Archaeologists unearth earliest man-made cave houses

Archaeologists unearth earliest man-made cave houses

Archaeologists have unearthed the earliest man-made cave houses and privately-owned pottery workshops in China which date back 5,500 years.

After four years of excavation, a row of 17 cave houses were found on a cliff along the Jinghe River in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, Wang Weilin, deputy director of the Shaanxi Archaeology Institute and chief archaeologist of the excavation, told Xinhua.

They were built between 3,500 to 3,000 BC, near the Yangguanzai village of Gaoling county, 20 km away from the provincial capital Xi'an.

Wang said the row of houses are within a 16,000-square-meter site which is being excavated.

news.xinhuanet.com...


Note : A Cave is a Cave! But a Cave House as in this case, has more than one room, for specific purposes.

Each cave house, with an area of about ten square meters, was divided into two rooms. One was dug into the cliff side, the other, possibly made of wood and mud, was built on the outside of the cave, Wang said.

haha as i soon as i heard xi'an i thought Zion,

It seems the world just keeps getting older, this isn't as old as gobekli tepe but they didn't find dwellings at tepe yet (they were probably wooden) -very interesting. Makes asia seem even more likely as the home of the early humans.

Awesome, thanks for sharing! I'm always interested in human history. It would be awesome if we could know our specie's and planet's full history.

If we only knew for sure where we came from, then we would have a better grip on what we are doing here, why, and what we should be doing.

reply to post by NatureBoy


Gobeki has only been partially excavated so there is still a possibility that dwelling will be found. Even wooden ones, if the disturbed the ground, will leave a record that archaeologists can read.

Çatalhöyük in Turkey dating from 7500-5700 BCE has got some good houses ..not the hut/cave variety, but houses constructed and divided into areas.

The only problem was that the doors were on the roofs and folks had to descend into the houses from the roofs!!!