Lighting Problem

The other obvious problem is lighting. Because of such great depths, some corners at the bottom of the Longyou Grottoes are pitch-dark, thus making the delicate carving of the patterns in the caves almost impossible to complete. Then how did the ancient people solve this problem?

According to Jia Gang, a Tongji University professor specializing in civil engineering: "There should be lamps, because the cave's mouth is very small, and the sunbeam could only shine in the cave at a certain angle during a certain period of time. As one goes deeper to the cave, the light becomes dimmer. At the cave's bottom, which is usually dozen of meters from the mouth, one could hardly see anything."

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  Overall Layout?

Although many an unsolved mystery like the lighting problem still lingers concerning the grottoes' detailed building process, when the experts shift their attention to larger problems encountered during the building, they are even more amazed by even more unbelievable wonders.

The already-discovered 24 caves are distributed in Shiyanbei Village in an area of only one square kilometer. Considering such a high density, one cannot help asking whether some grottoes were meant to be together, or whether some grottoes were linked together because of basic error in the primary design.

Five of the grottoes have already been pumped out and their structures are basically the same. Although the space between the grottoes is very close, the thin walls between them were kept intentionally by the ancients. After the stilts of the No. 2 and No. 6 grottoes were cleared out, the archeologists surprisingly found that the wall between the two grottoes was only 50 centimeters (cm) thick. Without prior layout, is it possible to maintain 50-cm wall in a vast area with such precision?

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(Author: Jeff)

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