These caves were accidentally found by one of the local peasants, who wrote about them to the authorities. Many researchers, employees of various institutes, and then tourists immediately rushed there. And what is surprising: although these are the largest caves in China, created not by nature, but by man, there is no information about them in the ancient chronicles. Who created them and why? Where did such a large amount of stone disappear? And if the purpose was precisely the extraction of stone, then why are the caves made to look like temples?
It turns out there are so many secrets that many people just shrug their shoulders. Sinologists (Sinologists), historians, geologists are trying to solve them. For what and who many centuries ago cut down many huge caves in these hard-to-reach rocks? Why was their arrangement carried out? What exactly happened in them? Why are they not mentioned in the historical chronicles?
And the most interesting fact is that the Huashan caves were discovered relatively recently - in the late 90s of the last century, more precisely in 1999.
Huashan Caves are located in the rocks in the south of Anhui province. It is in these places that the Yellow Mountain, sacred to Taoism, is located, which, in fact, represents five great mountains located a mile or two from each other. They seem to indicate the cardinal directions: center, south, north, west and east. Mount Huashan is the western great mountain, and several Taoist monasteries are located on it. At the moment, 36 caves have been discovered here, but their exact number is unknown. In addition, it is not known whether they are connected in some kind of a common complex, or each is located separately.
There is one more intriguing feature: the Huashan caves are located at 30 degrees north latitude, namely, on this parallel are located: Mount Kailash in Tibet, the Bermuda Triangle, the Great Pyramids of Egypt, as well as other "anomalous" points of the planet. Is this a coincidence, or has someone deliberately dug out the caves at this latitude?
One of the caves named Huanxi has an area of 4800 sq. m, and the length is 140 meters. Inside is a spacious hall, pillared, pools and several small rooms on either side of the cave tunnel.
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The largest cave is known as the "underground palace". Its dimensions are striking: 12600 sq.m. The artificial origin of the caves is confirmed by stone bridges over the river, stairs, passages and large columns.
In addition, numerous chisel marks remained on the surface of the ceilings and walls. Another interesting question: where did the stone cutters remove the huge amount of stones and rubble?
Flower Mountain has become almost hollow inside due to the construction of stone caves. Today it remains a mystery where the removed stone disappeared. It has been calculated that with the excavated stones it is possible to pave a road more than 240 kilometers long. However, it is strange that the local peasant houses are mostly built of blue stone, but there is none that was built from the stone of the Flower Mountain. This stone is colorful.
And how did they manage to determine the angle of inclination of the inner walls so that it exactly coincides with the angle to which the outer surface of the mountain is inclined? What technologies did the ancients use to create such an unusual interior? How and with what was the interior space illuminated?
Different versions can be put forward for each of the questions, but none of them has received an evidence base yet. However, this is far from the only case when scientists have only assumptions. For example, the famous ribbed towers in Tibet with the shape of a star: there is also no written evidence about them or their creators.
The only written mention of Mount Huashan, but not of its caves, is contained in the writings of a historian from the Han dynasty.
It says that many famous Chinese emperors loved this mountain and often came to it to pray to the gods and ancient ancestors. How people could climb its steep slopes, and how long it took, is also unknown. Since ancient times, one can get to the top of the mountain only by one narrow winding path 12 kilometers long. Those who wanted to perform any religious ceremonies or rituals on its summit had to have a lot of determination.
All of the above leads to the conclusion that the Huashan Mountain, striking in its beauty, had a special status among the ancient inhabitants of these places. But we don't know any details yet. And if we knew this, we could have guessed what caused the inhabitants to spend a huge amount of effort, gouging passages and caves inside the sacred mountain. The PRC State Tourism Office has taken a lot of serious action to ensure that these caves are accessible to travelers and tourists. Experts from one of the universities have developed a project for the development of the cave complex, including the lighting of the caves.
Illumination in different colors is extremely beautiful. It gives the caves a truly fabulous flavor. Each cave is numbered and some are accessible to visitors.
According to tourist sites, only during the preliminary inspection of the caves, experts were struck by the scale of what they saw. None of the already known complexes surpasses Huashan. For example, the total area of only two caves in the second and thirty-fifth ones exceeds 17,000 sq. M. The volume of rubble and soil removed from these caves reached 20 thousand cubic meters. It took three pumps and more than 12 days to pump out 18 thousand tons of water. Now these caves are open to the public, there are 26 stone columns in cave No. 35, all rooms have a bizarre multi-tiered shape.
Here you can admire stone terraces, pavilions, pools and ponds, stone bridges. In some places there are bas-reliefs.
Grishchenkov V. "Secrets of the Huashan Cave".
The purpose of building such caves remains extremely unclear. Among such ancient caves already discovered in China, there are those that were intended for habitation, for worship or for meditation of Buddhist monks. But the stone caves of the Flower Mountain were clearly not built for habitation. Moreover, there are no wall paintings or Buddhist deities in these caves. Therefore, they do not seem to serve a cult purpose.
There are many versions regarding the purpose of building the caves, but all of them have no scientific basis. If the caves were dug for the purpose of extracting stone, then such operations could easily be carried out in the open air. There was no need to engage in such titanic work. If they were created for storing grain, then these places cannot be considered dry. Maybe they were created with the aim of building the imperial chambers? But none of the historical records mentions them. Therefore, they really remain an outlandish mystery for the Chinese.
