Three wooden boats roughly 1,800 years old have come out of the silt of an ancient river channel in Beijing’s Fengtai District, lying about 7 meters below the modern ground surface. One of them carries the character 官, meaning “official,” pressed into its timbers, a mark archaeologists read as a sign of state ownership. The Beijing Municipal Institute of Archaeology announced the find on Nov. 1, and fresh coverage of the excavation was still circulating on Nov. 10.
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The wrecks lie near the Lize Business District and the site of the ancient Jinzhongdu city gate, inside the former course of the Yongding River. Excavation ran from September 2025 to March 2026. All three bows point south-west, and geological analysis suggests the spot was a sheltered river bend or bay, possibly associated with a dock. That setting helps explain why three vessels ended up together rather than scattered along the channel.
Yongding River No. 2 and the 官 stamp
The best preserved of the trio, Yongding River No. 2, measures about 14 meters long and 2.5 meters across at its widest, with roughly 0.9 meter of hull still standing, according to HeritageDaily’s summary of the Beijing municipal government’s account. Ten hollow beams divide the hull into nine compartments. Xinhua reported that several seal-script characters meaning 官 are clearly impressed on this vessel, and Global Times adds that the mark was stamped on the upper parts of the compartment walls. Researchers read it as evidence that the ships were built or operated under official authority, which gives them a reference point for studying government shipbuilding and water transport.
Ding Lina, a research fellow at the institute, said in Global Times coverage that the Han-Jin wrecks in Fengtai provide the first physical evidence of ancient inland water transport in Beijing. Global Times also describes the group as the largest set of same-period inland waterway vessels found in northern China.
The other two boats tell different stories. Yongding River No. 1 was broken, yet its upper and lower sections were found stacked in an orderly way and braced by upright planks, which suggests deliberate placement rather than random collapse. Yongding River No. 3 shows cutting on part of its bow, possibly from repairs. Reporting from News of Bahrain puts the largest vessel at about 15 meters, a figure that differs from the 14 meters given for No. 2 and presumably refers to one of the other hulls.
Mortise-and-tenon hulls and the Silk Road No. 1 comparison
All three boats are flat-bottomed plank vessels, and their hull parts were joined in different ways, which a second Xinhua account says reflects mature shipbuilding skill. Global Times lists mortise-and-tenon joints, some reinforced with wooden pegs, along with a compartment system built from beams, supports, braces and partition boards. It says the techniques resemble those of the Silk Road No. 1 wreck found in Xi’an. Xinhua adds that some of the joining methods offer new evidence of cultural and technical exchange between East and West. Both comparisons are the institute’s own reading, and no full hull-by-hull technical report was available to test them.
Smaller finds fill in daily life around the river. The team recovered a 13-centimeter wooden model of an oar from No. 2, woven matting, pottery, tiles, well components, and animal bones from horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and dogs. No. 3 held the headless skeleton of a woman about 25 years old. HeritageDaily reports that her body position may be consistent with drowning, though the circumstances of her death are uncertain, and Global Times also mentions two human skulls among the remains.
A river bend, a flood and the repair-dock theory
Archaeologists propose that the damaged vessels were gathered in the sheltered bend while they waited for repair, and that a later flood submerged them and buried them quickly under sediment. Layers of silt and sand sealed the wood and limited its exposure to oxygen, which accounts for timber surviving 1,800 years in a city that has been continuously rebuilt above it. The idea is plausible and fits the cut bow on No. 3, but it remains a working interpretation rather than a demonstrated sequence.
More than ten boxes of sediment samples were collected. Planned methods include radiocarbon dating, stratigraphic and artifact analysis, and pollen, phytolith and molecular studies to reconstruct the ancient environment. The team also expects the wrecks to show how the Yongding River’s course shifted and to demonstrate that the former Yushui waterway was navigable. The vessels were lifted as complete units and will be stored under controlled temperature and humidity, with a possible public display later.
What has not been published is any radiocarbon date for the timbers, so the Han-Jin range still rests on stratigraphy and construction style. Ding Lina’s team has not said when the sediment and dating results will be released, and the reading of 官 as proof of state ownership is, for now, the institute’s interpretation of a single stamped character.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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