Sun Hua, professor of archaeology at Peking University: The possibility of finding words in Sanxingdui is relatively small
In 2020, Zhong Fangrong, a left-behind girl in the countryside, entered the Peking University School of Archaeology, Culture and Museology with the fourth highest score in the college entrance examination in Hunan Province, which became a hot news.
According to Professor Sun Hua, who teaches at Peking University's School of Archaeology and Museology, with the development of our country's cultural and museology undertaking in recent years, archaeology is indeed not as unpopular as it used to be, and even has a tendency to become more and more popular. Now the conditions for archaeology have been greatly improved. The number of students applying for archaeology majors has increased, and some high-ranking students, even provincial and municipal champions, have become archaeology majors, taking archaeology as their first choice. People used to study in universities. , The main purpose of learning knowledge is to solve the problem of eating, so the first choice for liberal arts majors in colleges is economics, law, management and other majors. With the improvement of material and economic conditions, people begin to value and like some humanities majors that can satisfy the spiritual world. Not only archaeology , as well as some disciplines such as history, philosophy, and art, have also attracted people's attention, which is a necessity of social development."
Sun Hua analyzed that at present, there are still many large-scale infrastructure constructions in our country, and urbanization has not stopped moving forward. Underground cultural relics may be exposed when construction projects break ground, which requires front-line archaeologists to deal with them. , to carry out rescue excavations.
When our archaeologists and historians are studying some historical issues, they also need to obtain new archaeological materials through active archaeological excavations.
"Due to a large number of rescue archaeological work in engineering construction, many front-line archaeologists are now exhausted and have little time to carry out active archaeological excavations. From this perspective, it is indeed necessary to cultivate more archaeological professionals. to meet the needs of social development.”
However, this does not mean that the demand for archaeological talents in society will always increase.
Sun Hua mentioned that as our urbanization process is basically completed and large-scale capital construction projects are basically completed, rescue archaeology in conjunction with construction projects will gradually shift to active archaeology to solve some important historical problems.
In the future, it may be necessary to train more archaeological, cultural and cultural relics conservation professionals to enter museums or cultural relics conservation research institutions.
A museum is a social welfare institution and place that integrates research, storage and exhibition. It not only needs museology professionals, but also archaeologists, historians, art historians and cultural relics protection experts.
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dialogue
Sanxingdui Sands' joint application for World Heritage status is complementary
Cover news: Recently, Sanxingdui Site was in the joint application of Jinsha Site. What do you think are the advantages and significance of the joint application of these two sites?
Sun Hua: I think the Sanxingdui site itself can be applied for World Heritage, because its value is enough.
The advantage of Sanxingdui and Jinsha to apply for the World Heritage Site is that these two sites are the central capital sites of two ancient countries with different development stages in the same line, and they are likely to belong to the ancient Shu culture. Linking them together forms a series of heritage sites, which can be more It shows the development process of Sichuan bronze culture and ancient Shu civilization well.
On the other hand, the joint application of Sanxingdui and Jinsha can also complement each other's advantages.
The entire city site and palace area of the Sanxingdui site are better preserved, but its later sacrificial area is in the south of the city. Most of the sacrificial area has been destroyed due to river flooding and other reasons; the palace area in the north of Jinsha site has been occupied by the city, However, the sacrificial area in the south is basically intact. This can make up for the incompleteness of the Sanxingdui sacrificial area in space, and it can also make up for or supplement the sacrificial link after the decline of Sanxingdui in time, so that we can recognize Sanxingdui to Jinsha. Historical information such as evolution.
From the perspective of urban planning, if it is only a city site in Sanxingdui, we cannot see that this urban planning is a model that the ancient Shu people have used for a long time.
Because this kind of urban planning was formed in the late Sanxingdui culture, whether it is a special case of Sanxingdui urban development or a long-term urban model that has been used for a long time needs to be explained through long-term cases.
Since the late Sanxingdui urban planning was later applied to the Jinsha site, it can be seen that the Sanxingdui people created this kind of urban planning, not only for a short time, but inherited and passed on by the people of Jinsha later.
This urban planning model is still in use in the ancient Shu Kingdom after Jinsha, and Chengdu City before and after the Warring States Period is still a continuation of the Sanxingdui urban planning model.
