Yin Ruins: The Mysteries and Answers of the Shang Dynasty
China News Weekly reporter/Li Jing
Published in the 1078th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on February 6, 2023
A lifelike bronze casting mold with horns, fangs, and facial features resembling a human face, it was scattered in the ocher-red soil together with tens of thousands of furnace wall fragments, millstones, and modeling tools.
This is a super-large bronze casting base, with at least seven independent copper casting workshops, with a fine division of labor, including a working area, a living area, a sacrificial area, and a tomb area. The factory sheds, post-bronze ware processing plants, copper casting relics waste... They all come from the Shang Dynasty 3,500 years ago.
Up to now, the Yin Ruins site is still being "updated".
On November 10 this year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage held a work meeting on the progress of the major "Archaeological China" project, announcing important achievements and new progress in the archaeological and oracle bone inscriptions research at Yinxu in Anyang City, Henan Province.
The largest bronze casting base in the late Shang Dynasty was discovered at the Xindian Bronze Casting Site in the peripheral area of the Yin Ruins; the Taojiaying Site enriched the research content of the settlement society around Huanbei Commercial City in the mid-Shang Dynasty; The residence of the "family... In the Yin Ruins, there are newly discovered remains of large pools, waterways and related buildings in the palace and ancestral temple area.
The Shang Dynasty was once regarded as a legend, until "a piece of oracle bone shocked the world", and the mystery of this ancient dynasty was unveiled.
Afterwards, several generations of archaeologists excavated here. Since 1928, a prosperous city has been gradually restored, and the real and vivid face of Shang Dynasty civilization has gradually emerged in front of people today.
As the earliest excavated capital city site in China, and also the site with the longest archaeological work, Yin Ruins archaeology is almost the epitome of the development of modern Chinese archaeology.
There is a generally accepted evaluation in the Chinese archaeological circles - the greatest value of the discovery of the Yin Ruins is to make the history of the Shang Dynasty a credible history.
Starting from the Yin Ruins, there is a fulcrum for tracing back to earlier civilizations. Similarly, starting from the Yin Ruins, one can have a clearer understanding of Chinese history after the Shang civilization.
It is not only the active acceptance of modern Western field archaeology by Chinese academic circles, but also clearly shapes and affects the character of Chinese archaeology.
"The mysterious bird of destiny descended to give birth to a merchant"
In the autumn of 1928, Li Ji, who was negotiating with the Freer Museum of Art in the United States to cooperate in archaeological excavations, received a telegram from Fu Sinian, director of the Institute of History and Language, Academia Sinica.
At that time, as the first Ph.D. in anthropology in China, Li Ji returned to China and taught at Nankai University for only two years. He had just completed the excavation in Xiyin Village, Xia County, Yuncheng, Shanxi Province. scientific archaeology.
Fu Sinian's telegram invited Li Ji to meet in Guangzhou. The Institute of History and Philology had just been established, and he was looking for a director for the archaeological team. At the beginning of the establishment of the Institute, excavating the Yin Ruins in Anyang was included in an important plan.
"The mysterious bird of destiny came down to give birth to Shang, and the house is boundless in the land of Yin." The pre-Qin poetry book "Shang Song·Xuan Bird" once recorded a mythical story of the Shang Dynasty, and the later Sima Qian wrote "Historical Records·Yin Benji". Sima Qian did not describe much about the dynasty that was thousands of years earlier than himself, except for recording the succession of the throne.
Even if there are other historical materials and legends, people can only vaguely know that this dynasty, which has gone through 17 generations and 31 emperors, has ruled for more than 500 years. There was a Shang king named Pan Geng, who drove sheep with his family and people, and went back and forth. Come under the Taihang, reclaim wasteland, smelt bronze, and build palaces, turning this silent wasteland into a prosperous city.
Divination and divination, avoiding evil and praying for luck, priests carved important events on oracle and animal bones... It is also said that after the Zhou Dynasty destroyed Yin, the people were displaced, and the place was gradually reduced to ruins. The eternal mystery under the loess.
When the ancient school of vertical and horizontal historiography was doubted at the beginning of the last century, whether the Shang Dynasty really existed or not became a question in many people's minds.
At the end of the 1920s amidst internal and external troubles, the Institute of History and Philology has shouldered the responsibility of reconstructing ancient history since its establishment in Guangzhou.
