One of the all-stone corbelled structures at what appears to be a temple complex, western Tibet. Note how this structure is set deeply in the adjoining slope.

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A typical tent woven from black yak hair, Upper Tibet. Note the white strips flanking the entrance, a good luck attracting device. On the opposite side of the tent colorful prayer flags blow in the wind.

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One of the most conspicuous qualities of elite residential architecture in pre-Buddhist Upper Tibet is its extremely high elevation. Many of the buildings tower over the surrounding plains and hills, standing at altitudes as much as 17,500 feet above sea-level, making them the highest permanent residences in world history. By contrast, in Buddhist-era Upper Tibet, monasteries and castles were situated at much lower elevations. Historical Tibetans had lost the taste for living at altitudes with which only they can cope. Cultural changes must have played a part, as archaic religious traditions placed much emphasis on the sky and heavenly bodies, whereas Buddhism focuses on mental processes. Also, in the time of Buddhism, Upper Tibetan culture shows signs of retrenchment, as areas of permanent occupation contracted ever further. After the collapse of the Tibetan empire in the mid-9^th century CE, the Plateau never again rose up again as a center of international power.        

The historical and cultural origins of the characteristic all-stone corbelled architecture in Upper Tibet are beclouded in uncertainty. Nevertheless, the picture is gradually becoming clearer. In 2001 I recovered a small round of wood deposited in an underground room, in what appears to have been a garrison connected to a large citadel. The sample was radiocarbon tested and yielded a calibrated date of circa 100 BCE to 100 CE. The chronological evidence indicates that this all-stone acropolis was already viable by the beginning of Upper Tibet’s Protohistoric period. In local culture this place is named after the territorial deity of Ruthok Gekhö. According to Tibetan religious literature, Gekhö was the chief god of the Zhang Zhung kingdom.

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All-stone corbelled buildings at the Gekhö citadel, northwestern Tibet. The roofs of these structures are still partially intact

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At a site I documented in 2010, petroglyphs dating from the Protohistoric period and Early Historic period (600–1000 CE) cover stones once used in the foundations of all-stone corbelled buildings. These structures seem to have functioned as a hermitage or small village. The carvings were in all probability made as a kind of graffiti after the structures were abandoned. This suggests that the site had fallen into disrepair sometime before 600 CE.

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Petroglyphs on the foundation of a residential structure. Note the remains of all-stone corbelled shelters in the background. This site was converted into corrals for sheep and goats.

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Organic materials collected in western Tibet from the foundations of small buildings with structural features recalling all-stone corbelled structures have been dated by the US archaeologist Mark Aldenderfer and Chinese colleagues to circa 500 BCE. This pushes the possible age of Upper Tibetan corbelled architecture back to the Iron Age. Evidence for Early Iron Age antiquity comes from a necropolis on the high plains of Upper Tibet at ‘Red House Talus-Covered’ (Khangmar Dzashak). This site boasts three above-ground mortuary temples that almost certainly had all-stone corbelled roofs. Foot bones I recovered from a grave at the site yielded calibrated radiocarbon dates clustered around 840 to 700 BCE. While it has not been proven that these tombs were built at the same time as the mortuary temples, this remains a distinct possibility. 

Monuments of the Dead 

Cemeteries and necropolises are dotted all over Upper Tibet, constituting some of the most important archaeological evidence for the pre-Buddhist epoch. I have documented several hundred of them over the last two decades. These burial and funerary ritual sites come in a variety of forms, heralding the cultural development of Tibet from the early first millennium BCE to the time of the Tibetan empire. Among the two most important funerary monuments are menhirs or pillars erected inside a stone enclosure and rows of pillars appended to a temple-tomb.  

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Pillars erected on the west side of a rectangular enclosure in the southern part of Upper Tibet.

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One of three arrays of pillars at the site ‘Red House Talus-Covered’. The remains of a temple-tomb can be seen behind the standing stones. In the foreground, just out of view, is the tomb dated to the early first millennium BCE discussed in the text.

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One of the six complexes at Yul Khambu, the largest site of pillars and temple-tombs in Upper Tibet.

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Tibetans call the pillars ‘long-stones’ or doring, the most conspicuous structural element at ancient sites with a funerary function. In conjunction with all-stone corbelled edifices, the highly distinctive pillar monuments circumscribe the majority of Upper Tibetan territory. They are not found in Central Tibet or in other adjoining areas; therefore, they serve as a kind of geographic marker of pre-Buddhist culture in Upper Tibet.

The exact function of the standing stones is still enigmatic. Accounts of ancient burial rites in Tibetan literature support their use in the protection of the souls of the deceased before they were ritually consigned to the celestial afterlife. The standing stones may also have been ritualized memorials for the dead, especially important during the annual cycle of apotropaic rites.

The ‘long-stones’ stand between 10 inches and 8 feet above the ground surface. The pillars erected inside a rectangular enclosure tend to be larger than those in multiple rows beside temple-tombs. Pillars are almost always situated on the west side of an enclosure, while the rows of pillars extend eastward from temple-tombs. Originally, there were between 200 and 2000 pillars in each of these concourses. These are among the largest aggregations of standing stones at ancient sites anywhere in the world.

