A plain that echoes with legends

City of wonders

Last week, the findings from Zhouyuan were included in the Top 6 List of New Archaeological Discoveries of 2024, which was released by the Institute of Archaeology with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Recent physical evidence also indicates a truth: This "capital city "not only functioned as a center from which the Zhou ended a chaotic era and overthrew Shang rule, it also continued to prosper as a hub ruling over a vast territory after the war.

Chong's team also discovered triple-layered city walls dating to the Western Zhou Dynasty, a palace city that occupies 500,000 sq m, a "small"1.75-square-kilometer city around it, and a "large" city that covers a further 5.2 sq km.

It is the biggest Western Zhou city ruin ever found. So far, the southern gate of the palace city and the eastern gate of the "large" city have been excavated. Chong says they reveal the "aura of a king's capital", as the grand scale and complex structures were not only impressive for its time, but would still have been extraordinary compared to other cities a few centuries later.