In December of last year I reported about the discovery of a tomb in China which belonged to Cao Cao, the third century politician and general. Now a newspaper in China is reporting that more than 20 experts have declared the tomb to be a fake.

Today’s Modern Express reports that a tomb in Anyang, Henan Province excavated late last year that was claimed to contain the remains of legendary warrior Cao Cao is fake.

Cao Cao was one of the three warlords competing for control of China after the downfall of the mighty Han empire (BC206 – AD 220 CE). Cao’s life was popularized in The Legend of Three Kingdoms, a novelized history which has been revered as one of the four Chinese literature classics.

According to the Modern Express, 23 experts at an academic forum in Suzhou have declared that the tomb is a fake, citing anachronistic styles of engraving Chinese characters as one of the sources of their suspicion. The reports says that Chinese historians are now divided into “pro-Cao” and “anti-Cao” factions.

The article also notes that soon after the announcement, the excavation site was opened to the public, with a ticket price of 60 yuan a person.

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5,000 stone statues which are older than the Terracotta warriors, have been discovered in Hunan province, China.

They are statues of civil officials, military officers, pregnant women and all kinds of common soldiers and their height varies from 30 to 100 centimetres.

Archaeology experts in Hunan said that there are over 5,000 stone statues on the ground and a large number of stone statues buried about two meters below the ground.

The Hunan Cultural Relics department also found that the statues are the group of stone portraits with the longest history found in China by far.

Some were carved in prehistoric times about 5,000 years ago, and some were carved during the Qin, Han, Wei and Jin dynasties about 2,000 to 5,000 years ago.

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Chinese archaeologists are searching for a 15th century shipwreck that will provide evidence of commerce between China and Kenya.

The sunken ship is believed to have been part of a mighty armada commanded by Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He, who reached Malindi in 1418. According to Kenyan lore, reportedly backed by recent DNA testing, a handful of survivors swum ashore. After killing a python that had been plaguing a village, they were allowed to stay and marry local women, creating a community of African-Chinese whose descendants still live in the area.

A likely shipwreck site has been identified near Lamu island, according to Idle Farah, director general of the National Museums of Kenya, which is working on the archaeology project with its Chinese equivalent and Peking University.

“The voyages of the Portuguese and the Arabs to our coasts have long been documented,” Farah told the Guardian. “Now, by examining this shipwreck, we hope to clarify with clear evidence the first contact between China and east Africa.”

The project forms part of a recent effort by the Chinese government to celebrate the achievements of Zheng, a Muslim whose ships sailed the Indian and Pacific Oceans many decades before the exploits of more celebrated European explorers such as Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Starting in 1405, Zheng made seven journeys, taking in south-east Asia, India, the Middle East and Africa, in fleets of up to 300 huge ships with nearly 30,000 sailors in total, according to Chinese records.

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A pair of Han Dynasty tombs have been discovered in Central China’s Henan province.

The tombs were found by construction workers when digging sewer lines on June 24. A seven-story miniature clay building and more than 70 other items including jars, clay warehouses, clay dogs, clay basins and clay cups have been unearthed by archaeologists.

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Four gigantic stones salvaged from the bottom of the Yangtze River may be the remnants of a carved inscription that is more than 1,000 years old.

Three of the stones – weighing 60 tonnes, 10 tonnes and 450 tonnes – were pulled from the deep water, while another stone which broke during its salvage was successfully recovered later, Wang Youjun, an engineer in the salvage program, told Xinhua Tuesday.

The broken stones have been pulled up to the river bank, said Wang, but work remains to be done by archeologists and experts to check the stones for ancient carvings of Chinese characters.

The Yiheming Inscription that dates back to 514 A.D. was a dedication by an ancient Chinese calligrapher to a dead crane he raised. The Inscription was carved into a cliff overlooking the Yangtze River in Zhenjiang.

Historically, masters have left their calligraphy on the Inscription. But due to lightning strikes and landslides, the epitaphs have fallen into the river, according to the online encyclopedia of China’s biggest search engine, Baidu.

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