overgenomen uit The Straits Times Interactive, 21 juli 2002 (http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,1870,132975,00.html)

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2,000-year-old official records found in Hunan

CHANGSHA - More than 20,000 ancient bamboo slips carrying records of the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) have been unearthed in southern China's Hunan province.

The discovery is being compared to that of the Qin Dynasty terracotta soldiers and horses in north-western Shaanxi province in the 1970s.

'This is the first time that such a huge amount of bamboo slips recording history ranging from the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 25) has been found in China,' said Mr Guo Weimin, deputy director of the Hunan Provincial Archaeological Institute.

The total number of bamboo slips unearthed last century across China was fewer than 2,000.

The bamboo slips, engraved with ancient calligraphy, are official documents recording political, economic and cultural life.

They contain a total of 200,000 characters, according to Mr Zhang Chunlong, a researcher handling the find.

As Qin Shihuang, the founder of Qin Dynasty as well as China's first Emperor, had during his reign ordered books and documents to be burnt and many scholars buried alive, little of the currently available material on the Qin Dynasty is first-hand information.

Information such as multiplication tables, ethnic relations and army grain consumption have been found on the slips. --Xinhua