http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rock_climbing
x-posted to /r/climbing
I'm scouring the internet trying to find an example of the Chinese watercolors that depict men climbing rocks, dated to 400 BC. I can't find anything. Every single climbing history description claims there's these 400 BC watercolors, but no one cites anything about them. I don't even really need an actual photograph, just information on where they would be located (Chinese history museum?). There's a claim for this evidence, but I can't find it. Does anyone know anything about this, besides just citing book after book that mentions they exist? Where's the primary source? Would this be during dynasties in China, what historical point in Chinese history would lead me closer to a primary source?
I searched for every term I can think of in Chinese and couldn't find anything, then I realized paper didn't even exist back then and most Chinese 2D art from that period were on silk or walls. Silk being organic material rarely survive that long so finding any painting from that period would be very rare. Digging further I found a painting called Man riding a dragon from 475-221 BC and said to be the oldest painting from China. They couldn't even give an exact date. The figures are drawn from lines with a few shading (perhaps the colors have faded over the years), hardly "watercolor". So painting of rock climbing from 400BC seem very unlikely.