If history is defined as written records, in Fu Sinian's view, Anyang is the best choice to find the connection between prehistory and Chinese historical periods.
At that time, the oracle bone inscriptions had been discovered for nearly 30 years. They were first regarded as the medicinal material "keel" by the common people, and later bought by epigraphers and antique dealers. The real location of the oracle bone inscriptions was also clarified in the process. That is, the current Xiaotun Village in Anyang, Henan Province, and the landforms around Xiaotun Village are consistent with the records of "Huanshui Nanyin Ruins" in "Historical Records Xiang Yu Benji", thus confirming that Anyang Xiaotun and its nearby Huanbin area are merchants. The Yin Ruins where Wang Pangeng moved.
Excavating the Yin Ruins was already the expectation of the entire academic circle with epigraphy as the core at that time.
In October 1928, the excavation of the Yin Ruins finally appeared in the much-anticipated stage. It was presided over by Dong Zuobin, the first generation of ancient historians in China. Li Ji and Liang Siyong, trained in archaeology, presided over 14 archaeological excavations at the Yin Ruins.
In the past 10 years, the archaeological team of the former Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica has excavated the Yin Ruins 15 times, with a total area of more than 46,000 square meters.
Within the scope of the Yin Ruins, sites such as the Xiaotun Palace Area, the Northwest Gang Mausoleum Area of Houjiazhuang, and the Nanba Terrace of the Military Officer Village were excavated.
Among them, there were three excavations with the greatest harvest: in 1929, Li Ji presided over the third excavation of Yin Ruins, and unearthed the famous "Four Editions of Big Turtle".
In the 14th excavation in April 1936, a chariot and horse burial pit with a complete carriage and four horses was discovered.
In June 1936, the last excavation of the Yin Ruins yielded the most important results—17,096 pieces of oracle bones with characters.
A Yin-Shang dynasty that had been lost for 3,000 years appeared in front of the world as if from heaven. Before that, the available history of China was two hundred years after the demise of the Yin-Shang Dynasty.
The excavation in Anyang turned legends such as Tang Fajie, Pan Geng's move to Yin, and Wu Dingbai into verifiable historical facts one by one, and the history of Chinese civilization has been pushed forward for hundreds of years.
This excavation caused a sensation in the world and led to a great change in the field of historiography.
It is the first civilization with written records in the entire East Asia region, and it also proves that there are almost no mistakes in the royal genealogy of the Yin Dynasty recorded in Sima Qian's "Historical Records".
In fact, almost all the names of the emperors recorded in the "Historical Records" can be found in the archaeological specimens of the Yin Ruins - oracle inscriptions.
In the winter of 1936, Li Ji was invited to give lectures in Britain and Sweden, where he delivered a speech on important discoveries in Anyang.
In the following year, in his speech on the 300th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University, the French sinologist Pelliot praised the archaeological excavation of the Institute of History and Philology as "the most important archaeological excavation in Asia in recent years. Chinese scholars have obtained a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. There are a large number of reliable materials of Chinese history in 1990.” American scholars compared Yin Ruins to the ruins of Troy, because both of them turned legends into historical facts.
The continuity of excavations has drawn wide attention to field archeology, and the discipline has gradually gained popularity. Scholars at the Institute of History and Philology have successively proposed a series of new theoretical frameworks, such as Liang Siyong's "three layers" and Fu Sinian's "Yi Xia East and West". "Said" and the pottery classification method advocated by Li Ji, these theories and methods have far-reaching influence and laid the foundation of Chinese archaeology.
It is also through these 15 excavations that Li Ji and Liang Siyong brought out a group of fledgling young people. They have similar interests and close relationships, and they are called "Ten Archaeological Brothers".
In the long years that followed, most of them grew up to be archaeological masters on both sides of the strait, such as Hu Houxuan, a master of oracle bone inscriptions research, Yin Da, who successively served as the deputy director of the Institute of History of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the director of the Institute of Archaeology, and Shi Zhang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Such as, high to find.
They spread branches and leaves, and the echelon and team of Chinese archaeological talents were gradually established. Therefore, Yin Ruins is known as the cradle of modern Chinese archaeology.
If the excavation of Xiyin Village in Xia County is the warm-up of modern Chinese archaeology, then the archaeological excavation of the Yin Ruins site can be said to be the real starting point, and Chinese scientific archeology started from here.
