Zhejiang Museum Wulin Branch
Museum hall that once displayed a seven-thousand-year-old ivory carving of sun-watching birds.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Zhejiang Museum's Wulin branch begins in 1973, when farmers digging an irrigation ditch near the Yao River struck carved ivory preserved in black wetland mud for seven thousand years. It follows the discovery of the Hemudu site and a small ivory plaque showing two birds flanking a sun, which archaeologists believe once helped rice farmers time their spring flooding by the calendar. Get that timing wrong, in a settlement this dependent on water, and a village starves.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Liangzhu Museum
Museum of jade-studded Neolithic graves, built around the culture whose relics sparked a nineteen eighty-seven tomb-raiding frenzy.
跨湖桥遗址
Marshy Neolithic settlement site yielding the world's oldest known dugout canoe, hand-carved from a single pine log.
Hangzhou Museum
Museum built around a rock-crystal drinking cup dug from a Warring States tomb by a stubborn excavator.
Liangzhu Ancient City Relic Site
Neolithic walled city with engineered dams, stone-based ramparts, and jade-filled royal tombs.
Exhibition Hall of Southern Song Site
Glass-floored gallery over an excavated Song Dynasty imperial road, its stone paving stacked beneath centuries of later streets.
Xianghu Lake
Freshwater lake fringed with wetland trails above a Neolithic site that yielded the region's oldest known boat.