Etched and drawn on high cliffs and hidden mountains in southwest China, the Jinshajiang River rock paintings are hard to find and even harder to protect.
Discovered in the 1980s by local hunters, the rock paintings, which are believed to date back to the early Neolithic period, are among the most famed rock paintings in China.
In 2016 July, the Zuojiang Huashan rock paintings in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region were included in the UNESCO's world heritage list, heightening calls for the protection of such paintings.
The Zuojiang Huashan site covers over 6,621 hectares and is home to more than 1,900 well-preserved drawings on the face of the Huashan mountains along the Zuojiang River.
However, global warming, human activity and the construction of engineering projects have been endangering such rock paintings in China, experts said.
Unlike the the Zuojiang Huashan paintings, which are of rice growers and frog-shaped people -- a totem of the Zhuang ethnic group, Jinshajiang's paintings are mainly of wild animals such as cows, deer, sheep, pigs and monkeys. There are just a few human images alongside abstract symbols and graphics.
Researchers believe the paintings reflect the lives, religion, culture and art of nomadic people dating back thousands of years.
So far, a total of 1,900 square meters of Jinshajiang rock painting, with close to 10,000 images in 85 sites, have been recorded. Most of them are found in the Deqen Tibetan prefecture and Lijiang city in Yunnan, as well as Daocheng and Muli counties in Sichuan.
Building a copper mine, railways, a highway and hydropower stations along the Jinshajiang River also affected the rocks.
Chinese rock paintings are found in the northwest Altai and Helan mountains, and in the southern provincial-level regions of Guangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Fujian. Though many paintings have already been put under state or local protection, it is still difficult to keep them intact due to their locations.
Studying rock painting is a dangerous and challenging task.
|
上一篇：
发表、查看更多关于该信息的评论 
将本信息发给好友 
打印本页
