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Ancient Hun capital to be designated a UNESCO world heritage site
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Shaanxi province, located in the People’s Republic of China, is preparing to apply for UNESCO world heritage listing for its Tongwancheng, the world’s only ruins that the ancient Huns left behind, trt.net.tr reported.
Zhang Tinghao, director of the Shaanxi Cultural Relics Bureau, announced that they wanted to see the only remaining city of the ancient Huns, Tongwancheng, to be proclaimed as a UNESCO world heritage site. “The ruined town will give important clues to the study of the Huns who disappeared nearly 1000 years ago,” said the director.
The ruins of Tongwancheng was discovered a few years ago, and it was a great sensation among archaeologists. The ruins of the city has been served as a source of many valuable findings and scientific discoveries about both the origin and the culture of Huns.
According to Chinese media, the national heritage park, which will include an underground museum, will help preserve local Chinese culture and attract tourists to the area in north-western China.
Shaanxi province urges China to declare Tongwancheng a UNESCO world heritage site, because the ancient city has been under the threat of desertification. The 1 600 year-old Hun city is the only Hun cultural heritage site that has been preserved for posterity in relatively good condition. The State Council already designated Tongwancheng as a cultural relics under top state protection in 1996.
Tongwancheng is located about 500 kilometres from the provincial capital city of Hsian. According to Chinese experts, Tongwancheng is the largest city ever built by a minority in the Chinese empire, which has remained relatively intact.
The Huns were a nomadic group of people who are known to have lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century. Contemporary literary sources do not have a clear consensus of the Hun origin, but several scholar claim that they first lived in the territory of China.
“The Huns played an important role in the world history, especially in the shaping of the European nationalities and the development of European history,” said Lin Gan, a professor specializing in the study of Huns at the Inner Mongolian University.
Chinese were so afraid of Huns that the Great Wall was built in order to protect the Chinese state and empire against the Huns’ raids and invasions. Later, Huns invaded and conquered several Chinese territories, but suffered a defeat against the troops of the Han dynasty in China, and, as a result of the battle, they became separated.
Attila the Hun was also known as Flagellum Dei , which means the ‘Scourge of God.’ With him at the lead, the Huns were one of the biggest threats faced by the Roman Empire. Although he was famously defeated by the Romans under Flavius Aetius and their Visigothic allies under Theoderic I at the Battle of Catalaunian Plains, Attila the Hun and his warriors were still a threat to the Western Roman Empire.
http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/end-huns-death-attila-and-fall-hunnic-empire-007740
Fascinating, thank You.
Attila or his Hunnic predecessors came to the West when the Roman empire was disintegrating, by that time it has been slowly ‘rotting’ for about 500 years. Corruption, greed, love of power were the main reasons. Just watch the Medici or Resurrection or other movies on Netflix. Even though some of these movies depict a bit later period and certainly not fully historically vetted, they still show what was going on in the so called West at their respective time. And they could give us some ideas what was going on earlier in the times of the Huns also, about which period we have even less records. Those who came from the East, like the Huns were not in any way worse than the system of the West or the so called ‘barbars of the North’. To call them barbaric is misleading. To call them nomads is probably better. They had their own culture, customs and belief system which though different than those of the West, shouldn’t be looked down on. Barbar in Greek means not of us.