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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/sc...cheo.html?8dpc
A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets
By NICHOLAS WADE
In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air. It resembles boats with oars.
Liu Yu Sheng SYMBOLISM Archaeologists believe the hundreds of 13-foot poles at the Small River Cemetery in a desert in Xinjiang Province, China, were mostly phallic symbols.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/03/16/science/16archeo-span/16archeo-span-articleLarge.jpg
In the women’s coffins, the Chinese archaeologists encountered one or more life-size wooden phalluses laid on the body or by its side. Looking again at the shaping of the 13-foot poles that rise from the prow of each woman’s boat, the archaeologists concluded that the poles were in fact gigantic phallic symbols.
Many of the women buried there wore string undergarments like the one in this drawing. The men’s boats, on the other hand, all lay beneath the poles with bladelike tops. These were not the oars they had seemed at first sight, the Chinese archaeologists concluded, but rather symbolic vulvas that matched the opposite sex symbols above the women’s boats. “The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism,” Dr. Mair wrote. In his view, the “obsession with procreation” reflected the importance the community attached to fertility.
The discovery of a large number of ancient Silk Road mummies, with European features and red hair, has become a bone of contention between Uighurs and Beijing.
From: http://www.unfreemedia.com/asia/2010/03/how-a-large-number-of.html
That's the question I have about a current New York Times story that was briefly listed as the front page feature earlier today, titled "The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To":
From: http://china.notspecial.org/archives/2008/11/mysterious_mumm.html
Hi, Frank:Hi Panther,
I failed to get the first link to the NYTimes to work.
The second link I managed to see, taking that forest of poles as phallic symbols is weird to me. Is there some evidence by Liu Yu Sheng why that entire collection of corpses would be buried with their phallic symbols extended so long and massed together. Does he suppose some vast male ritual?
Fascinating though. I am beginning to reconsider whether the association of 2 and all even numbers to Yin female and 3 and all odd numbers to Yang male may well be symbolism derived from human genitalia.
Frank
At No.5 archaeologists also discovered miscellaneous large wood-carved figures, small wooden masks, engraved wooden arrows, red ox heads, snake-shaped wood poles and wood carvings of male and female genitalia.
From: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Archaeology/130815.htm
The tomb complex yielded rare cultural relics including wooden ware, animal hair fabrics, jade, stone ware, and fur and bones of animals such as sheep, cattle, fowl, lynx and weasel.
It also yielded genital-symbolic objects, indicating a prevailing phallicism at that time, but little bronze ware had been unearthed, though many wood ware objects were obviously made with bronze ware, and it might be that bronze ware objects were too rare to be buried as funerary objects, Zhu said.
Most tombs were built by the same procedures, experts said. Ancient people first dug sand pits, put coffins made of diversiform-leaved poplar inside, and then erected pieces of carved wood representing the dead's gender, Zhu said.
From: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Archaeology/126811.htm
These people conserved such interests even after died, of course, they had to be turks.
Hi, Frank:Hi Charly,
Are the Turks more interested in expressing their sexual preferences than other peoples?
...
Uyghurs as indigenous people; a new UHRP report highlights Chinese government violations of Uyghurs' indigenous rights. Published 10/5/2009 | UHRP and UAA Reports , Press Releases
At: http://www.uhrp.org/articles/3011/1...ions-of-Uyghurs-indigenous-rights-/index.html
Q&A: China and the Uighurs
The latest unrest in China's western Xinjiang region follows a long history of discord between China's authorities and the Uighur minority.
From BBC News
At: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7540636.stm
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).