There is a field in Anyang, Henan Province, in central China, that archaeologists have been digging carefully for nearly a century. Beneath it lies Yinxu, the Ruins of Yin, the last capital of the Shang Dynasty, which ruled China from approximately 1600 to 1046 BCE and represents the earliest archaeologically confirmed civilisation in Chinese history. The site was first excavated in the 1920s and has yielded some of the most significant finds in the entire history of Chinese archaeology, and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And yet, despite nearly a hundred years of work and thousands of excavations, archaeologists believe only a tiny fraction of the ancient capital has been uncovered.
The latest discovery explains why those working there refuse to stop: a massive north-south thoroughfare running 1.6 kilometres through the heart of the ancient city, its surface still bearing the dense wheel ruts of Bronze Age traffic, flanked by drainage ditches, embedded within a grid-pattern road network that would not look out of place in a modern city plan. The find was announced by China's National Cultural Heritage Administration and is described as the longest urban road ever discovered at Yinxu, and the longest known preserved road of ancient China.