Excavation of ancient tomb "recognized" the owner of the tomb
In May 1976, both the era and the climate were getting warmer. Zheng Zhenxiang, the first generation of archaeologists in New China, brought a team of scholars and technicians from the Anyang Archaeological Workstation to the post in the northwest of Xiaotun Village.
The shovels of the craftsmen beat down again and again, and then pulled out gently. The rammed earth in this place is extremely deep. It has been more than a day, and there is no harvest.
A rod of 3.5 meters could not reach the bottom, so they dug down 3 meters, and then connected the rod with a twisted rod. The three rods were connected together and continued to drill down. When the distance from the surface was 6 meters, the rammed earth turned into soft mud, and the drilling work became more strenuous. When the probe reached 7 meters with difficulty, the probe rod suddenly dropped 1.2 meters quickly, and people's hearts were raised.
Then I felt that the probe rod had touched the bottom, and I carefully lifted the probe shovel up. The shovel was filled with bright red patent leather and an emerald green jade pendant.
Here is the tomb!
If the excavation by Li Ji and others was the beginning of scientific archaeology at the Yin Ruins, then in April 1950, the newly established Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences restarted the excavation of the Yin Ruins site and entered the second stage.
Until 1979, more than 40 excavations were carried out in the second stage of archaeology, and more than 20 excavation sites were excavated.
Now that Shang has entered reality from ancient history, the affirmation of "Historical Records·Yin Benji" will inevitably lead to the understanding that "Historical Records·Xia Benji" is also a credible history.
Therefore, in the 1950s, the archaeological community proposed the topic of Xia culture exploration, and people began to trace upwards from the Yin Ruins.
In 1950, Zhengzhou Shangcheng, the ruins of the capital city of the early and middle Shang Dynasty, was discovered.
In 1959, when Xu Xusheng, a famous Chinese archaeologist, led a team to investigate the "Xiaxu" in western Henan, he discovered the Erlitou site, which opened the prelude to the exploration of Xia culture.
The Yin Ruins became the cornerstone of the later "Xiaxia" road.
However, looking for Xia must first study a good business.
The second stage of excavation has the basis of predecessors, so it can go one step further.
From the spring of 1958 to the winter of 1961, the Anyang work team initially figured out the scope and layout of the Yin Ruins through excavations in 13 locations including the west of Xiaotun Village. And preliminary research on slavery in the Yin Dynasty provides more detailed information.
In March 1961, the State Council included the Yin Ruins in the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units and announced the protection scope of the Yin Ruins.
In the past ten years, the most concerned one is undoubtedly the tomb of Fuhao discovered in 1976 by a team led by Zheng Zhenxiang.
The location of the tomb belongs to the palace and ancestral temple area of the Yin Ruins. Zheng Zhenxiang did not expect to find a tomb in the palace area. This is an accident and a surprise.
The burial objects in the tomb are extremely rich, and it is not an exaggeration to describe it as dazzling. There are 210 bronze containers buried in the tomb, plus a large number of weapons, tools, etc., and the total weight of the bronzes reaches 1.6 tons.
The more than 750 pieces of jade and stone ware buried in the tomb allowed scholars at that time to see the rich categories of jade ware in the Shang Dynasty.
The most exciting thing, of course, is the inscription "Fu Hao" or "Good" on the 109 bronze wares. The owner of the tomb is Fu Hao, the queen of Wuding who appeared hundreds of times in oracle bone inscriptions.
Tang Jigen, a student of Zheng Zhenxiang and later the captain of the Anyang Yinxu archaeological team, told China News Weekly: "The most exciting thing for an archaeologist is to suddenly 'recognize' the owner of the tomb during the process of digging an ancient tomb."
Zheng Zhenxiang once said in an interview that as early as when he was studying oracle bone inscriptions at Peking University, he knew about women's goodness.
In ancient society, "the great affairs of the country lie in sacrifice and military affairs".
According to the inscriptions on oracle bones, Fu Haowen was the main sacrifice, and a large number of bronze ritual vessels unearthed from the tomb also confirmed this point. She led troops to fight in the east and west, and at the most one time, she led more than 13,000 troops, many All the male generals were under her leadership. This was also the battle with the largest number of people in the war recorded in the oracle bone inscriptions. The copper axe with the inscription "Fu Hao" was a symbol of military power.