Like the pillars, the temple-tombs range widely in size. The most impressive examples are up to 215 feet in length, making them among the largest prehistoric monuments in Tibet. Some of these heavily built mortuary temples are divided by walls into two or more chambers, which were presumably used to entomb high status members of ancient society. None of the stone roofs of the chambers have survived intact and human remains have not been discerned inside. Local treasure hunters over the centuries and the punishing climate of Upper Tibet have cleaned them out.

In both types of Upper Tibetan pillar monuments, structures tend to be oriented in the cardinal directions, indicating that topographical and astronomical alignments were probably part of their ritual use. The terrain in the east is almost always wide open, suggesting that the sunrise and the path of the sun played a role in ritual calculations associated with the funerary pillar monuments.

Samples from timbers extracted from the wall of a mausoleum with outlying structures comparable to the walled-in pillars have been radiocarbon dated to the 3^rd to 5^th centuries CE, an indication of the prehistoric antiquity of the pillar monuments. Petroglyphs and inscriptions engraved on standing stones as a kind of graffiti at a few sites seem to signify that their significance was diminished in the Early Historic period. Had they still been a major part of Upper Tibetan ceremonial life after 600 or 700 CE it is not likely that they would have been tampered with in this manner. The making of the carvings coincides with the introduction of Buddhism in Tibet, a religion with very different concepts about death and corpse disposal. Politics may also have been involved. The rulers of the Tibetan empire were based in Central Tibet, a region without a tradition of funerary pillar monuments.

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Mausoleum predating the 6^th century CE in Upper Tibet. Samples of wood for dating were obtained from the cavity in the structure visible in the photograph. The tamarisk timbers were probably deployed in construction shortly after they were cut from local stands. This shrub grows to about 8 feet in height in the region.  

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The long-stones of Upper Tibet can be compared with other types of menhirs raised for the dead in the middle of Asia, helping to date them. These types of monuments were erected from the Late Bronze Age to an era that corresponds with the Protohistoric period in Tibet. While the cultures of Central Asia and Upper Tibet had their own distinctive sets of pillar monuments for funerary purposes, there are correspondences between them in form, materials and placement. These architectural analogies may reflect certain parallels in the rituals, myths and beliefs observed in the core of ancient Asia.               

Most famous among the pillar monuments are ‘deer stones’, the handiwork of Late Bronze Age peoples in Mongolia, the Altai and southern Siberia. Recent findings by American archaeologists working in Mongolia such as William Fitzhugh indicate that deer stones were primarily erected between 1200 and 800 BCE by predecessors of the Scythian tribes of the Iron Age. The Tashtyk culture (100–600 CE), a successor to the Scythians in southern Siberia, raised large groups of pillars. Like the rows of standing stones in Upper Tibet, the narrow sides of the tabular Tashtyk menhirs were oriented north and south and erected east of burial grounds. Similar configurations of standing stones distinguish some early Turk sites in the Altai (4^th to 6^th century CE).

Another special type of mortuary structure in Upper Tibet is the mountaintop tomb. These diminutive masonry cubes contain a small chamber in the middle. This appears to be an ossuary designed to contain human bones after the final stage of corpse processing. Although the mountaintop tombs have not been dated yet, like all-stone corbelled edifices, walled-in pillars and rows of pillars appended to temple-tombs, they demarcate the Upper Tibetan territory and its distinctive archaeological culture.

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A cubic tomb on the summit of a mountain that rises nearly 1000 feet above the high plains of western Tibet. This structure measures approximately 10 feet by 8 feet and is now 4 feet in height. Originally, it was somewhat taller.  

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The monumental residential architecture of ancient Upper Tibet stands in contrast to many steppe and forest regions of Central Asia, Mongolia and Siberia in the Iron Age, which have no stone citadels or temples and are devoid of agriculture. The more advanced stage of development exhibited by Upper Tibet in the Iron Age may possibly mean that it was an exporter of culture and technology to the northern peoples. As tantalizing as this prospect is, further exploration is needed to validate it.   

Upper Tibet Civilization in the Wider Context

There have been no excavations of the hundreds of residential and ceremonial monuments I have documented in Upper Tibet. The newness of the discoveries, a lack of indigenous expertise and the harsh political environment in Tibet have thus far stalled this work. However, Chinese archaeologists working in western Tibet have uncovered a few cemeteries and residential structures, occasionally with international collaboration. Since the late 1990s, they have opened tombs or studied those accidentally disturbed by development projects, and with spectacular results. Cemeteries in the badlands region bordering the Himalaya in the Upper Tibetan region of Guge have yielded a wealth of artifacts. Tombs excavated in Guge date from circa 500 BCE to 400 CE. Ornaments, implements, household items and ritual objects made of cast and worked bronze, copper, silver, gold and iron have been collected. Turned wooden bowls, ceramic vessels, stone weights, semiprecious stone beads, woolen textiles, silks, bone, ivory and numerous other materials have also been discovered.

