Before the dating results for the artifacts came out, everything was speculation.
But there was no doubt that this was a highly developed Pre-Shang culture.
Based on its geographical location, archaeologists named it the Caogou Village Ruins.
The first phase of excavation alone covered as much as 400,000 square meters, nearly half of which consisted of smelting furnaces and pottery workshops.
Without question, with so many production workshops, the excavation of pottery, copperware, and bronze artifacts was practically exploding!
Judging from the number of bronze weapons already found, they could arm an army of at least five thousand men!
This was simply unbelievable. Together with the unearthed stone axes and stone spears, they could fully equip another servant army of three to six thousand men.
What kind of power needed such a large army?
It was practically a major arms-production hub of that era!
On the ninth day after the discovery of the Caogou Village Ruins, the C14 test results finally came out.
The city had been established sometime between 2900 BC and 2500 BC.
Most of the bronze artifacts dated to around 2600 BC. The stone artifacts were clearly older, dating from roughly 3000 BC to 2800 BC.
In other words, bronze technology had gradually developed only after the city was founded, and only in the century before the city was flooded had it clearly surpassed the later Taosi Ruins.
The testing also revealed that the city had been flooded twice!
The first flood occurred around 2500 BC, while the second took place in 2000 BC.
The time when it was suddenly buried beneath mud and sand could be calculated precisely: 2000 BC.
Thus, it could already be confirmed that this site was more advanced than the Taosi Ruins of the Tang Yao period. Its technological level was no