More than 500 ancient cultural relics have recently been excavated in Longling County in southwest China's Yunnan Province.

The relics include a wide variety of stoneware, especially stone axes of different shapes, and examples of pottery such as pots, bowls and basins.

The relics can be dated back to the Xia and Shang dynasties (approximately 21st-11th century BC) and will be of great help for research into the history of the Chinese nation, according to archeologists.

Some relics of the two dynasties were buried in the same layer, indicating that Chinese tribes had lived there thousands of years ago, archeologists have said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 28, 2002)