Taosi: A City Older Than the Records That Name It
A Longshan walled town in the Fen valley, its dates, its 280-hectare middle city, and the semicircular platform read as the oldest observatory in East Asia.
Taosi Site
Taosi is an archaeological site in Taosi township, seven kilometres northeast of the seat of Xiangfen County in Linfen. It belongs to the late Longshan culture of southern Shanxi, a phase dated 2300 to 1900 BC, and it is the largest Longshan site found in the Linfen basin. Finds began to appear in the 1950s, but the middle-period city wall was only identified in 1999-2001. In 1988 the State Council listed the site in the third batch of national key cultural relics. Several Chinese archaeologists have argued that this was the capital of the legendary ruler Yao, the place the old texts call Pingyang.