The first regular meeting of the protection and World Heritage Site was held in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province on Wednesday. At the scene, six counties and cities of the Shangshan cultural sites in Zhejiang held the signing ceremony for the joint application, which marked the official launch of the Shangshan Cultural Heritage Site.
The Shangshan Cultural Site group was first discovered in 2000 on the Pujiang River in 2000, namely the Shangshan site, about 10,000 years ago. The site found the earliest known rice farming remains in the world, dating back the history of rice cultivation in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River to 10,000 years ago.
In 2006, the early Neolithic culture, represented by the mountain site, was named “Shangshan Culture”. Over the past 20 years, 21 Shangshan cultural sites have been found in 11 counties and cities, including Jinhua, Quzhou, Shaoxing and Taizhou.
At the academic seminar on the 20th anniversary of the discovery of Shangshan Site held in 2020, experts concluded that Shangshan is the origin of rice agriculture in the world, Shangshan culture is the source of Chinese farming village culture, and the colored pottery of Shangshan Site is the earliest known colored pottery in the world.
Yuan Longping, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Yan Wenming, an archaeologist, once inscribed “The Rice Source in the mountain world” and “the first village in ancient China” respectively.
In 2021, the Shangshan Site was selected as China’s “top 100 archaeological discoveries in one century”. Zhejiang has also clearly proposed to “promote the application of Shangshan culture for World Heritage”.
Chen Tongbin, an authoritative expert on the application, believes that the application is of great significance and can witness the “rice origin” in the “agricultural origin”, which is a great contribution to human civilization, and is another major cultural heritage that can directly enhance the cultural confidence of the Chinese nation after Liangzhu.
On the afternoon of the same day, pujiang County, Shengzhou City, Yiwu City, Yongkang City, Longyou County, Xianju County and other six counties where the mountain cultural sites distribution county also held the signing ceremony of the joint world Heritage application city.
It is reported that the joint application will accelerate the cooperation in archaeological excavation, cultural relic protection and personnel training, and further improve the organization and coordination mechanism of site protection and application work.(intact)