While Shanghai is widely regarded as the city of the future and a global financial hub, it has not forgotten its past.
Shanghai will build a cultural-relics park that will surround a key archeological site containing evidence of the city's nascent history - several thousand earlier than most people thought.
About 4,000 years ago, Shanghai's earliest residents migrated from the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River to escape a flood, and settled down in Guangfulin Village, south of Sheshan Hill in Songjiang District.
These were the findings after archeologists painstakingly excavated the site, according to the Xinmin Evening News.
The Guangfulin relic park, covering 0.6 square kilometers, is scheduled to be completed by 2010, according to Songjiang District government.
A relic museum will be built in the east of the park, with its most prominent exhibition hall underwater.
"Since river channels were dense in the digging areas, many findings were immersed under pervious rock," said Wang Rui of the Songjiang Newcity Construction Co Ltd.
The park will also feature a restored ancient town and original crop-growing methods in its west to highlight the lifestyle of the ancient Guangfulin immigrants, the newspaper said. Forty-one Jiangnan-style houses dating back to Ming and Qing dynasties have been collected to be rebuilt in the area.
Archeologists have spent 47 years digging the overall relic site of 10 hectares, and have found 23 cemeteries dating back to the Neolithic Period (8,000-2,000 BC).
They have also unearthed dozens of artifacts, including pottery containers, stone ploughs and kilns.
The most recent digging is expected to be finished by the end of this month.
Houses there were found built on stakes or with strong walls, according to Song Jian, head of the archeology department of the city's cultural relic watchdog.
Dozens of wooden stakes discovered are very rare, according to an archeologist working at the scene.
