According to some authorities the most ancient Chinese representations of sexual subject matter date from the Tan dynasty (ca. 206 B.C.-A.D. 24) "Excavations from that period have unearthed bricks from tombs and gifts buried with the dead which show definite sexual motifs." In view of the great antiquity of other aspects of Chinese erotic life these sexual motifs do not seem particularly ancient. The sexual manuals in China suggest that various forms of sexual imagery would have been employed two or three thousand years before the birth of Christ.