[meteorite-list] 5,000-year-old Chinese Meteroite May Solve Death of Mythic Emperor

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 09:50:25 2004
Message-ID: <200204091616.JAA24138_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://asia.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/04/09/china.emperor.reut/index.html

China meteor may solve death of mythic emperor
Reuters
April 9, 2002

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A 5,000-year-old meteorite unearthed in
northwestern China may explain the legendary death of the man celebrated as
the nation's earliest ancestor, the Yellow Emperor, state media said.

The meteorite, found near a mausoleum for the Yellow Emperor in the Shaanxi
province county of Huangling, may lie behind the cataclysmic shattering of
land that historical records say killed China's enigmatic first emperor, the
official China Daily said Tuesday.

The discovery also sheds light on a local legend that nine dragons broke up
the ancient town of Huangling, the newspaper said, quoting Li Yanjun, a
long-time Yellow Emperor researcher and one of those who found the
meteorite.

Skepticism abounds over accounts of China's part-real, part-mythical
forefather named Huangdi, to whom the word for "emperor" and the imperial
color of yellow are traced.

Chinese legend credits him with inventing the cart and the boat, and his
dialogues with the physician Qi Bo were the basis of China's first medical
book, the Yellow Emperor's "Canon of Medicine", or Nei Jing.

Huangdi's wife, Lei Zu, taught China how to weave silk from silkworms and
his minister Cang Jie devised the first Chinese characters, according to
tradition.

Huangdi is said to have reigned from 2697 to 2597 B.C., before a dragon came
and took him back to Heaven at the age of 110.

5,000 years old

Geologists estimate the uncovered meteorite sample dates back 5,000 years,
the newspaper said.

The sample, found buried deep in the ground, was only 82 cm (32 inches) long
and 21 cm wide and had bumps, holes and traces of burned matter, said Li.

He said the meteorite was believed to have crashed on the top of the
mountain where Huangdi was supposedly buried.

Some 50,000 mainland and overseas Chinese flocked to the nearby mausoleum,
first erected in the Han Dynasty, to pay their respects to the cultural
patriarch last Friday for the annual Tomb Sweeping Day.

Since 1992, China has spent $24 million (200 million Yuan) to renovate the
mausoleum outside the ancient capital of Xi'an, which is nestled in an
ancient forest of 80,000 cypress trees, some over 1,000 years old, the
People's Daily said on Sunday.

Officials at the mausoleum, contacted by Reuters, said they had not heard
about the discovery.
Received on Tue 09 Apr 2002 12:16:30 PM PDT