XI'AN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Wang Jianxin knows the ancient Silk Road like the back of hishand. He has visited hundreds of sites along the routes in the past twenty years andbelieves he is almost ready to lay bare the secrets of the Greater Yuezhi, an ancientnomadic kingdom.
Wang, 64, is a professor at the Northwest University of China in Xi'an, capital of thecountry during the peak years of the Silk Road's glories. He specializes on the corridor ofterritory which stretches from the city then known as Chang'an across thousands miles ofCentral Asia, home to many minority ethnic groups that have since vanished, often leavingvery little trace.
Wang has been passionately committed to the study of ancient nomads for many years,and his resume is packed with notable archaeological research on the subject.
The disappearance of the Greater Yuezhi people has been a mystery to historians,anthropologists and linguists for many years, he said.
The ancient nomads were a branch split from the Yuezhi people who were first reported inChinese histories living in the west of the modern Chinese province of Gansu. An answer tothe mystery of their whereabouts is also about the ethnic origin and composition in CentralAsian countries.
Wang found the ruins of the Greater Yuezhi's royal palace and tombs and some communitysites, one of China's ten most important archaeological finds of 2007, but he was shockedwhen he first visited Central Asia in 2009.
"You should have come earlier! Why do you Chinese archaeologists come to join us solate?" an Uzbek archaeologists asked him. Archaeologists (and treasure hunters) from allover the world had flocked to Central Asia for archaeological or art purpose since thecollapse of the Soviet Union.
Wang knew Chinese archaeologists could never take their proper place on the world stagewithout overseas experience. So, in 2013, in the arid wilderness on the border ofUzbekistan and Tajikistan, he set up his research base and began working with Uzbekcolleagues. They have found a large tomb believed to belong to the royal family of theKangju Kingdom in southern Uzbekistan.
Amriddin, director of Institution of Archaeology under the Academy of Sciences ofUzbekistan, is optimistic about cooperation with China. Chinese archaeologists know theimportance of protecting sites after excavation, and their working methodology should bepromoted, he said. But despite substantial international acclaim for his work, Wang hasendured plenty of difficulties in his search for final destiny of the Greater Yuezhi.
He has trekked for hours across harsh terrain to reach inaccessible sites. He broke a rib ina traffic accident but returned to work only days later.
He and his team have been widely praised for their work in the western Tianshan Rangeand are leading the way in archaeological cooperation along the Silk Road, said Arnayev, aUzbek professor at Termez State University in Uzbekistan who has often worked alongsideWang.
Silk Road is a great treasure of human civilization. With looming development expected toproceed more quickly than ever, the need to protect the cultural heritage and the manyunique, often fragile, environments of the countries along the Belt and Road has never beenmore urgent.
Wang said more overseas archaeological centers and Silk Road-related archaeologicalcenters should be established to attract experts from various fields such as geology,biology, and environmental planning, so as to come up with more academic achievementsto benefit the mutual learning among different civilizations along the Silk Road.
