Ancient Rock Art on the Mengdong River
Cangyuan cliff paintings (沧源崖画), discovered in the Mengdong River reaches of Cangyuan County (沧源县), Lincang Prefecture (临沧), Yunnan Province (云南), were dated back to about 3,000 years ago.
These paintings, which are major historical and cultural sites under protection, are rich in content, succinct in design, vivid in images of people and animals. The hunting and production scenes of the human beings’ forefathers are depicted in the paintings, which are of high value to research ancient ethnic history, religion, culture, and art.
Discovery and Dating
The paintings were first discovered in January 1965 by the archaeologist Wang Ningsheng, of the Institute of History at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences. Fifteen separate sites have since been identified across Cangyuan County, together containing more than 1,200 individual painted figures, spread over roughly 500 square meters at elevations between 1,000 and 2,000 meters. The images sit between 1 and 8 meters above the ground on limestone cliff faces.
Dating the paintings has proven difficult, and estimates have varied over the decades. Early radiocarbon work on carbonate deposits overlying the pigment suggested an age of around 3,000 years. A more recent and more rigorous study, using uranium series dating on 57 samples from the rock surface, narrowed the range to between roughly 3,800 and 2,700 years old, placing the paintings in the late Neolithic period. In 2001, the site was registered by China’s State Council as a Major Historical and Cultural Site under national protection.
The Site Today
This scenic area has beautiful sceneries, dense forests, forests of palisades, and flowing brooks, with pure and unique folk customs.
Cangyuan cliff paintings map
Cangyuan cliff paintings images
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