The Star-shaped Towers of the Tribal Corridor of Southwest China

Hundreds of free-standing tall towering stone structures, some of the most astonishing star shapes, are still standing, in the remote, earthquake prone, mountains of Western Sichuan and Southeastern Tibet, part of a region also called Kham. I had stumbled by coincidence upon them, but I later learned that no one knew who had built them, or why, or when. After 11 years of research, hampered by the lack of local written language, and after sending 68 samples of wood, collected from their now broken beams, for carbon-dating, I was able to establish that the towers still standing were built from 200 AD to 1600 AD, they must have been thousands, and they span over a territory large as a third of France. I was also able to determine that, in fact, they belong to 4 different groups, each located in a specific geographical pocket that corresponds to the traditional lands of an ancient tribe.