Cave number 35 has a depth of 170 meters, an area of about 12 thousand square meters. meters. The entrance to the cave is small. From it there is a tunnel 20 meters long and then suddenly a huge underground palace appears in front of you. In the middle of the palace there are 26 tall, huge stone columns, the circumference of which is more than ten meters. These columns diverge to form a triangle and look very majestic. They support the caves and prevent them from collapsing.
There is one more place in the cave at number 35, which causes involuntary admiration among visitors. This is the wall of a stone cave, stretching to the ground at an angle of 45 degrees. It is 15 meters wide and 30 meters long.
All premises have an irregular, fancy multi-tiered shape. Experts note the high technical and aesthetic sophistication of the caves. 18 bas-reliefs were found in caves No. 2 and No. 36. You can see stone terraces, ponds and pools with green water, stone bridges. Traveling through the cave complex, you find yourself in a large hall, then in a narrow gallery - as if you were walking through a fancy palace.
But why did the creators of the caves want to give such a shape? With the help of infrared rays, it was discovered that this wall is just a natural slope of the mountain. This wall does not have a distance of five meters from the peak of the mountain. If, having reached this point, the builders did not change direction, then they could dig through the mountain.
Traces of human labor are clearly visible on this wall. Pay attention to the surface texture - what tools did the builders use to create these grooves? Purely for aesthetic reasons, or was the stone taken out all at once, in one pass? Did they use the "forests"?
Obviously, the builders specifically designed this slope of the wall. But how in those ancient times, when everything was primitive and there were no measuring instruments, they were able to calculate the slope of the mountain so accurately? This also remains a mystery.
The caves are located between the following coordinates: 29 ° 39'34 "and 29 ° 47'7"
Comrade Jiang Zemin visited the cave complex in May 2001 and wrote four hieroglyphs, giving the cave complex the name Huashan Miku. He noted that the Huashan caves are China's national treasure. In January 2003, Chinese Ambassador to the UN, Wang Yingfang, visited the complex and said that solving the mystery of these caves would put this magnificent complex on a par with the Great Wall of China and the Tomb of Emperor Qin Shihuang.
Like the Egyptian pyramids, the Huashan caves are full of mysteries. Who created these caves and when? Where are hundreds of thousands of cubic meters exported? m of stones? Why don't the historical chronicles mention these caves? Why were they discovered only in our time?
During the cleaning of the caves, ceramic products were discovered, attributed by experts to the era of the Jin dynasty (265-420), which gives grounds to attribute the caves to this time in time of creation. This conclusion is preliminary confirmed by studies of stalactites.
The caves have pools and lakes. The water in them is so transparent that the bottom is visible. Curiously, the water level in the lowest lakes is seven feet below the level of the Xinyan River, which flows in the valley of the sacred mountain.
From the very moment the caves were discovered, they talk about their man-made nature. However, it is possible that the ancient builders simply used what was already created by nature. If they really completely cut down these halls in the sacred mountain, the project is striking in its scale. After all, only stones during the drilling of caves would have to take out more than 100 thousand cubic meters from these places. However, (remember the Great Wall of China) the Chinese have never been afraid of grandiose projects. But then it remains unclear why the project, now claiming to be a new wonder of the world, was built so imperceptibly - not a single chronicle or record mentions either the creation or the use of the Huashan caves. Meanwhile, created in the depths of the sacred mountain, the caves were most likely very important for the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire. And then another assumption is born:the caves were created as a secret facility, possibly a military one, maybe troops were stationed there. Or the caves were the place of secret spiritual practices, it is quite possible that they were intended for the monastery.
However, when the caves were cleared, no traces of fires or soot were found on the walls. Again the question is: how did the inhabitants illuminate these halls?
And here's another mystery of the caves: they are almost completely devoid of echoes. For some reason, those who conceived these shelters needed complete silence, and they developed such a structure of walls and arches that the stones absorb the echo instead of reflecting it, as usual.
It is not known when exactly the caves were built or equipped, but the samples of the stones say: the caves are about 1700 years old.
Huashan (flowering mountain) is a complex of five mountains of China, which got its name due to the similarity of its peaks with a lotus flower. The Chinese say: "If you have visited the five sacred mountains of China, then you can not go to other mountains." The Huashan Mountains are one of the places of Taoist religious practices and alchemy studies. Lao Tzu himself lived in these places.
These mountains are amazingly picturesque, but the ascents to their peaks are extremely dangerous. Narrow mountain paths wind through the rocks, joining together at the highest peak - 2100 meters. Pilgrims, climbing to the top, often pass through numerous bridges hanging in sheer cliffs on chains, some of which were built many centuries ago.
Along the paths are Taoist monasteries and pagodas. Even the buildings of the 11th century (the Yuquan temple) and the palaces of the Yuan dynasty have survived. But most of the buildings belong to the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). It is no coincidence that UNESCO included Huashan in the list of natural heritage sites.
As for our caves: Huashan Caves and Huashan Mountain (which is near Xi'an, and not others) are at a distance of at least a day by rail from each other, from Mountain to Cave - 24 hours by train and several hours by bus to the place.
If the Chinese have built such a grandiose complex that can claim to be a wonder of the world, then why was this construction not covered in the chronicles of Chinese history?
From all that has been said, the conclusion suggests itself that Mount Huashan, famous for its beauty, had a special meaning for the ancient inhabitants of these places, but which one is unknown. But if we knew this, then, obviously, we would have guessed why these people needed to exert so much effort, gouging caves and passages in the sacred mountain.