These diverse tomb finds illustrate the degree of cultural sophistication attained by Upper Tibet in the Iron Age and Protohistoric period. Objects like bamboo and birch bark ritual items also document trade links with India. For their part, golden burial masks and patterned silks give us an inkling of wide-ranging Central Asian social and economic networks that once extended to Upper Tibet.

In recent years, a large stronghold I identified as a probable capital of the Zhang Zhung kingdom has been partially excavated by two different teams of Chinese archaeologists. One team, led by Li Yongxian and Huo Wei, discovered structural remains far more extensive than I could observe on the surface. The other team, headed by Tong Tao, has explored cemeteries in the vicinity , obtaining evidence for a broad range of crops and domestic animals and the stratification of early society. Samples from the site subjected to radiocarbon analysis by these two teams of archaeologists as well as by me show that it was particularly active from the 2^nd to 5^th centuries CE.   

The richness of the archaeological record in Upper Tibet is also reflected in Tibetan literature. Although many of these accounts are not historical in the strict sense of the word, they identify facets of the face of ancient civilization, correctly alluding to its cultural sophistication, size, wealth and influence on the rest of the Tibetan Plateau. According to Tibetan literature, the kingdom, culture and people known as Zhang Zhung occupied Upper Tibet before the mid-7^th century CE. Many written tales of Zhang Zhung are mythic in nature, but they lend a deeply personalized touch to prehistory lacking in many other parts of the world.  

Upper Tibet of 1200 to 2500 years ago possessed a culture as advanced as any of its neighbors, at least in certain aspects. By many measures (monumental architecture, social complexity, irrigated agriculture, mining, inter-regional trade, etc.) this was a civilized order, a constituent part of the wider civilization of the Tibetan Plateau. However, no evidence for a system of writing has been discovered in Upper Tibet prior to the 7^th century CE, nor were there true urban centers, important trappings of civilization especially in the great river valleys of the world.

It was in prehistory that Upper Tibet reached its zenith in terms of settlement building and population density. This was a remarkable feat when we consider the great elevation, geographic isolation and marginal climate of the region.  With the coming of the Tibetan empire and Buddhism in the 7^th century, Upper Tibet entered a new phase of civilization, one with art, literature and architecture heavily influenced by its great neighbor to the south and west, India. After the collapse of the Tibetan empire in the middle of the 9^th century, far western Tibet entered a new phase of civilization, with Buddhism as its guiding light. This was the final period of glory in Upper Tibet, a land that has been in headlong decline for the past seven or eight centuries. Dwindling water supplies have been a major culprit. There may be an object lesson in this for us in the modern world and our own struggles with water resources. 

Looking to the Future           

Although important answers to some of the mysteries of ancient civilization in Upper Tibet have been forthcoming, many questions loom large, compelling me to continue the quest. The study of early civilization on the Tibetan Plateau is still in its infancy.  Except for my surveys of surface features in Upper Tibet, no systematic catalog of the Plateau’s archaeological holdings has yet been produced. And this heritage is disappearing at an alarming rate due to large-scale development and organized looting.

There is cause for hope, however. A new generation of Chinese archaeologists, including those trained in the West, is eager to pursue exploration in Tibet. But the research would surely benefit from more international cooperation.   In the years to come, the continuing efforts should help us procure a better understanding of early civilization in Tibet and its unique achievements in the world.

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About the Author

John Vincent Bellezza is an archaeologist and cultural historian specializing in the pre-Buddhist heritage of Tibet and the Western Himalaya. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Tibet Center, University of Virginia, and has lived in high Asia for three decades. Since 1994, Bellezza has comprehensively surveyed ancient monuments and rock art on the uppermost reaches of the Tibetan plateau. He has also extensively studied archaic rituals, myths and narratives in Bon and Old Tibetan literature. In addition to nine books, Bellezza has written numerous academic and popular articles on topics pertaining to early Tibet. He is the first non-Tibetan to have explored both the geographic and ritual sources of each of the four great rivers that emerge from the Mount Kailas region. He has visited most major islands and headlands in the great lakes of Upper Tibet.

For more information about John Vincent Bellezza’s research and exploration, see his website: Tibet Archaeology (http://www.tibetarchaeology.com/)

See also his book, Dawn of Tibet: The Ancient Civilization on the Roof of the World, for an in-depth treatment of the ancient civilization of Upper Tibet. http://www.amazon.com/The-Dawn-Tibet-Ancient-Civilization/dp/144223461X

Dr. Bellezza’s important research cannot be conducted without generous donations from the public and any sponsoring organizations. Additional resources will be needed before any future meaningful progress can be made in illuminating our understanding of this ancient society. If you are interested in donating to this effort, please see the website page for more information.

