Talk:Longyou Caves

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What was their purpose?

Does anyone know? 161.29.255.138 (talk) 06:55, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Age

The source for the claimed age of these caves is suspect. Currently the article cites three sources, two of which (Milligan and Zhu) state that the age of buildings is unknown. The third (Li et al) states in passing that they are over 2000 years old, but cites no source for that claim. A different paper by the same authors from 2016 [1] cites as a reference a 2001 article from "China Mining News" titled "The mysteries to be solved about Longyou ancient underground buildings, archaeological research verified it's at least 2000 years old" (Meng 2001 in the references). That source appears older than the article cited in this wiki article (2009), but is not referenced in it, and then is referenced in the 2016 article.

I haven't been able to find the article or even the publication (probably because it's in translation), but from the name of the publication and the article title it doesn't seem like a journal, but a news outlet or industry publication. It's a strange citation for a scholarly article to use, especially when the title seems to be a reference to a better source.

I tried to track down any other source, but all references to "Longyou Caves" bottom out to nothing or that 2016 Li at al article and China Mining News. Searching instead for "Xiaonanhai caves" gets better results, and results that suggest something fishy going on, e.g. a 2011 article describing them as 6th century Buddhist sanctuary caves [2]. I can't tell if they are referring to the same cave, the description doesn't match but the characters used to refer to it appear the same as what's translated in the wiki article as "Xiaonanhai Stone Chambers".

This article could use an expert review, archaeology or even just a fluent Chinese speaker who can help find the original sources. The article as written appears to be the basis of a lot of 'mysterious reality' type pseudoscience, it would be a service to get the facts straight. Carleas (talk) 00:35, 3 June 2024 (UTC)