Boy finds 3,000-year-old sword in China
13 Sep TOI
A 3000-year-old bronze sword has been discovered in a local river by
an 11-year-old child in east China's Jiangsu Province.
Yang Junxi discovered the rusty sword on July 2 when he was playing
near the Laozhoulin River in Gaoyou County. While washing hands in the
river, Yang touched the tip of something hard and fished out the metal
sword. He took it home and gave it to his father Yang Jinhai.Upon
hearing the news, people began flocking to Yang's home, Jinhai said.
"Some people even offered high prices to buy the the sword, but I
felt it would be illegal to sell the cultural relic," Jinhai told
sate-run Xinhua news agency. After considering his options, the father
sent the sword to the Gaoyou Cultural Relics Bureau on September 3.The
bureau arranged a joint team of local cultural relics experts to
identify the sword. They identified sword's material, length, shape and
other major factors.Initial identifications found the 26-cm-long
yellow-brown sword could be dated back to more than 3,000 years ago,
around the time of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, said Lyu Zhiwei, head
of the cultural relics office of the bureau.There was no characteristic
or decorative pattern on the exquisite bronze sword. Made in a time of
relatively low productivity, its owner would have been an able man with
the qualification to have such artifact," he said.
"The short sword seems a status symbol of a civil official. It has
both decorative and practical functions, but is not in the shape of
sword for military officers," he said. It is the second bronze artifact
found in the region after a bronze instrument was excavated in the
nearby Sanduo Township. The sword was found in the Laozhoulin River,
which crosses the ancient Ziying River which was excavated in the Qin
Dynasty (221 BC-206 BC). It also interlinks the ancient Han Ditch as the
"predecessor" of China's Grand Canal, the world's longest artificial
waterway with a history of more than 2,400 years.The 1,794km canal runs
from Beijing to Hangzhou in China's eastern Zhejiang Province. It was
entered into the World Heritage list in June 2014. The city has
conducted several rounds of dredging in the Laozhoulin River, which
might surface the sword from the river bottom, said Lyu, adding the
township government has prepared a further archeological dig into the
river and in the nearby areas.The relics bureau and municipal museum of
Gaoyou City have sent the collection certificates and bonus for the boy
and his father in honour of their deeds of protecting and donating
cultural relic.
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