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Selected Reading

Bellezza, J. V. 2014. Antiquities of Zhang Zhung: A Comprehensive Inventory of Pre-Buddhist Sites on the Tibetan Upland, Residential Monuments, vol. 1. Miscellaneous Series – 28. Sarnath: Central University of Tibetan Studies. Online version: Tibetan & Himalayan Library (THlib.org): http://www.thlib.org/bellezza, 2011.

____2014. Antiquities of Zhang Zhung: A Comprehensive Inventory of Pre-Buddhist Sites on the Tibetan Upland, Ceremonial Monuments, vol. 2. Miscellaneous Series – 29. Sarnath: Central University of Tibetan Studies. Online version: Tibetan & Himalayan Library (THlib.org): http://www.thlib.org/bellezza, 2011.

____2014. The Dawn of Tibet: The Ancient Civilization on the Roof of the World. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.

____2008. Zhang Zhung: Foundations of Civilization in Tibet. A Historical and Ethnoarchaeological Study of the Monuments, Rock Art, Texts and Oral Tradition of the Ancient Tibetan Upland. Philosophisch-Historische Klasse Denkschriften, vol. 368. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 

____2002. Antiquities of Upper Tibet: An Inventory of Pre-Buddhist Archaeological Sites on the High Plateau, Delhi: Adroit.

Bellezza, J. V. and Bruneau, L. 2013. “The Rock Art of Upper Tibet and Ladakh: Inner Asian cultural adaptation, regional differentiation and the ‘Western Tibetan Plateau Style’” in Revue d’etudes tibétaines, vol. 28, pp. 5–161. Paris: CNRS.

http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_28.pdf

Chayet, A. 1994. Art et Archéologie du Tibet. Paris: Picard.

Dani, A. H. and Masson, V. M. (eds.). 1992. “History of civilizations of Central Asia. The dawn of civilization: earliest times to 700 B.C., vol.1. Reprint. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1999.

Davis-Kimball, J. /Bashilov, V. A. / Yablonsky, L. T. (eds.). 1995. Nomads of the Eurasian Steppes in the Early Iron Age. Berkeley: Zinat Press.

Mallory, J. P. and Mair, V. H. 2000. The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. London: Thames & Hudson.

Richardson, H. E. 1998. High Peaks, Pure Earth. Collected Writings on Tibetan History and Culture. London: Serindia Publications.

Sinor, D. (ed.). 1990. “The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Stein, R. A. 1972. Tibetan Civilization (trans. J. E. S. Driver). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Suolang Wangdui (bSod-nams dbang-’dus). 1994. Art of Tibetan Rock Paintings. Introduction by Li Yongxian and Huo Wei. Chengdu: Sichuan People’s Publishing House.

Tucci, G. 1973. Transhimalaya (trans. J. Hogarth). Reprint, Delhi: Vikas Edition.

Unless otherwise noted, all photo images credited to John Vincent Bellezza.

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Excavating near the ancient site of Pylos in southwestern Greece, archaeologist Alison Fields sent a text message from her smartphone as soon as she knew she had encountered something worth shouting about.  “I hit bronze,” she texted. The receiver, Sharon Stocker, knew what this meant. Stocker and her colleagues, some distance away, dropped everything and came running where Fields was excavating. Fields, an advanced graduate student with the University of Cincinnati and a key field excavation director at the site, along with coworker Flint Dibble, were already well beneath the surface within a stone-lined shaft tomb by this time, and Stocker, a senior research associate with the University of Cincinnati, was co-leading the team responsible for overall excavations in the area of the site.

It wasn’t long before the bronze encounter became a single, large bronze basin. But as they excavated, there was much more. Their efforts eventually led to the skeletal remains of an adult male and nearly 1500 more artifacts, some of the artifacts featuring rich iconography, and all associated with a single burial. Dated to about 1500 B.C. based on pottery shards found at the location, the shaft tomb and its contents have turned out to be, according to Stocker, “one of the most magnificent displays of prehistoric wealth discovered in mainland Greece in the past 65 years.”* Stocker would know—after years of experience investigating an area rich with evidence of an ancient presence long before the classical Greeks, she had never personally encountered a single burial quite like this one. 

The inventory of finds was astounding. As reported by M.B. Reilly of the University of Cincinnati in the related UC Magazine article, the object tally included the following:

• The skeleton of an adult male, age approximately 30 – 35 years who would have stood about five-and-a-half feet tall, placed upon his back when buried;
• At his left chest, a sword, three feet in length, featuring an ivory hilt decorated with gold in an embroidery design;
• Beneath the sword, a small dagger featuring a similarly designed gold hilt;
• More bronze weapons laying at his legs and feet;
• Four solid gold seal finger rings;
• A 30-inch long necklace of box-shaped gold wires with two gold pendants decorated with ivy leaves;
• Numerous well-preserved gold beads;
• Two gold cups and six silver cups, one with a gold rim;
• Bronze cups, bowls, amphora, jugs, and a basin;
• More than 50 seal stones featuring intricate carvings of goddesses, altars, reeds, lions, bulls – some with human bull jumpers flying over their horns. All seal stones were in Minoan style and likely originated in Crete;
• Pieces of carved ivory, one featuring a griffin with large wings and another showing a lion attacking a griffin;
• Six ornate ivory combs, implying that he may have had long hair;
• Over 1,000 beads of carnelian, amethyst, jasper and agate. Archaeologists suggest that some of the beads may have decorated a fabric burial shroud – as suggested by several square inches of associated woven threads;
• Thin bands of bronze, likely from long decayed body armor; and
• Wild boar’s teeth, likely from a warrior’s helment.*

