Archaeologists in China claim to have found the capital of an empire that disappeared in floods two millennia ago.

Divers discovered ancient city walls, dwellings and paved roads covering several square miles at the bottom of Fuxian Lake in southwestern China. The ruins are said to be what is left of the administrative centre of the Dian Kingdom, a neighbour of China’s Han dynasty.

According to Yu Xixian, of Beijing University, the city was located in a valley that flooded after a massive earthquake in AD110. “The valley filled with water, probably killing all the inhabitants,” he said.

The city was forgotten for almost 1,900 years until a local man claimed to have found walls in shallow water. Subsequently, other divers spotted patterns of urban development on the sandy lake bottom.

Archaeologists inspected the site from a research submarine earlier this summer and concluded that it was genuine. Carbon dating has apparently confirmed that pottery found in the lake is from the Dian period. Excavation work has now been taken over by the Chinese Government. Experts have compared the site to Pompeii, the Roman city buried by a volcanic eruption.

Professor Yu said: “The flooding of this city was only 30 years after Pompeii. All sorts of terrible catastrophes happened around that time. When the earthquake struck in Dian, there would already have been an air of panic in the city. Many people may have gone there to escape disasters elsewhere.”

Several walls show ancient carvings, including two snakes facing each other, a known religious symbol, according to Professor Yu. He said: “Daily life in the city was marked by violence. Rich and poor worshipped many gods and for the rich this meant human sacrifices during grand ceremonies.” The Dian people worshipped nature gods, he said. “We can imagine that when the earthquake came and they were submerged in water, it was a cruel irony for everyone to see themselves killed by their object of worship. As they were dying, they probably imagined the world was coming to an end.”

The city was about 1½ miles long and one mile wide, according to sonar readings taken from the surface. The central boulevard is said to run along a perfect north-to- south alignment, with smaller streets going off at right angles. The ruins are 600ft from today’s shoreline and 50ft to 300ft below the surface.

The site is made up of eight clusters of houses, assumed to form different city districts. Poorer districts lie outside the partially surviving city wall.

The districts inside the wall have houses made of bigger stones, which are better preserved. The walls were built from stones with flat, polished surfaces. None of the dwellings has a roof and most walls have fallen over. The longest standing wall is 100ft long and 12ft high.

The first sighting was made by Geng Wei, a local man with a fascination of legends of the city’s existence. He found the site, 50 miles south of Kunming, near the borders with Burma, Laos and Vietnam, after 38 dives over the past year. The lake is 25 miles long, five miles wide and among the deepest in China.

The Dian Empire is said to have covered approximately the same territory as the modern province of Yunnan. Little is known about the Dian period and historians have long speculated about the location of its capital.

Professor Yu said: “All the Chinese experts agree that the city was flooded instantly and that there were no survivors.” After consulting records he concluded that the earthquake struck in AD110. “However, there are no known records of the city’s existence, I think — and so far nobody has disagreed — that this city was the capital of the Dian border kingdom.”

• Story originally published by:
The Times, London / England Oliver August - Sept 01.01

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