For decades, villagers in the hills of Loess Plateau, China, believed that the crumbling stone wall near their home was part of the Great Wall of China.
This makes sense because the remains of an ancient barrier meanders through this arid region within the northern circle of the Yellow River, marking the frontier of Chinese rule that stretches for more than 2,000 years.
However, when a team of Chinese archaeologists came to investigate the puzzle several years ago, they began to discover something amazing and baffling. The stones are not part of the Great Wall of China but the ruins of a majestic fortress city.
Excavations by archaeologists have uncovered more than six miles of protective walls surrounding the 230-foot pyramid and inner sanctum with mural paintings and jade artifacts. What attracts the most attention is the evidence of ritual human sacrifice.
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The most gruesome discovery was under the eastern wall of the city. Namely 80 human skulls collected in six holes.
The two openings closest to the East Gate, the city's main entrance, each contain exactly 24 skulls.
The number and placement of the skulls represent ritual decapitation during the laying of the foundation of the wall — the earliest known example of human sacrifice in Chinese history.
Forensic scientists determined that nearly all of the victims were young girls, most likely prisoners belonging to opposing groups.
"The scale of ritual violence observed at Shimao was unprecedented in early China," said Li Min, an archaeologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, on the National Geographic page.
The skulls at Shimao depict massive human sacrifice that Li calls "the defining attributes of the Shang civilization." This was until centuries later (from about 1600 to 1046 BC) before subsequent dynasties ended the practice.
Before excavations were suspended earlier this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, archaeologists found 70 stunning relief sculptures in rock - shaped like snakes, monsters and a half-human beast that resembled Bronze Age iconography in China.
Even more astonishingly, carbon dating determines that this section of Shimao, as the site is called (real name unknown), dates back 4,300 years, nearly 2,000 years - before the Great Wall of China was created and 500 years before Chinese civilization took over, according to the National Geographic website.
Shimao thrived in this seemingly remote region for nearly half a millennium before disappearing suddenly or being abandoned.
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