CultureCentral Asia
The library cave at Dunhuang
Fifty thousand documents walled up and forgotten for nine hundred years
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The Diamond Sutra of 868 is printed from woodblocks, complete with colophon and date. The documents include Buddhist scriptures, contracts, dream manuals and accounts — Silk Road daily life in unusual detail. Most were carried out of China by European expeditions in the decades after the find, and are scattered across museums worldwide.
For children
Beside the Silk Road a room full of manuscripts was walled up around the year 1000 and forgotten. When it was opened in 1900 it held fifty thousand documents in seventeen languages — among them the world's oldest dated printed book, from 868.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org