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Relic in Qugong
The First Neolithic Relic Which Is Found in Lhasa

The cultural relic in Qugong is located in the northern suburb of Lhasa, 5 km away from the city center. The Sera Monastery is located in the east of it, but not far away. It is the first Neolithic relic that is found in Lhasa and is also the second relic of the Neolithic Period in Tibet after the cultural relic in Karub, Chamdo where scientific studies and excavation work were undertaken. Historically, the cultural relic in Qugong can be classified later than the cultural relic in Karub and is considered as a special cultural type in the late Neolithic Period.. 

The total area of cultural relics in Qugong is 10,000 m² and more than 3,000 m² of it has been excavated. There are mainly pits with ashes and graves on it and Jades, bones and ceramic articles, small copper goods and a large number of animal bones were unearthed here.

These findings prove that people in Lhasa region were involved in farming, cattle breeding, hunting and gathering of plants and fruits at least 4000 years ago. The millstones, yaks, Tibetan sheep and comb-shaped items unearthed in Qugong are considered as important evidences for that Tibet had an early civilization. People found not only numerous hunting tools but also a lot of wild animal bones. The discovered nets and fish bones prove that people were already familiar with fishing and eating fish. More than ten comb-shaped objects made of carefully polished stone have been found. These findings prove that wool knitwear was already being produced in Qugong at that time. The bronze arrowhead, which was found in Qugong, is so important, which it shows that the ancestors of the Tibetans on the Tibetan plateau had already entered the Bronze Age around 4,000 years ago.

Other similar relics were later found in the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River Valley, including the Chenggo relic in Konggar County and the Banggar Relic in Qonggyai County.

As the highest cultural relic in prehistoric China and with an altitude of 3680 m to 3690 m, it is 20 m higher than the Lhasa and more than 500 m higher than the well-known Karub Relic in Chamdo. The Qugong relic has been chosen as one of the ten most important archaeological findings in 1991.

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