The Historical Secret of Dunhuang's "Ghost Town"

When it comes to China's western culture, we will definitely think of the endless desert and next door, Uygur culture, the mysterious ancient country of Loulan and so on. In Dunhuang area of China, there is a "ghost town". The landscape here is like independent forts and buildings, in droves. From a distance, it looks like an ancient city in decline, or more appropriately, it looks like an uninhabited "ghost town". Is the ghost town really an ancient city? There is a long history and legend about ghost towns. Now let's have a look.

This mysterious ghost town is located in the Wuerhe mining area downstream of Jiamu on the northwest edge of Junggar Basin in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China. It is more than 0/00 kilometers away from Karamay/Kloc-Xinjiang. It is a very unique wind erosion landform, where there are strong winds all the year round. Ghost town is also known as Wuerhe windy city. Local Mongolian residents call the ghost town Sulu Muhaq, and Uighurs call it "Shayitankxi", which means ghost town. From the geological point of view, ghost town is actually a very typical landform of Ya Dan, and the word Ya Dan means "steep hill" in Uygur language.

The length and width of the ghost town are all over 5 kilometers, showing northwest east-west trend, with an area of about 10 square kilometers and an altitude of about 350 meters. According to the investigation and analysis of geologists, this place knelt down as early as the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago. It used to be a big lake with dense plants and trees growing on the shore. In this area, some dinosaurs, such as plesiosaur, stegosaurus and Zhungeer pterosaur, once lived and multiplied here. This used to be a paradise for aquatic animals. Later, due to the crustal movement, two major earthquakes occurred, and the lake became a sea of Wang Yang.

Speaking of the history of the ghost town in Dunhuang, it can be traced back to more than 2 million years ago, when the ghost town was still a lake. As early as 733-248 BC, the ancient Dunhuang Basin was a place with very high humidity and relatively cold climate, just like Sichuan in spring. Because there was a large amount of water in Dunhuang basin at that time, flash floods would occur in rainy season, and floods in the south would rush into the basin with sediment and form gravel strata. There was no human culture at that time.

In the Middle Pleistocene of 700,000-200,000 years, Lop Nur, a very large, ear-shaped lake, was wanted because of its extremely rich water. Due to clay and sediment, the bottom of the lake presents grayish brown, grayish green sand layer and cohesive soil layer. By the end of the Middle Ages, the weather became very hot and dry, the lake area began to shrink gradually, and most parts of Lop Nur began to dry up. In the later period of 200-65438+20,000 years, in the late Pleistocene, the topography of Lop Nur rose slowly on the line. Lop Nur, which was already very dry, became more arid, and pieces of sediments at the bottom of the lake were exposed to the surface, which was very close to Lop Nur now.

1.2 years later, it entered the Holocene. Under the action of flood and strong wind, the whole rock cracked until it could not bear the pressure and was washed away, thus forming a groove. But the rocks covered with mud still stand, gradually forming the landform we see now.

In ancient times, there were various legends about ghost towns, one of which was the ghost town. There used to be a magnificent castle here. All the men and women in the castle are very handsome, beautiful and kind. These people are very hardworking and live a life of food and clothing every day. Slowly, people in this castle are getting richer and richer. Slowly, wealth occupied people's hearts, and evil thoughts followed. People in the castle began to indulge in pleasure and lead a dissolute life all day. In order to get more wealth, people in the castle began to attack each other. They are silent in all kinds of death shadows every day, and everyone has an extremely ferocious face.

At that time, when God saw this scene, he was heartbroken when he remembered the past glory of this place. In order to awaken people's conscience, God turned himself into a beggar and came to the castle. When God arrived at the castle, he told the people in the castle that evil had changed him from a rich man to a beggar. However, no one cared about what the God who became a beggar said, but these words were laughed at and abused by people in the castle. So the gods turned this place into ruins in a rage, and everyone in the castle was buried under the yellow sand. Every night, the dead will be heard wailing here, praying that the gods can hear their confession, and then this place will be called a ghost town everywhere.

Although the ghost town is called "city", it is only because this landform looks like a city. But according to the research of historians, no ancient civilization has ever had a site here, at least not yet, because of the bad weather of this generation. Now the ghost town has become one of the tourist attractions in China, and it is a 4A-level scenic spot. The main reason for calling a ghost town wrong is that this peculiar Ya Dan landform gives people a sense of visual impact, which makes people feel more like an ancient city. Its desolation makes this place look like a ghost town.