If the ruins of the ancient Shu capital city in Chengdu are still well preserved, from Sanxingdui to Jinsha, and then to Chengdu during the Warring States Period, it constitutes a complete process of the rise and development of the capital city of Shu and finally its incorporation into the Qin territory.
Therefore, the joint application of Sanxingdui and Jinsha is also helpful for us to understand the value and significance of Sanxingdui culture today.
Cover news: When talking about Sanxingdui, many experts mentioned that if a set of mature texts is unearthed in Sanxingdui, it will be of great significance to the solution of the mystery of Sanxingdui.
The Sanxingdui Culture has not yet found any writing, and the Twelve Bridges Culture, represented by Jinsha, has not yet found any writing.
So, with the progress of Sanxingdui archaeology, is there any possibility of discovering words in the future?
Sun Hua: Judging from the information I have obtained so far, I personally think that the possibility of Sanxingdui finding words is relatively small.
why?
The mature texts that we can see at present are not earlier than the era of King Wuding of Shang.
Before Wuding, King of Shang, there may have been written texts, because the Zhou people said, "Only the ancestors of Yin have books and books" (meaning that the ancestors of merchants have books and books), and books need to be recorded in words. From this perspective In other words, there was a possibility of the existence of writing in the early Shang Dynasty, just because the writing was not popular at that time, and the writing materials at that time had not been discovered by us.
The mature Chinese writing system as we know it today spread from east to west in the Shang Dynasty.
Sanxingdui Culture is roughly equivalent to the end of the Xia Dynasty to the end of the Shang Dynasty. The Erlitou Culture in the Central Plains before it and the Shang culture in the Zhengzhou period have not yet found definite written evidence; although the Shang culture in the Anyang period had written words, However, Anyang is far away from Sanxingdui, and there is also the Zhou culture in Shaanxi. Whether people in Sanxingdui can or need to learn the use of characters from businessmen is still a question mark.
However, after the Sanxingdui Culture, the Twelve Bridge Culture represented by the Jinsha site is more likely to appear in writing.
The Jinsha site is equivalent to around the early and middle stages of the Western Zhou Dynasty. During this period, the bronze wares cast by the fisherman at the Baoji Fisherman's Cemetery in Shaanxi had already been cast with characters. "They are a branch of the Twelve Bridges culture centered on Jinsha".
Because the national emblem of the fishermen shoots fish with arrows, which is very similar to the national emblems of Jinsha and Sanxingdui shooting fish with arrows; in addition, in the tombs of Yubo in the cemetery of the fishermen, small bronze figures similar to Sanxingdui and Jinsha were also found , a bird-headed scepter, and many sharp-bottomed objects.
It is very likely that the ancient Shu Kingdom in the Jinsha period was closely related to the Western Zhou Dynasty, so an ethnic group of the Ancient Shu Kingdom was arranged at the mouth of the Qinling Valley near Wangji of Zhou. This ethnic group had a lot of contact with the Zhou people and quickly mastered Zhou Human text.
It is entirely possible that the ancient Shu nobles in the capital city of Jinsha, Chengdu, through their branch fishermen, also mastered writing.
Cover news: What would the characters mastered by ancient Shu people in the Jinsha period be like?
Sun Hua: The script they master should not be a new script, but an ancient Chinese character in the Central Plains.
Because until the Warring States Period, in the State of Shu or Bashu, their ruling class still used ancient Chinese characters, that is, the Chu family of characters at that time.
Since they have mastered ancient Chinese characters, there is no need for the ancient Shu people to develop another set of characters.
Of course, the "Bashu symbols" that were popular in the Bashu culture later were the symbols derived from the original records of the ancient Shu people during the Sanxingdui culture period. They were preserved and carried forward as a tradition.
In the Sanxingdui burial pit, a jade sac with pictures of sacrificial scenes was once unearthed. There are several strange symbols on it. They neither pay attention to symmetry nor rhythm. They do not seem to be part of the picture. They may be This kind of primitive memoir expresses some kind of meaning symbol.
These symbols are small in number and simple in combination, and they are not a literal character that records the language.
Therefore, based on the above judgments, we believe that the ancient Shu people in the Jinsha period were very likely to have mastered writing, namely ancient Chinese characters, but the possibility of Sanxingdui people mastering writing is still small.
Cover reporter Zhang Jie Xu Yuyang