ARCHAEOLOGISTS have discovered the oldest city in southern China, that is some 3,000 years old.
The settlement is the earliest known civilization in the area that provided the base point for the Maritime Silk Road.
The Niuluchong site is in the Gongcheng Yao county, near the city of Guilin, southeast China.
It was first discovered in 2022 by builders who unearthed patterned bricks and broken pottery when they were developing previously untouched land.
Initial excavations produced clues that the city was incredibly old, and now a three-month “rescue dig” has revealed its truly staggering age.
He Anyi, leader of the dig, said this year’s finds included double city walls and moats.
It is very rare to see moats in ancient cities from this region, making Niuluchong a significant find.
“The site is about 165 metres long from north to south and 140 metres wide from east to west, with a total area of 23,100 square metres,” he said.
“The north and west walls of the entire city site are well preserved, among which the west wall is the best preserved, and the highest part of the west wall may be about 1.4 metres.”
Archaeologists pulled a range of fascinating cultural relics from the earth including pottery and stone tools, and found structures such as ash pits and pillar holes.
Confirmation of the site’s age dates it as the earliest known city of the ancient region of Lingnan.
Lingnan is thought to have spanned the south coast of China, across the modern provinces of Guangxi, Guangdong and Hainan.
Lignan was incredibly important to the ancient world because it was the starting point of the Maritime Silk Road – a network of sea passages that connected southeast Asia to Europe.
According to He, excavation of the site will continue and the team hopes to find other remains – that could include carbonised rice grains.
The archaeologists will also be heading to the lab to analyse their finds, that include a “severely-rusted” bronze item that appears to be a sword.
There has been a flurry of discoveries of ancient cities over the past few months.
An ancient city that was abandoned in the 18th century was finally unearthed deep inside the Amazon rainforest in October.
Located in the modern Brazilian state of Rondônia, the Portuguese settlement is said to have appeared on some maps hundreds of years ago before vanishing.
With the help of Lidar technology and locals from various Indigenous groups, a group of archaeologists managed to trace out the existence of the colony that is now covered in deep forest.
In another extraordinary story, a huge ancient Mayan city that had disappeared for centuries was accidentally found by a student using Google.
Thousands of undiscovered structures were located at the long-lost city Valeriana, in the south of Mexico.
Archaeologists noted the city had been “hidden in plain sight” under a jungle just 15 minutes away from a major road.
The ancient site, named after a nearby lagoon, is also thought to be the second largest Mayan area, just behind Calakmul.
This shocking discovery was made after Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane University in the US, scrolled through Google.
He explained how he noticed something interesting “by accident” while online, according to the BBC.
The PhD student said: “I was on something like page 16 of Google search and found a laser survey done by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring.”
Auld-Thomas noticed the huge ancient city when he processed the data.
Valeriana, made up of three sites and around the size of Edinburgh, is thought to have been home to around 30,000 to 50,000 people at its peak from 750 to 850 AD.
Archaeologists have found pyramids, sports fields, and amphitheatres at the ancient site.
