An international call from Liu Haiwang, PhD, senior researcher at China’s Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, invited T.R. Kidder to join his archaeological team and different graduate students to explore a preserved farming village, Sanyangzhuang, buried 2000 years ago by the flooding of the Yellow River. A construction team notified the Henan Province archaeological institute of the find, which then sent Liu to investigate. He dated those remains to the Han Dynasty, which ruled from 206 B.C. to A.D. 220, following China’s unification. So far, four extended-family compounds, about 500 feet apart, have emerged. Each has a series of rooms and covered front and back courtyards inside an earthen wall. Toilets and deep, brick-lined wells are set in surrounding open areas. Because fossils of mulberry leaves, signaling silk production, appear at Sanyangzhuang along with copper coins, Kidder says the area may mark the beginning of China’s Silk Road trade.