From analysis of the burial, archaeologists could see that many of the burial objects were originally placed above the interred on top of his wooden coffin, which had been initially crushed by a fallen one-ton stone (likely the cap stone of the burial), the wooden coffin having long since decayed and collapsed and leaving the objects resting upon the skeleton. Further analysis of the skull indicated that he had a broad face with close-set eyes and a strong jaw. (See tomb and tomb find images below. Story text continues after images)

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 Excavating at the tomb. From left to right, Denitsa Nenova, Sharon Stocker, Alison Fields, and Jonida Martini. 

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Sharon Stocker stands within the excavated shaft tomb.

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 Stocker with the 3,500-year-old skull found along with the other skeletal remains of the single adult male in the tomb.

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Conservator Alex Zakros removes bronze jug within the tomb.

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Viewed from above, the one-ton stone dominates the scene of the tomb details during the excavation.

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 Above and below: The three-foot sword found next to the skeletal remains.

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 Found within the tomb: A meter-long slashing sword with an ivory handle covered in gold.

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 Above and below: A bronze mirror with an ivory handle.

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 An ivory comb, one of six, found within the tomb.

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 Above: Gold chain and seal stones, in situ, found within the tomb.

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 Found near the neck of the skeleton, this chain necklace features two gold pendants decorated with ivy leaves.

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 Above: One of the more than 50 seal stones found within the tomb. This one features an intricate Minoan design of long-horned bulls.

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 One of four solid gold rings found within the tomb. This one features a Cretan bull-jumping scene.

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Graphic illustration of the shaft tomb, showing the spatial relationships of the various artifacts with the skeletal remains found within the tomb. Archaeologists noted that weapons had been placed on the left side of the body at burial while items such as the seal stones and rings were placed on the right. They also noted that some of the images represented on the rings correlated with actual artifacts within the tomb. Davis and Stocker hypothesize that these patterns suggest some purposeful intent at the time the body was interred. Credit: Denitsa Nenova

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A Warrior King?

By any measure, the man in the tomb was clearly an important, high-status individual for his time—perhaps a great warrior, given the military nature of many of the artifacts, or a king.

But who was he?

At this point, no one knows. There are no historical records that would provide a hint to his individual identity. But the burial goods could provide some clues to his status and occupation. Although the shaft tomb is located within the territory of the town of Chora (ancient Pylos) not far from the excavated remains of the Mycenaean Palace of Nestor (of Homeric legend) in southwestern Greece, it became clear that a substantial portion of the tomb’s objects actually originated in Crete, exhibiting a characteristic Minoan (3650 – 1450 B.C.) style and technique that differentiated from other objects more typically identified with mainland Greece in the 15th century B.C. Thus, given the nature of some of the key artifacts and the dating of the shaft tomb and its contents, archaeologists could see that there was an apparent Minoan connection here. “We are in the period subsequent to the eruption of the Thera volcano, in a time of intense interaction between the Greek mainland and the so-called Minoan “New Palaces,” says Stocker.

The Thera volcano is today a caldera remnant that forms the present-day island of Santorini (anciently known as Thera), a member of the Cyclades islands southeast of Greece. In the 17^th century B.C., it was a fully formed volcano, the most prominent landmark of an island that was home to Akrotiri, a major Minoan city. But around 1600 B.C. the volcano’s massive eruption and destruction buried the Minoan presence there and profoundly affected the entire Minoan civilization, including their main settlements on Crete. The Minoans subsequently rebuilt their destroyed Cretan settlements and palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Zakros and Malia. It was the time period of these new palaces that witnessed extensive contact and trade between Minoan Crete and the emerging Mycenaean civilization on mainland Greece. The influence can be seen, for example, with the evidence of Minoan handcrafted items on the Greek mainland, indicating a likelihood that the ruling houses of Mycenae were connected to the Minoan trade network. To possess goods of fine Minoan craftsmanship would be considered a sign of status, wealth and prestige. “This latest find is not the grave of the legendary King Nestor, who [according to Greek mythology] headed a contingent of Greek forces at Troy in Homer’s ‘Iliad’,” said Stocker. “Nor is it the grave of his father, Neleus. This find may be even more important because the warrior pre-dates the time of Nestor and Neleus by, perhaps, 200 or 300 years. That means he was likely an important figure at a time when this part of Greece was being indelibly shaped by close contact with Crete, Europe’s first advanced civilization.”*

