Archaeological treasure trove found at Three Gorges Project in China

Archaeologists excavating during the Three Gorges dam project in China have discovered nearly a quarter of a million artifacts, the state-run Xinhua News Agency says.

The world’s largest dam project has created a reservoir that’s 410 miles long and more than half a mile wide. Before that reservoir was flooded, China spent $285 million to hunt for cultural treasures, at times using teams of more than a thousand archaeologists. They’ve uncovered artifacts ranging from medieval statues to early stone tools two million years old. While the sites they came from are now lost beneath the water, the artifacts they yielded will give fresh insight into China’s long history.

Now museums across China are busy conserving the artifacts and hopefully soon many of them will be on display for China’s growing tourist industry.

The Three Gorges Project is itself becoming a tourist attraction. It’s the largest dam project in the world, and the largest electrical generating facility. It’s also highly controversial because it displaced 1.3 million people.

[Photo courtesy user Rehman via Wikimedia Commons]

Dam it, People Move!

There was an interesting expose on China’s Three Gorges Dam in yesterday’s WSJ (Europe ed.). It looks like up to 4.8 million more people might have to move from the Yangtze River valley because of the dam.

The massive $25B power project, completed last May, has already displaced approximately 1.4 million people, as their land has been submerged because the area behind the dam has filled. When I was there in 2005, the water level was about 132 meters (435 ft.), and it’s now at 157m, and it’s expected to hit 175m in 2009. The reservoir is 640km (400 miles) long (about 1/10th the length of the whole river).

Obviously, the dam is important to China, which needs the power for its growing economy. The dam provides ten times the electricity of the Hoover Dam.

Some frightening stats from the article:

  • 60% of the new shoreline is too steep to farm.
  • the water is moving so slowly behind the dam that the port of Chongqing (seen at right on a “sunny” day) is expected to silt over in ten years. (This is a big deal, considering the size and economic importance of that city, with an estimated at 55 million inhabitants in that economic “municipality.”)
  • the dam is making the local weather even more foggy and humid than before. (ouch.)
  • fish populations are dwindling because of disrupted river flows. (I didn’t see a single living bird, duck, goose, swan, or fish during my days on the Yangtze, so I’m not too surprised.)