World’s Oldest Coin Mint Discovered in 2,800-Year-Old Chinese Foundry(artnews.com)
artnews.com
World’s Oldest Coin Mint Discovered in 2,800-Year-Old Chinese Foundry
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/oldest-mint-spade-coins-chinese-foundry-1234601047/
11 comments
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Bronze coins is in alignment with India’s use of copper coins since around 500-1000 BCE: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coinage_of_India
Has anybody figured out exactly where Guanzhuang is? China is huge. And even if TFA says it’s near the Yellow River, the Yellow River is also quite long. Having only the phonetic name, without even the province name, is really unhelpful.
The Daily Mail had good coverage of this story, but got the location very wrong. Look at the first map in the article:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9865429/Worl...
It's the place you get if you type 'Guanzhuang' into Google maps. The point they draw is not in Henan, even though the caption says Henan.
If you scroll down to the second map, it only shows historical context, not modern place names, but the marked location is correct: just west of Zhengzhou.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9865429/Worl...
It's the place you get if you type 'Guanzhuang' into Google maps. The point they draw is not in Henan, even though the caption says Henan.
If you scroll down to the second map, it only shows historical context, not modern place names, but the marked location is correct: just west of Zhengzhou.
The source article in Antiquity says Xingyang, Henan province. That’s 河南省滎陽市. Trying to pinpoint it now. (But even Henan may have multiple cities or municipalities with the same phonetic spelling. Crossing fingers.)
It's here, I think: https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B042'02.7%22N+113%C2...
Thanks. I just found another article in Chinese that also says it’s 關莊（关庄）.
I went to the source and saw the map.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/ra...
And from the map. It looks like it's around this part of Yellow River. (Guanzhuang, Xingyang, Zhengzhou, Henan, China 34.69942093691378, 113.36167182390584)
And from the map. It looks like it's around this part of Yellow River. (Guanzhuang, Xingyang, Zhengzhou, Henan, China 34.69942093691378, 113.36167182390584)
Yes. That （關莊） seems about right. I was initially looking for 管莊 or 官莊, both of which would have the same phonetic spelling.
I love the simple times when a "coin" was simply a stamp on a piece of precious metal certifying its weight.