It was centuries later when the so-called Palace of Nestor was built, not far from the newly discovered shaft tomb. Destroyed by fire around 1200 B.C., the Late Helladic period structure has been widely identified as being associated with Mycenaean-era Pylos, a coastal city and center of a significant Mycenaean kingdom that once ruled within the present-day region of Messenia. Pylos and the palace were noted as important locations in Homer’s Odyssey, where Homer writes that beach sacrifices were made. Its architectural remains can still be seen, consisting of two stories featuring storerooms, workshops, reception rooms, baths, and wells. Archaeologists uncovered 1,000 Linear B tablets at the site. The remains of the Palace were first uncovered in 1939 by UC archaeologist Carl Blegen, along with Konstantinos Kourouniotis, director of the National Archaeological Museum. Stocker and her colleagues do not know at this point what relationship the man in the tomb may have had with the fore-runners of the Pylos kingdom centered at the Palace of Nestor, but they suggest he may have played an important role in laying the foundations of the kingdom. 

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 Above: A satellite view of Santorini (ancient Thera), a center of the Minoans. The caldera is a reminder of the massive eruption that disrupted Minoan civilization and may have been a factor in its decline, eventually eclipsed by the further expansion and influence of the Mycenaeans in the Aegean.  

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Before Nestor

The shaft tomb that Stocker and her team unearthed, though rare in terms of its unlooted condition and the richness of its finds, would actually not have been atypical for the burial of a member of the elite structure of early Mycenaean times. By around 1500—1450 B.C., near the end of the early Mycenaean and the time to which the shaft tomb is dated, archaeologists and historians know that a number of power centers had already emerged in the Greek southern mainland, dominated by a warrior elite society. Christofilis Maggidis, archaeologist and President of the Mycenaean Foundation and one of the world’s foremost authorities on Mycenaean culture, summarizes the Mycenaean world of this time:

“Rising to power was a long process through trade, diplomatic contacts, and constant warfare abroad and at home during the formative Early Mycenaean period (Late Helladic I-IIA/B, ca. 1650-1420/1410 BC). The Mycenaeans proved to be meticulous students: through increasing contacts with Minoan Crete, their trade horizons gradually expanded from the Balkans and Northern Europe to Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. This gradual expansion is documented in the multicultural amalgam of stylistic, iconographic, technical elements and materials of the exquisite finds in the royal Shaft Graves at Mycenae (Minoan, Egyptian, European/Balkan, Hittite, and Helladic influences), the extensive corpus of foreign imports in Greece (orientalia and aegyptiaca), and the increasing Mycenaean exports abroad. Contemporary iconographical evidence (e.g. flotilla fresco from Akrotiri at Thera, silver Siege Rhyton from Grave Circle A at Mycenae) illustrate some of the early military achievements of the rising new power abroad: raiding jointly with the Minoan fleet foreign exotic lands (Egypt?), sieging and sacking foreign towns.”**

With this description, it is easy to see the fitting context of the man in the tomb. “Whoever he was,” speculates archaeological team co-leader Jack Davis, “he seems to have been celebrated for his trading or fighting on the nearby island of Crete and for his appreciation of the more sophisticated and delicate art of the Minoan civilization (found on Crete), with which he was buried.”* He has been dubbed the “griffin warrior” by Davis and Stocker based on the griffin iconography found in the tomb.

As recorded history and archaeology would testify, the Mycenaean warrior kings continued to dominate their expanding domain in the ensuing centuries, eventually conquering their own Minoan trading partners on Crete following the debilitating disruption of Minoan power and society, caused perhaps at least in part, by the Thera eruption. Knossos and the other Minoan centers on Crete became predominantly Mycenaean, as evidenced by the archaeology and even the language.  “At some point the palaces on Crete are destroyed, probably by Mycenaean invaders,” says Stocker, “and Greeks take control of Knossos and established an administration that kept records in Greek in the Linear B, as opposed to the old Linear A, script.”

Moving Forward

Though the finds to date have been abundant and spectacular, work related to the shaft tomb discovery is far from over. “We want to initiate a program of geophysics this coming summer (2016), continue to investigate a [nearby] Mycenaean town, especially on a piece of land that we are in the process of purchasing near to the tomb, and study the details of the tomb itself,” reports Davis and Stocker. Ongoing work will also include study of the skeletal remains by Lynne Schepartz of the University of the Witwatersrand, and DNA analysis of the bone may shed more light on the warrior’s origins.

Although the shaft tomb excavation and study is conducted through the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, with sponsorship from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, research in the region of the tomb’s location has long been conducted under the auspices of the Pylos Regional Archaeological Project (PRAP), a project that has been underway for well over two decades. Undertaken as a multi-disciplinary endeavor to explore prehistoric and historic settlement in the area of the Bronze Age administrative center of the Palace of Nestor in the western Messenia region of Greece, the project has served to shed additional new light on a region that played a salient role in the prehistoric and Mycenaean history of Greece. Separate from PRAP, the most recent surveys and excavations in the area have located and identified remains of houses of the Mycenaean palatial period, as well as remains of the Middle Bronze Age before the emergence of the Mycenaeans.

