08 Mars2018: Zheka - Perth- Zhilu - Gurrala Madugu -
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CHINE - Zheka - Archaeologists in southwest China's Yunnan Province said Wednesday that they had discovered 17 cave tombs dating back thousands of years. The tomb group is believed to be the main part of an 1,500-square-meter cave site found last September in Zheka Village, Wenshan Zhuang and Miao Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan, according to the provincial institute of cultural relics and archaeology. Researchers with the institute said that the tombs were the oldest and largest known ones of their kind in the province. The cave tombs are earth pits with well preserved human skeletons in various burial forms including extended and flexed burials. Some tombs with disordered bones may have been robbed. A batch of cultural relics including pottery, stoneware, and spinning wheels were unearthed in the tombs. Researchers estimate that the cave site was created between the late Neolithic age and the Bronze age. The findings will further research on the human activity and burial customs of early Chinese.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/07/c_137022491.htm
AUSTRALIE – 
Perth - The oldest known message in a bottle was found on an Australian beach 132 years after being thrown from a German ship in the Indian Ocean as part of an experiment to track currents, experts said. The Dutch gin bottle, with no cork or top, was spotted by Tonya Illman in January in remote sand dunes 180 km (112 miles)north of Perth, the capital of Western Australia state. Inside, her family discovered a note tightly rolled up and tied with string, carrying the date June 12, 1886, and the name of the ship, Paula. The family took their find to the Western Australian Museum, which got experts in Germany and the Netherlands to confirm the bottle was made in Holland in the 19th century, the paper matched the era and the vessel Paula had sailed from Cardiff to Makassar in 1886, as the message stated. German experts turned up the ship’s journal, with a captain’s entry from June 12, 1886 showing that a drift bottle was thrown overboard. The coordinates, 950 km (590 miles) from Australia’s west coast, matched those on the note.
CHINE - Zhilu - Archaeologists said Tuesday that they have unearthed a rare well-preserved township relics site dating back some 2,000 years in southwest China's Sichuan Province.Researchers with the Chengdu Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute and Sichuan University found the remains of houses, kilns, wells, moats, and sewage ditches as well as pottery during their excavation near Zhilu Village in the suburbs of Chengdu, the provincial capital, from June to October last year. An unearthed double-eared pot had characters engraved on it which prove the area was a township-level site. The excavated area covers about 600 square meters. Before the excavation, the site was covered by farmland. "It is the first time a relic has been discovered with characters proving a township-level site from the Western and Eastern Han dynasties (202 B.C.- 220 A.D.) in Chengdu," said Yang Bo, researcher in charge of the excavation. Archeologists also found a part of the roof of a "luxury horse-drawn carriage" beside a four-meter-wide road, proving the township was once prosperous, according to Yang. The site may have been neglected in the late years of the Eastern Han Dynasty and suffered minor damage later, he added. Well-preserved relics sites from the Han dynasties are rare nationwide, according to archaeologists. The site at Zhilu Village is of great significance in the study of the life and production of residents and cultural development at that time, they said.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/06/c_137020524.htm
INDE – 
Gurrala Madugu - A megalithic burial site has been unearthed at Gurrala Madugu, a remote habitation near Konakanamitla in Prakasam District. The site enriches the historicity of the district, throwing light on the cultural practices of the people during Iron Age (1,000 BC to 300 BC), says Dr. Raghu Yadav working as an academic consultant in the Department of History and Archaeology, Yogi Vemana University, Kadapa. Megalithic people, who perhaps believed in life after death, used carved stones in the construction of a tomb-like structure to commemorate the ancestors, Dr. Yadav says in a conversation with The Hindu. The artefacts found are a dolmen and on the upper surface of the capstone, cupules/cup marks, explains Dr.Yadav, who has explored the site. Though very little is known about birth ceremonies performed in the Iron Age, people then practised diverse modes of rituals, including death ceremonies. Similar cup marks are found elsewhere in the State such as Ubbaramadugu (Chittoor District) and Mulakanur (Anantapur District), he says, adding that probably people had a strong belief in astronomy.