In the "Wuding Zhongxing" dynasty, Fu Hao played an extremely important role, and she had a very close relationship with Wu Ding. After Fu Hao passed away, Wu Ding asked her several times in inscriptions if she was well in another world.
Perhaps because of this, Wu Ding went against the law and did not bury Fu Hao in the royal tomb area on the north bank of the Huan River, but in the palace area where he handled state affairs.
In order to offer sacrifices to her frequently, a rare hall was built above the mausoleum in the palace area.
The stars have changed, the glorious dynasty has long been hidden in history, and the old thoughts have returned to dust, but the foundation site of this hall of worship has protected the queen's tomb - once the tomb robbers of the past generations dug up the foundation of the house, they thought there was nothing underneath. What happened, this made Fu Hao sleep peacefully for 3200 years.
In 1976, the tomb of Fuhao was listed as one of the "Top Ten National Archaeological Achievements". It is also the only tomb of royal family members of the Shang Dynasty that has been found since the scientific excavation of the Yin Ruins. Since 1928, it is one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the Yinxu palace and ancestral temple area.
A few years ago, CCTV's "National Treasure" program showed a number of national treasures in Fuhao's tomb, such as a uniquely shaped and exquisitely carved ivory cup, a jade phoenix pendant with three flower crowns on its head, four bronze mirrors and cosmetic items. The unique jade palette and nearly 500 bone hairpins show the pursuit of beauty in the Shang Dynasty.
One of the cute bronze owl statues can be called a masterpiece of ancient Chinese bronze culture. After the broadcast of "National Treasure", it became an "Internet celebrity".
complex business culture
How to divide the ruins of the Shang Dynasty has been a heated debate in the academic circles.
It has been confirmed that the Yin Ruins are the ruins of the late Shang Dynasty, so where are the ruins of the early and middle periods?
When Zhengzhou Shangcheng and "Erlitou" were discovered, people thought that the former was a Chinese merchant and the latter an early merchant.
Zou Heng, a professor at Peking University, revised the periodization theory of Shang in the late 1970s, that is, the Yin Ruins belonged to the late Shang, Zhengzhou Shangcheng belonged to the early Shang, and the Shang Dynasty was only divided into early and late Shang. This view is accepted by most scholars in the academic circle.
In 1982, when Tang Jigen sat in the classroom of the Department of Archeology of Peking University, he learned this theory.
But at the master’s level, he stared at the pottery sherds of the early Shang and late Shang, and he always felt that there were some pottery and pottery that were neither like the early Shang nor the late Shang. What era did they belong to?
When doing his master's thesis, he clearly wrote his conclusion: "There is still a certain gap in time between the early Shang culture represented by Zhengzhou Mall and the late Shang culture represented by Yinxu."
After the 1980s, the archaeology of Yin Ruins officially entered the third stage. Accompanied by a new generation of archaeologists who are more adept at asking questions and the cooperation of more disciplines, the Yin Ruins of this period gradually revealed the culture and culture of merchants thousands of years ago. Life.
In 1990, Tang Jigen, who graduated with a master's degree, was assigned to the Anyang workstation of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
He was always thinking about the missing part of the mid-Shang Dynasty, and he also published some articles, but sooner or later, the idea of the two issues was deeply ingrained. Without solid physical evidence-the city sites and palaces in the mid-Shang Dynasty, he would not be able to get a response from his peers.
In those years, whenever he was free, he took an archaeological team, "carrying a broken woven bag", picking up pottery fragments all the way, from one village to another.
Until one day in November 1999, Tang Jigen, who had become the head of Anyang Workstation, was visiting relatives in Beijing when he suddenly received a call from a colleague: "I found the city."
This is the famous Huanbei Commercial City—located in the northeast of the Yinxu Reserve, slightly overlapping with the Yinxu, with a total area of 4.7 square kilometers. This discovery filled the gap in the middle of the Shang Dynasty, and the chronological framework of the Shang Dynasty changed again.
According to "Shangshu" and "Historical Records" and other documents: After the establishment of the Shang Dynasty, the capital was moved five times. Among them, the "Xiang" land moved by the thirteenth generation Wang Hedanjia and the "Yin" land moved by Pan Geng were both in Anyang.
