Yandian Ancient City

Yandian Ancient City

Yandian Ancient City is a cultural relic protection unit of Sichuan Province.

The Dayi Yandian Ancient City is the seventh prehistoric city discovered on the Chengdu Plain, found in Yandian Village, Dayi County. Its discovery completely rewrote the belief that Chengdu was founded 2,300 years ago, pushing the city's history back to more than 4,500 years ago. This is the earliest known prototype of a Chengdu city site to date and can be regarded as the very first chapter in the founding of Chengdu.

In other words, more than 1,000 years after the establishment of this ancient city, the ancient people of Chengdu gradually migrated to Sanxingdui and Jinsha, eventually forming what we now recognize as Chengdu. Additionally, the successful excavation of this city site, tentatively named “Yandian Ancient City,” also supports the archaeological theory that the civilization centered around the Chengdu Plain in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River is one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization.

What is even more pride-inducing for the people of Chengdu is that the discovery of this ancient city proves that the Chengdu Plain has harbored a highly developed civilization since ancient times, completely refuting the old notion that Chengdu was a barbaric land in antiquity. Prior to this, six other ancient cities in the vicinity of Chengdu had already been excavated: the Bao Dun Longma Township Ancient City in Xinjin, the Mangcheng Ancient City in Dujiangyan, the Zizhu Ancient City in Chongzhou, the Shuanghe Xiama Cheng Ancient City, the Pixian Ancient City, and the Yufu Ancient City in Wenjiang. These seven ancient cities were built approximately 100–300 years apart from one another and are densely distributed along the southwestern foothills of the Chengdu Plain. Together, they vividly trace the gradual migration and development of Chengdu over the past 4,500 years.

The total area of this prehistoric ancient city is 300,000 square meters, making it the second largest among the seven ancient cities discovered around Chengdu (second only to the 600,000-square-meter Longma Township Ancient City). The entire city is rectangular, measuring 700 meters from north to south and 500 meters from east to west. Since this city was built long before Li Bing constructed the Dujiangyan Irrigation System, to avoid the threat of floods on the Chengdu Plain at that time, the entire city is elevated 2–3 meters above the surrounding plains. Moreover, the walls, built from a mixture of clay, sand, gravel, and pebbles, not only served to defend against invasions but also provided some flood prevention functions.

The walls of Yandian Ancient City consist mainly of the eastern and northern sections. The base of the walls is wider at the bottom and narrower at the top, constructed using a precisely angled sloping method with trapezoidal cross-sections. Interestingly, a small river excavated outside the northern wall in ancient times still irrigates the fields of Yandian Village today. Another unique feature of Yandian Ancient City is that, unlike other ancient cities which typically had two layers of walls, it had only a single wall—but its fortification strength far exceeded that of the double-layered walls of other cities.

The ancient city covers an area of about 300,000 square meters.

Group 6 of Yandian Village is located 3 kilometers southwest of Dayi County. The site is roughly the size of a soccer field. Measurements show it is over 700 meters from north to south and nearly 500 meters from east to west, with an area of about 300,000 square meters. At the site, stone remnants of the walls can still be faintly seen buried in damp yellow mud. Over 30 local villagers, under the guidance of archaeologists, are digging layered pits to search for relics. The current excavation is focused on the eastern and northern ends of the “city.”

Protected area: 30 meters beyond the outer edge of the city wall ruins.

Construction control zone: 100 meters beyond the protected area.

Further reading:

· Eighth Batch of Cultural Relic Protection Units of Sichuan Province