More information about the PRAP and other projects and organizations involved in the Messenia region can be obtained at the website.

Readers who wish to support the conservation and study of the shaft tomb discoveries may click here and enter Friends of Pylos in the comment box.

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The excavation was conducted through the Department of Classics, University of Cincinnati, with sponsorship from the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and with permits from the Greek Ministry of Culture. Flint Dibble and Alison Fields served as the trench supervisors on the tomb excavation. Research at Pylos by the University of Cincinnati in 2013 was supported by the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, the Louise Taft Semple Fund of UC’s Department of Classics and private donors including Phocion Potamianos, a Greek-American; James H. Ottaway, Jr., trustee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens; and Robert McCabe, president of the Board of Trustees of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and his wife, Dina McCabe.*

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*M.B. Reilly, UC team discovers rare warrior tomb filled with Bronze Age wealth and weapons, UC Magazine, University of Cincinnati

**Christofilis Maggidis, Unearthing the City of Agamemnon, Popular Archaeology, June 5, 2014.

Images credit: University of Cincinnati, Department of Classics, Pylos Excavations

Jewelry images: Jennifer Stephens

Tomb Illustration: Denitsa Nenova

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It was in 1989 when miners, quarrying limestone in the Maludong Cave near the city of Mengzi in southwest China’s Yunnan Province, stumbled across a cave with some curious fossils. The cave became known as Red Deer Cave, because of the fossils of giant red deer subsequently excavated at the site. But the most curious fossils discovered at the site appeared to be those of humans. Archaeologists stored these fossils away and they remained unexamined for nearly two decades. They languished in obscurity. That is, until 2008, when an international team consisting of scientists from Chinese and Australian institutions began to study them in earnest.  

What the new team uncovered in their analyses would prove to be nothing less than extraordinary. Led by Associate Professor Darren Curnoe of the University of New South Wales, Australia, and Professor Ji Xueping of the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the team identified skeletal elements of an archaic human, represented by three individuals, who sojourned in Red Deer Cave between 14,500 and 11,500 years ago. They knew the date range based on radiocarbon dating of charcoal deposits within the cave. Also present were stone tools. Whoever they were, they controlled fire and used it to process and cook the deer. Curnoe and colleagues also examined evidence of another archaic human whose remains, consisting of a similar partial skeleton found in 1979 in a cave near the village of Longlin in the neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, appeared to exhibit similar characteristics.

It wasn’t altogether unique to find fossils of archaic humans in these parts. But what Curnoe and his colleagues found most noteworthy about these archaic human fossils was their unusual combination of primitive and modern features, coupled with the late date range—a time almost exclusively attributed to the presence of anatomically modern humans (AMH). All other species of human, at least in these regions of China, were thought to have gone extinct tens of thousands of years earlier. The finds harkened back to the sensational discovery made in 2003 on the island of Flores in Indonesia, where scientists recovered and identified skeletal remains of another unusual species of human with archaic features—Homo floresiensis, popularly known as the “hobbit”. That human, determined to have occupied the site possibly as late as only 12,000 years ago, featured a very small (average 3 feet tall) body and small cranium or brain capacity, and a mosaic of other features, including a Homo erectus-like skull with a chinless mandible. The Red Deer Cave finds, on the other hand, featured an altogether different mosaic of anatomical features, decidedly different than Homo floresiensis and any other known species of human in the paleontological record. This species sported long, tall, broad frontal brain lobes much like modern humans, but they also featured more primitive characteristics such as a smaller brain capacity, thick skull bones, a prominent brow ridge, a jutting jaw that lacked a chin, a flat upper face with a broad nose, and large molars. Other features were unique to the Red Deer Cave specimen, shared by neither archaic or modern humans, such as a very curved forehead bone, very broad eye sockets and very flat, flaring cheeks.  “In short,” Curnoe told a LiveScience reporter, “they’re anatomically unique among all members of the human evolutionary tree.”*

The findings and their implications, from the very beginning, have divided the scientific community.

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 The Red Deer Cave (Maludong) was discovered during quarrying work and was excavated in 1989 (Credit: Ji Xueping & Darren Curnoe).

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 Above and below: The Longlin 1 partial skull found in Longlin Cave in the Guangxi Zhuang region of China.  Curnoe, D.; Xueping, J.; Herries, A. I. R.; Kanning, B.; Taçon, P. S. C.; Zhende, B.; Fink, D.; Yunsheng, Z.

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 Maludong mandibles MLDG 1679 (left) and MLDG 1706 (right) (scale bar = 1 cm).  Curnoe, D.; Xueping, J.; Herries, A. I. R.; Kanning, B.; Taçon, P. S. C.; Zhende, B.; Fink, D.; Yunsheng, Z.

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 Maludong 1704 skullcap (each bar = 1 cm)  Curnoe, D.; Xueping, J.; Herries, A. I. R.; Kanning, B.; Taçon, P. S. C.; Zhende, B.; Fink, D.; Yunsheng, Z.

