Suspecting that the village’s fish pond was not a natural pond and not as deep as rumored, a man pumped all the water out of the pond, revealing a significant secret.
This incident occurred in 1992 in Thap Yen North Village, located in Long Du County, Zhejiang Province (China). A man named Wu Anai always had a feeling that the village’s communal pond was not as deep as the locals claimed. For generations, the people of Thap Yen North Village believed in a legend that the pond was bottomless, which deterred anyone from approaching it.
Mr. Wu didn’t believe this and rallied some villagers to pump the water out of the pond to prove that it was just an ordinary pond. Together, they purchased a water pump and worked tirelessly. After 17 days of pumping water, they were astonished to discover an ancient cave. From that point on, Mr. Wu proved that his intuition was correct. Authorities and archaeologists were quickly called in to investigate.
The seemingly crazy action of Mr. Wu led to the discovery of a colossal ancient wonder.
The ancient cave was later named Long Du, after the administrative name of Long Du County. Through practical surveys, archaeologists determined that Long Du is an artificial cave system consisting of 24 smaller caves, each with an average floor area of about 1,000m2 and a height of up to 30m. The total area of this cave system is over 30,000m2. The typical caves feature sloped ceilings supported by columns.
Archaeologists confirmed that this ancient cave system was entirely created by human hands, based on evidence of tool marks around the area. The tool marks formed parallel grooves that are believed to symbolize something significant.
Similar marks were also found on pottery (thought to date from 500 to 800 BC) currently stored and displayed in a nearby museum.
According to researchers, these were hand-carved into limestone. This discovery has attracted the attention of many experts from various countries around the world, including Japan, Poland, Singapore, and the United States.
Additionally, the cave system features numerous staircases, columns, and intricate carvings. However, it cannot be ruled out that ancient people may have simply expanded a natural cave.
The Long Du cave may have been built 2000 years ago.
From the perspective of some archaeologists, it is possible that the Long Du cave was built about 2000 years ago.
The only similar structure to Long Du is the Hua Shan Cave Cluster, which is located 200km away in another region of China and may have been constructed up to 1,500 years later.
Preliminary estimates suggest that to complete this cave, nearly 1 million cubic meters of rock had to be displaced. According to scientists, constructing the Long Du cave required a massive workforce. The number of workers mobilized to create these 24 caves could reach tens of thousands.
Everything about the origin and formation of Long Du remains a major mystery.
A structure of such magnitude would typically be recorded in historical texts. However, there are virtually no clues or information about it. Therefore, to this day, everything regarding the origin and formation of Long Du remains a major mystery. One of the most intriguing and perplexing mysteries is why these 5 caves have maintained such an intact state for over 2,000 years.
The reasons behind the ancient peoples’ immense effort to create these caves are also a mystery. Were these caves a refuge, a military bunker, a structure for rituals, a secret palace for the elite, or a resource extraction site?
In 2014, researcher Yang Hongxun from the Archaeology Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences proposed a hypothesis. Hongxun suggested that the caves were built on the orders of King Goujian of Yue in 494 BC. He argued that King Goujian used the Long Du cave to hide thousands of his soldiers after a devastating defeat. However, this hypothesis still fails to explain many other mysteries of the cave cluster.
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