Mysterious Longyou Grottoes

Longyou Grottoes amaze with their scale and magnificence, delicate design, construction complexity, and high precision. The Chinese consider them the Wonder of the Ancient World.

Huge and impressive, Longyou caves can be found in China, in the province of Zhejiang. These grottoes, as some researchers believe, are more than two thousand years old.

These caves are one of the largest archaeological excavations that securely store the secrets of our ancestors, and cause bewilderment of all experts and specialists who examine them.

The best curious minds from all over the world are racking their brains over the idea of how they were built, and what their purpose was.

The history of the cave’s discovery is also not quite common.

In 1992, Wu Anai, an incredibly curious villager, decided to dry a pond. The pond for the inhabitants of the village was the object of mystical stories, because, according to a legend, it was bottomless. But the fantastic theories did not satisfy Wu Anai, and so he decided to completely dry the pond. It turned out that it was not a pond at all, but a flooded entrance to an old hidden cave. The villager reported the discovery to the authorities.

Since then, more than 30 grottoes have been found with a total area of about thirty thousand square meters. Each grotto, carved in hard rocks, stretches to a depth of 30 meters under the ground.

Huge columns serve as supports for the ceilings. Inside, the wall and the supports are covered with parallel carved lines.

In the course of twenty years of research, the secret of these grottoes’ origin and purpose has not been solved. Even a rough estimate of the volume of construction works in the five largest grottoes is impressive. The amount of rock removed from the grottoes was around a million cubic meters. If the work was done manually, then more than a thousand workers were needed to accomplish it. Nothing like possible tools was found throughout the excavation area either.

In addition, scientists are perplexed about symmetry and similarity between the various grottoes. An amazing floor-to-ceiling finish, consisting of lines evenly angled at 60 degrees, is mysteriously wonderful! The caves, located at great depths, are in total darkness. Nevertheless, even the darkest areas are decorated with lines.

The largest cave gained fame as an "underground palace". Its size is amazing: 12,600 sq.m. The artificial origin of the caves is confirmed by the presence of stone bridges over the river, stairs, passages and large columns.

Despite years of exploration, no answers have appeared to explain the hidden secrets of the Longyou caves. A thrilling mystery that surrounds this miracle once again proves that the ancient people possessed solid knowledge of techniques and methods we still have yet to discover!

“The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” Albert Einstein