via Global Times, 21 March 2023: Over 10,000 ancient bamboo and wooden slips have been discovered in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province, with 2,000 of them still bearing clear Chinese characters, according to the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
The Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology on Monday announced that more than 10,000 ancient bamboo and wooden slips, known as jiandu, have been found at the more than 2,000-year-old Hebosuo Site in Kunming, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province. Prior to the invention of paper and its widespread usage, slips of bamboo or wooden slips were tied together to form “books” that could be written upon and rolled up like a scroll.
Among the numerous slips, 2,000 of them still bear clear written Chinese characters.
Some of the slips record the names of 12 counties, such as “Dian Chi county” and “Jian Ling county,” which once belonged to the Yizhou Prefecture, an ancient region that was founded by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) after being defeated and started incorporation of the Dian Kingdom, a regime founded by an ancient ethnic group that lived along what is now the southwest frontier of Yunnan Province.
Source: 2,000-year-old bamboo and wooden slips found in Yunnan – Global Times
