2,700-year-old gold 'cat paws' become online hit

TAIYUAN-Four cat paw-shaped gold ornaments, currently on display in a museum in North China's Shanxi province, have become the latest sensation on Chinese social media.

The ornaments, believed by experts to date back some 2,700 years, quickly stole the hearts of Chinese people online due to their adorable appearance, one metacarpal pad and four toes as seen on the back paws of domestic cats, after pictures and videos surfaced on the internet.

They are from a collection of five similarly shaped ornaments unearthed last year from a Zhou Dynasty (c. 11th century-256 BC) tomb at the Beibai'e cemetery site in Shanxi's Yuanqu county, says Yang Jiyun, a researcher from the Shanxi provincial institute of archaeology and leader of the site's excavation project.

The ornaments were found by the waist of the male tomb owner's remains, leading archaeologists' conjecture that they could have been decorations on the owner's waistband.

While some online suggest that the ornaments were proof of "China's age-old cat-loving tradition", experts have yet to confirm whether the artifacts were really based on felines.

Yang says that researchers are also working to determine the gold content of the ornaments.

The Beibai'e cemetery site is home to a cluster of Zhou Dynasty tombs. Excavation from April to December last year led to the discovery of more than 500 artifacts, including pottery, jadeware and bronzeware, from nine tombs at the site.