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makes the Chinese structures less suscep: AO NTH Th GOL OENIRE the villages said the towers resist earth- by Stiliyan Yanchev © 2004 quakes," Darragon said. The question remains: Why were they [: the summer of 2003, during built? One idea is that they served a reli- archaeological excavations of a proto- gious function, perhaps representing the Neolithic settlement situated in the dmu cord that, according to Tibetan leg- | northwest Black Sea littoral area on end, is said to connect Heaven and Earth. Bulgarian territory, I spotted a very Alternatively, some scholars suggest the | interesting and puzzling find. structures were watchtowers or forts. While clearing out the destroyed "The towers were built for defence," said | remains of a burnt-down dwelling place of Marielle Prins, a linguist with the | that epoch, under my brush appeared a Southwest Institute for Nationalities in | small cylindrical object. Chengdu, China. "Most of them are from At the first moment I was neither dis- the Jinchuan Wars." turbed nor puzzled. I got my camera and Eric Mortensen, a Tibet scholar at | took the necessary pictures in situ. National Taiwan University, said the The next moment... Oh my God! My structures were "likely used as signal | breath stopped at the sight of the find that towers". He bases that conclusion on their | I was holding in my hands. It was almost locations, which generally provide a line | absurd, incredible, perplexing! of sight from one to another. A 7,000-year-old graphite cylinder It was in a cultural layer dated when she asked local 4800-4600 BC (calibrated dates), at a depth of 0.68 metres below the contempo- residents about the rary ground level near a stone wall of a 5 A dwelling place, that I found this object—a tower. Who built graphite cylinder with a round opening in them? When? Why? the middle which passes through the whole length. —nobody seemed to The perfectly worked cylinder is 4.3 havea clue. centimetres long, 1.7 cm in diameter and 0.6 cm in diameter at the opening. But the most impressive discovery was that on the cylinder's surface, along all its But some scholars suggest that the tow- | length, there can clearly be seen traces of ers are not so mysterious after all. "If | laps: about 24 to 26 coils with a 1- there's any mystery surrounding them, it's | millimetre width of the trace. no doubt partly a product of Western At both ends of the solid, the traces of mythology around anything Tibetan and | the coiled wire are most distinct and give the fact that until recently the Chinese for- | the impression that they have been slightly bade access to the region," said Alex | smelted by some sort of energy having Gardner, a Buddhism specialist at the assed through. University of Michigan. "I don't see how I was speechless, astonished and they could be called 'unknown' when they | inwardly happy. I was holding in my are visible for miles, and the region is ands something very interesting, excit- crisscrossed with trading routes and now | ing, somewhat disturbing, but unique! automobile roads." What is it? Who made it? Meanwhile, the mysteries of the towers From my long working experience, I continue to rattle Darragon's mind, and new that graphite was used in some cases her sleuthing will continue. The self- | for the decoration of pottery, as a described free spirit has purchased a home | background or ornamentation, and its in a valley in the Kham region of China, roperties were known as early as the fifth settling down next door to a tower. millennium BC. (Source: Concord Monitor Online, 22 March The use of graphite with its spectacular, 2004, http://www.concordmonitor.com/ | metallic glimmer, combined with the apps/pbcs.dll/article ?AID=/20040322/ | ornamentation of the pottery, probably REPOSITORY/403220376/1013/NEWSO03) represented some charged meaning MYSTERIOUS TOWERS IN CHINA AND TIBET ANCIENT ELECTRICAL DEVICE UNEARTHED IN BULGARIA artine Darragon fell under the spell of an elusive phenomenon scattered across the foothills of the Himalayas. Old stone towers, some vaguely star-shaped and some more than 100 feet tall, became a near obsession for Darragon as she found their origin to be a mystery. Darragon told Smithsonian Magazine's Richard Stone that when she asked local residents about the towers—Who built them? When? Why?—nobody seemed to have a clue. What she had stumbled on was rare indeed: a riddle in plain sight. Over five years, she journeyed nine times to western China, where she saw nearly 200 of the towers in Sichuan Province and Tibet. She photographed and measured them, climbed into them when possible and carved off bits of wooden beams for analysis. Local monks told her they'd found no mention of the structures in centuries-old monastery doc- uments. Still, she did find a few refer- ences to the towers in some Chinese annals and in the diaries of 19th-century Western travellers to the region. From 2000 to 2003, Darragon shipped pieces of wood from 32 towers to a labo- ratory in Miami for radiocarbon dating. Most of the wood samples she had tested are several hundred years old, and the towers from which they came are presum- ably the same age. But one structure in Kongpo, Tibet, proved much older. It was likely built 1,000 to 1,200 years ago. The dating method isn't definitive and it's pos- sible that the wood used by some tower builders was already very old, in which case the structures may be younger. Local ignorance of the towers' original purpose may be traced to the area's history and geography. A millennium ago, the place was dominated by mountain tribes that over the centuries have maintained isolation. "People in one valley usually cannot understand what is said in the next valley," Darragon told Stone. She wonders if knowledge of the towers that was once passed down orally may have been lost as dialects evolved or disappeared. Darragon is especially intrigued by the more than 40 roughly star-shaped towers she encountered. Some have eight points, others 12, but both configurations are rare. Darragon speculates that the star shape them? When? Why? —nobody seemed to have a clue. NEXUS = 61 by Stiliyan Yanchev © 2004 ..When she asked local residents about the towers—Who built OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2004 www.nexusmagazine.com