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Illumination in the Thigh

Now, more than 25 years later, Curnoe and Ji Xueping’s scientific team has added more grist to the developing story of these enigmatic human remains. An associated 14,000-year-old partial femur (thigh bone) sample from the site laid unstudied until recently, when they conducted CT scans and took bone and body mass measurements, analyzing them with a range of statistical techniques and data sets. Their findings revealed that the bone resembles equivalent fossils belonging to some of the earliest known members of the Homo genus, the evolutionary line that eventually leads to modern humans. It closely matched, according to the investigators, those from species like Homo habilis and early Homo erectus, pre-modern hominins, the remains of which have been dated to as much as 1.5+ million years ago. The first traces of Homo habilis were discovered and identified by Luis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, a find that, at the time, revolutionized the thinking on human evolution.  Fossils of Homo erectus, considered to be a more advanced species on the human evolution spectrum, and another revolutionary development, were first discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1891 on the island of Java in Indonesia. Many other Homo erectus finds have been recovered in both Africa and Eurasia.

More specifically, like the primitive species Homo habilis, the Maludong thigh bone is very small; the shaft is narrow, with the outer layer of the shaft (or cortex) very thin; the walls of the shaft are reinforced (or buttressed) in areas of high strain; the femur neck is long; and the place of muscle attachment for the primary flexor muscle of the hip is very large and faces significantly backwards.

“Taken together, these features suggest the Maludong individual walked in a way that was different from how modern humans move,” Curnoe said.

With a reconstructed body mass of only 50 kilograms, the individual was very small by pre-modern and Ice Age human standards.

“We published our findings on the skull bones first because we thought they’d be the most revealing, but we were amazed by our studies of the thigh bone, which showed it to be much more primitive than the skulls seem to be,” Professor Ji said.

The latest study, now published in the journal PLOS ONE in December, 2015, confirmed that some of the fossil remains from Maludong represent a mysterious pre-modern species.

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The recently described pre-modern thigh bone from the Red Deer Cave people of Southwest China (Credit: Darren Curnoe & Ji Xueping).

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 Red Deer Cave people thigh bone compared with a modern human (not to scale; Credit: Darren Curnoe, Ji Xueping & Getty Images).

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 Human evolution timeline showing where the Maludong thigh probably fits (Credit: Darren Curnoe & Ji Xueping).

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 Human remains from the Red Deer Cave people (left, newly described thigh bone; middle, skull bones and tooth) and the Maludong fossil site (right) (Credit: Darren Curnoe & Ji Xueping).

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The Implications

The unusually primitive nature of the bones, coupled with their relatively young age, has raised some startling implications—and this discovery is expected to be controversial because, until now, it had been thought that the youngest pre-modern humans on mainland Eurasia – the Neanderthals of Europe and West Asia, and the ‘Denisovans’ of southern Siberia – died out about 40,000 years ago, soon after modern humans entered the region. The new find shows that at least one pre-modern species overlapped in time with modern humans in mainland East Asia for tens of thousands of years.

“The Maludong individual might represent a relic, tropically adapted, pre-modern population that survived relatively late in the biogeographically complex region of southwest China,” reported Curnoe, Ji and colleagues. “It is intriguing that such a primitive looking species could have survived at Maludong until near the end of the Ice Age, until about 14,000 years ago. Yunnan Province in southwest China is a remarkable place with a very complex topography resulting from the uplift of the Himalayan Mountains (Qinghai Tibetan Plateau) and the building up of the Indochina block due to plate tectonics. The result is that it has a highly varied and highly unusual set of plant and animal communities and species, with many having persisted in isolation for hundreds of thousands or millions of years……the region around Maludong is also biogeographically on the northern edge of tropical Southeast Asia, and at the time the Maludong cave deposit was formed, it would have been warmer and wetter than today.”** Adds Curnoe: “This is exciting because it shows the bones from Maludong, after 25 years of neglect, still have an incredible story to tell. There seems to have been a diversity of different kinds of human living until very recently in southwest China.”

Do the Maludong specimens represent an entirely new species of archaic human?

Curnoe and colleagues are guarded about assigning the finds to a new species at present. “It is certainly possible that the Maludong femur represents a new species,” they report. “The problem at present is that there simply aren’t many pre-modern femora from East Asia with which to compare the Maludong specimen. It may even be that there were different species living on mainland East Asia during the last Ice Age, from what we see in Europe or Africa at the time…..[but] we can’t narrow down just yet which species the Maludong bone belongs to, other than to state that it strongly resembles early pre-modern groups like Homo habilis.”**

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 Artist’s reconstruction of a Red Deer Cave man (Credit: Peter Schouten).

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* “Mysterious Chines Fossils May Be New Human Species,” by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor, March 14, 2012

**From the subject University of South Wales Q&A Media press release.

Some content within this article was adapted and edited from the subject University of South Wales press release, entitled ‘Red Deer Cave people’ bone points to mysterious species of pre-modern human.

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