10,000 ancient chinese coins unearthed

[G-Manicus]

From Nuismaster.com

 

While digging a channel in which he planned to place pipes for tap water in the village of Qianwanhu, he accidentally found what is now being dubbed the "money cellar," a long forgotten basement containing about 10,000 ancient Chinese coins with a weight of about 1.5 tons.

 

The coins, curiously enough, were "piled orderly into a cuboid of 1.3 meters long, 0.65 meter wide, and one meter high."

 

Although Li did not try to analyze the find for the newspaper his explanation suggests the discovery could have been placed in the cellar no earlier than 1127. According to Li's statements, "Most of the coins were made during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) with the remainders made during [the] Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and Tang Dynasty (618-907)."

 

During the Han Dynasty, the earlier pan liang bronze coinage was continued, but debased, ushering in a coinage reform in 118 BC ordered by Emperor Wu Ti. His wu shu or 5-shu coinage would become the standard for the next 800 years.

 

The suggestions were that the coins might have been the private wealth of "liege" lords, the coins were the property of a private bank during a war, or that they belonged to wealthy individuals who buried them during a war but for some reason never returned to claim them.

 

The "money cellar" coins were described as "in good condition, and characters on the surface were still legible, while some others were rusty." All were sent to local cultural relic authorities.