"Huanbei Commercial City is likely to be 'Xiang'." Tang Jigen told China News Weekly, "Its palaces are very well preserved, and its overall structure is very similar to today's 'siheyuan'. The architectural model of Chinese culture for thousands of years, It was like this until the Ming and Qing Dynasties.”
In the mid-Shang Dynasty, there was a capital city in northern Henan, which finally became a testable history.
In 2006, Huanbei Commercial City was listed as part of the Yin Ruins site, and together with the Yin Ruins, it became China's 33rd world cultural heritage.
At this time, Shang's face became clearer.
For example, Shang attached great importance to sacrifice and killed for it.
According to incomplete statistics, there are 14,197 people involved in human sacrifice in oracle bone inscriptions, of which 9,021 were used in the Wuding period alone.
From the perspective of modern people, its cruelty is beyond doubt.
However, He Yuling, a researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and deputy director of the Anyang Workstation, told China News Weekly: "We need to look at this period of history objectively, rather than blindly criticizing it. It may be a necessary experience in the process of human development. stage. The same phenomenon also existed in Central America, South America, including Indian civilization or Mayan civilization, and even in the 14th and 15th centuries, there were still ways of human sacrifice.”
In the late Shang Dynasty, the sacrifice of killing gradually shrank on a large scale.
In the Western Zhou Dynasty, this phenomenon only appeared occasionally.
After the Western Zhou Dynasty, figurines gradually appeared in tombs. At first, they were wooden figurines. After the Warring States period, pottery figurines appeared.
Perhaps, this is the course of civilization.
That's why Confucius said, "restrain oneself and return to ritual", "I follow the Zhou Dynasty", after the Western Zhou Dynasty, the era of killing people and offering sacrifices came to an end.
In He Yuling's view, the biggest feature of Shang culture is openness, inclusiveness and respect for etiquette. Because of this, after the bronze casting technology was passed from the West to the Central Plains through the Hexi Corridor, in order to meet the etiquette regulation and social governance needs of the nobility, the bronze culture was developed in the Shang Dynasty. When it reached its peak, the most well-known stepmother Wu Dafang Ding came from the Yin Ruins.
Different from bronze forging tools and decorations in the West, Chinese bronze wares are mostly related to food and drink. The original function of the tripod is to cook meat, the gui (guǐ) is used to hold food, and the goblet (gū) 斝 (jiǎ) is used to hold wine. As well as wine vessels for drinking, jue, bu (bù), and 罍 (léi).
In this series of complex production processes, the bronze ware gradually became a specific vessel rich in religious belief, political will and spiritual connotation.
It is not only a symbol of identity and political status, but also an important expression of will.
Behind almost every bronze ware unearthed from the Yin Ruins, there are rich historical stories. These bronze ware with many meanings brought a new look to the bronze civilization in the entire Yangtze River Basin during the process of the Shang civilization going south.
businessman
After more than ninety years of excavation, is there anything to extend?
He Yuling often encounters such questions.
In fact, less than 5% of Yin Ruins, which covers an area of 36 square kilometers, has been excavated so far.
Just in this limited few percent, there are quite a lot of mysteries to be solved, which is exactly the charm of archaeology.
Li Zhipeng, a zooarchaeologist at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is still puzzled by a sacrificial pit. Hundreds of cow jaws without front teeth are buried in this pit. What is even more strange is that there are rotating steps leading to the bottom of the pit Thousands of front teeth of cattle are placed on the steps from high to low.
"Why use the lower jaw of a cow for sacrifice? Why are there so many front teeth of cows piled up? Could it be that the cow teeth were pulled out specifically to show their status and wealth? But these speculations cannot be conclusive, and we need further research in the future." Li Zhipeng told China News Weekly "explain.
Digging with shovel after shovel, although "what is unknown is far more than what is known", according to the current excavation of less than 5% of the Yin Ruins, scholars are still trying to get a glimpse of people's lives at that time, not only the battles and sacrifices of emperors, generals and ministers, but also There are small details of ordinary people's daily life.
It is in these daily life that one can paint a freehand picture of the Shang Dynasty.
The businessman has his hair up, wears colorful clothes, and lives in a "siheyuan" with a rammed earth platform and a thatched roof with double eaves and four slopes, and uses a relatively complete underground drainage system.
At that time, the climate in the Central Plains was much warmer than it is now, wild holy buffaloes could still be hunted on the vast land, and tapirs, rhinos and Asian elephants were also found in the capital.
