Chinese Nazca Lines? The Mystery of Mount Mengding

On the same latitude as the Great Pyramids, the Sanxingdui civilisation and the Bermuda Triangle, there's another, lesser-known mystery that is just as intriguing.

Mount Mengding is the next-door neighbour of Sanxingdui, Heizhugou (the 'terrestrial Bermuda Triangle' as they call it), and Mount Emei.

Xie Qiang of the Beijing General Research Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (BGRIMM) was the first to discover it. Xie, who really loves Google Maps, decided to look for his hometown in the software, but was in for a surprise. On Mount Mengding, he saw a picture of a Roman soldier next to a qilin (a one-horned Chinese mythological creature).




(Shown here is a carving of a qilin on Mengding. The body of the qilin is always wet and the head part is always dry. This remained a mystery for many years. Modern science believes it's due to the chemical composition of the rock.)

As it turns out, the locals are big-time qilin worshippers. Qilins have been their totem for hundreds of years. On Mengding, it is impossible to walk ten steps without bumping into a statue of a qilin. However, never have they realised that there's a giant carving of one right at their doorstep.


(An artist took the time to trace the outline of the picture, not to mention the liberty of a few extra details.)

Now, you might be thinking, one ancestor decided to carve a giant qilin into the ground, then everyone forgot about it. Makes sense, right? The only problem: The whole picture was 10km x 4km. It was practically impossible for anyone to have done so without hi-tech helicopters and stuff. Besides, carving this thing requires more a stick and some sand. It was formed by the relief of the area.

A TV crew decided to take on the challenge and try to explain this weird phenomenon. They managed to explain the strange carving and a weather-controlling well using modern science.

They also explained the feathered helmet, which was not a helmet at all, but a collection of natural gullies. Mengding happens to be the place with the highest rainfall in the world, not to mention the shortest distance between the clouds and the ground, so it makes a lot of sense. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that the feathered crown was not part of the original artwork.

tv.sohu.com...

While the guy probably wasn't a Roman soldier after all, the mystery remains: who drew a qilin and a man there?

Occam's Razor may be shouting 'coincidence' by now, but a giant carving of a qilin in a qilin-worshipping area... what kind of coincidence is that?

What is your opinion? Could it be that the Sanxingdui guys - whoever they were - decided to pop over and draw some carvings? Could it be another, more advanced civilisation?

I've done a bit of playing around with Google Maps, but I'm yet to find the pic.

If anyone wants to look, it's slightly north of Ya'an. The exact latitude is 30 degrees 6 minutes and the longitude is 103 degrees 2 minutes. The picture is on the northern side of the mountain, near the base.

Here's a picture of the guy who discovered it:

Guys, I think found it!

It's right here:



Type this into Google Maps: 30.109215,103.02411 and change to Earth mode. It's blurry, but it's there for sure!


Looking at it in the full version of Google Earth, I couldn't find Xie's picture. The 2008 one was even blurrier than this one. Perhaps I didn't get it right after all...

I am extremely sorry.
its nothing but paraeidolia

Here is the a pic of the same coordinates from Google Earth Pro.



A closer Look at the Roman Soldier.



The roman helmet is nothing but eroded soil, by chance in a semicircular formation.

Nothing Spectacular.

Just sensational yellow jouranlism.

reply to post by coredrill


I don't think we were looking at the same thing. I focussed a lot more than your picture...

By the way, I did say it wasn't really a Roman soldier after all, the helmet being natural. (The TV crew actually went there - they walked from the neck to the helmet.)

reply to post by diqiushiwojia


Well, then please provide the google earth coordinates for the image you "are looking at" and lets see whether we are looking at different things.

Pareidolia (pron.: /pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-DOH-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek words para (παρά, "beside, alongside, instead") in this context meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of; and the noun eidōlon (εἴδωλον "image, form, shape") the diminutive of eidos. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia, seeing patterns in random data.

You or the gentlman who saw the "image" is having a classic example of Pareidolia.

Is it actually some sort of man made earth work or etching on the ground?
No.
The helmet isnt man made. it is the result of soil erosion.
your views?

reply to post by coredrill


The coordinates are the same; what I was looking at, though I may be wrong, was the semi-circle you see when you focus on the fork on the far left of your screen.

Considering they used GPS while they were on the trip and found themselves at various times to be at different parts of the man's body, and also considering that the screenshot provided by the TV does show a guy next to a qilin quite clearly, I'm still of the opinion that there's something not right with this thing...

If you speak Chinese, try watching the documentary and see if you agree with me.

Could the roman helmet perhaps been a depiction of a budhist munk? I remember seeing some of them with some sort of "headgear", that shows a striking similarity.

Originally posted by 2Faced
Could the roman helmet perhaps been a depiction of a budhist munk? I remember seeing some of them with some sort of "headgear", that shows a striking similarity.

Interesting thought - maybe they specially chose that location so that the water would run down his head in the gullies:
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