<

China Meteor May Solve How Mythic Emperor Died
Tuesday, July 23, 2002
Reuters

Some 50,000 mainland and overseas Chinese flocked to the nearby mausoleum, first erected in the Han Dynasty, to pay their respects to the cultural patriarch last Friday for the annual Tomb Sweeping Day.

BEIJING -- Reuters
A 5,000-year-old meteorite unearthed in northwestern China may explain the legendary death of the man celebrated as the nation's earliest ancestor, the Yellow Emperor, state media said on Tuesday.

The meteorite, found near a mausoleum for the Yellow Emperor in the Shaanxi province county of Huangling, may lie behind the cataclysmic shattering of land that historical records say killed China's enigmatic first emperor, the official China Daily said. The discovery also sheds light on a local legend that nine dragons broke up the ancient town of Huangling, the newspaper said, quoting Li Yanjun, a long-time Yellow Emperor researcher and one of those who found the meteorite.

Scepticism abounds over accounts of China's part-real, part-mythical forefather named Huangdi, to whom the word for "emperor" and the imperial colour of yellow are traced. Chinese legend credits him with inventing the cart and the boat, and his dialogues with the physician Qi Bo were the basis of China's first medical book, the Yellow Emperor's "Canon of Medicine", or Nei Jing. Huangdi's wife, Lei Zu, taught China how to weave silk from silkworms and his minister Cang Jie devised the first Chinese characters, according to tradition.
(More: The Khaleej Times News Source)
2002 © Reuters, Ltd.

Dan