In 1988, a geologist working in Ningxia stumbled across a treasure trove of several thousand rock carvings spread over a 15 km area. The very earliest scrapings at the site, known as Damaidi (大麦地), are between 20,000 and 30,000 years old. The most recent carvings date from the Western Xia period (1032-1227 AD) with the majority of the inscriptions and pictographs dating from about 7,000 years ago.
Many of the images–sheep, hunting scenes, horses, deer, tigers–suggest nomadic hunter/gatherer and then later pastoral neolithic cultures living at the site. The images change over time, suggesting that many different cultures had used the site over the centuries.
Xinhua (h/t Tea & Gossip) reported yesterday that researchers studing the Damaidi carvings have begun to discern recognizable pictographs dating from about 8000 years ago. These symbols, they claim, strongly resemble early Chinese writing. If the researchers are correct, then these pictographs would be by far the earliest extant examples of proto-Chinese characters.
According Li Xiangshi, a researcher at the North Universities of Nationalities in Ningxia who has worked at the site for many years: “We have found some symbols shaped like both pictures and characters,” Li Xiangshi, a cliff carving expert at the North