They use low tables, so they always sit on their knees. They usually eat millet. They also have raised cattle, sheep, and pork to supplement protein, as well as game such as venison and rabbit meat. They use seashells as trading currency. It should also be buried to show the "glory and wealth" of the tomb owner in this life and future generations.
Farmers use axes, chisels, shovels, and adzes to plow the fields, and there are skilled craftsmen in the jade, pottery, and bone-making handicraft workshops.
Bronze ware is a heavy industry, and the bronze ware workshop area can cover 500,000 to 600,000 square meters.
It is a pity that merchants don’t live long. The average age of death for men is about 35 years old, most of them are only 1.55-1.65 meters tall, and women are 1.55-1.59 meters tall, and they often die around the age of 30.
It was a very hierarchical society, the nobles used bronzes, and the ordinary people used pottery.
The horse-drawn carriages used by nobles and troops for military campaigns have exquisite bronze ornaments on their bodies. They drive on cobbled roads with a maximum width of 15 meters, and there are 1.8-meter-wide sidewalks on both sides.
Businessmen believe in the destiny, but with the change of time, the pottery used for sacrifices has changed from large to small, from exquisite to rough, and people's worship of natural gods and ancestors has finally changed from awe to detachment.
They proudly called their country "Dayi Shang".
In East Asia, the "Dayi Merchants" was the most powerful country, and was the political, economic, cultural, and military center at that time. Through its unique governance model, it controlled, managed, and fought against the surrounding areas.
They also created the earliest written documents.
The Shang Dynasty in Chinese history, from the mere 3,000 words written by Sima Qian, has been transformed into visible and tangible bronzes, jades, pottery, and oracle bones... It is also the success of the Yin Ruins that made Chinese archeology the day it started. Since then, regardless of the research object or method, it has embarked on a road of "proving classics and supplementing history" that is different from other countries and regions.
Zhang Guangzhi, a Chinese-American scholar, once called this "archaeological prejudice." He said with regret: "If the first site excavated for several years is not the Yin Ruins...the generation of experts trained is not in history but in history." It is in the field of prehistory, and it is very likely that the Chinese Archaeological Society will go on another path. The Chinese Archaeological Society focuses on the study of the ecological environment, plants, animals, and soil, and focuses on the analysis of pottery fragments, ruins, and stone tools. as in the West."
Scholars today can already respond to this kind of "regret" frankly.
"It must be noted that the theoretical development of archeology is mainly in the United States, and there is a huge difference in the academic background between China and the United States." He Yuling told China News Weekly.
Before the "Mayflower" landed in North America in 1620, the Indians on the North American continent had not yet produced a unified script, let alone ancient books.
Therefore, American archaeology has had no books to read since its inception. Its reference is not historical documents or inscriptions, but ethnic surveys, geographical studies, and ethnography, which belong to the broader anthropology.
Tang Jigen's statement is more straightforward: "Even if you want to revise history, there is no history to revise."
Chinese archaeology, in the context of extremely rich literature, has turned legends into messengers. He Yuling believes that this is understandable.
Tang Jigen also expressed emotion: "Chinese archeology does have its own characteristics, and the facts also prove that there are very few mistakes in ancient Chinese books and documents, and the Chinese do not write blindly."
When the "Dayi merchants" prospered in East Asia, the northern part of Africa was in the period of the New Kingdom of Egypt, and the Mesopotamia entered the post-Babylonian era. When they gradually disappeared in the wind and sand of history, the Shang civilization witnessed the stage of entering the "kingdom" In China, merchants recorded those past events in the earliest written documents. Today, those sharp lines carved by them in the oracle bones in the past are still inherited by future generations, and they are already a mature language.
The archaeological excavations in the Yin Ruins are still continuing, and people's original cognition is constantly being broken.
To this day, Yin Ruins has not found a city wall like other capitals.
Therefore, the concept of "Dayi merchant" is still shrouded in fog.
The scope of the Yin Ruins of 36 square kilometers is still only a conservative estimate.
As for the oracle bone inscriptions with more than 4,500 characters, only more than 1,500 were successfully tested.
For this vanished dynasty and those cultural gene codes buried in history, people may have to go through quite a long time and several generations of hard work to get closer to its true appearance.
"China News Weekly" Issue 4, 2023
Statement: The publication of the manuscript of "China News Weekly" must be authorized in writing