(Question about things) Witnesses said | Who created the mysterious Sanxingdui?
China News Service, Beijing, April 1st: Who made the mysterious Sanxingdui?
Author Huo Wei
Huo Wei himself.
Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan
With the archaeological excavation of the 6 "sacrifice pits" in Sanxingdui, the Sanxingdui culture once again attracted the attention of the world.
Facing "one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of mankind in the 20th century", people have been asking for decades: Who created the huge, mysterious and splendid Sanxingdui culture?
Is it a product of foreign civilization?
Or is Sanxingdui come from outer space?
A large number of archaeological evidence shows that the ancient Shu civilization represented by the Sanxingdui bronze civilization is an important part of the long-standing Chinese civilization.
At the same time, in the development process, it has absorbed the factors of civilization in the surrounding areas, and these surrounding areas are mostly located in China from the perspective of today's territory.
The origin of Chinese civilization is not limited to a center in the Central Plains, but there are several central regions.
It is not spread from a cultural center to the surroundings, but through the exchanges, mutual learning and gradual integration of various regions, it finally lays the common foundation of Chinese civilization.
Huo Wei teaches students in the laboratory.
Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan
Lift the mystery of ancient Shu civilization
The discovery of Sanxingdui was quite accidental.
In 1929, a farmer in Guanghan, Sichuan found a burial pit in the ground while building a canal.
The artifacts in the pit were unearthed and spread to the market.
The curator of West China University Museum (now Sichuan University Museum), American professor David Crockett Graham, and assistant Lin Mingjun rushed to the scene to record the situation at the time, and conducted the first excavation of the Sanxingdui site in the Moon Bay of Guanghan. Opened the prelude to "one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century".
Ge Weihan wrote in his diary that after seeing Moon Bay and Sanxingdui, he felt that "the land nearby is a significant and strong feng shui place, and it is the center of feng shui in Guanghan."
The "feng shui" that Professor Ge referred to is actually the standard used by the ancient Chinese to choose the environment.
Although the Chinese Fengshui theory formed a theoretical system after the Han Dynasty, people were very particular about environmental choices during the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
The ancients not only chose to live in Sanxingdui, but also chose this place as a place of worship, reflecting the profound historical roots of the Bashu region's environmental choice.
The significance of this excavation also lies in the use of archaeological materials to prove that in the Yin and Shang era, in addition to the Central Plains, in remote areas of China, there also existed a distinctive archeological culture with a long tradition.
Historians combined the literature and compared it with the ancient Shu, which became the starting point for studying the ancient Shu civilization from the perspective of archaeology.
Shu has been recorded in oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions, and traces can be found in different historical data systems.
In the cultural system of the Central Plains, "Shangshu·Pastoral Oath" recorded the participation of Shu and Pakistan in the major military operations of Zhou people against merchants.
"Historical Records · The Benji of the Five Emperors" records that the descendants of the Yellow Emperor developed and multiplied here to become the first kings and people of Shu.
In the Bashu cultural system, according to legend, the Book of the King of Shu, written by Yang Xiong in the Han Dynasty, recorded the stories of kings such as Can Cong, Bai Guan, Yu Fu, Du Yu, and Kaiming.
The worship of birds recorded in the ancient Shu civilization has been found abundantly in Sanxingdui.
There are also Yufu, Du Yu, and the relationship between bird and fish, which have been reflected in some patterns.
Archaeological materials also reflect that Sanxingdui is indeed closely related to the Central Plains culture.
It proves that the relationship between Shu and the Central Plains recorded in the literature is tangible.
Data map: Cultural relics in the "sacrifice pit" at Sanxingdui site.
Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan
Rooted in China and absorbed neighboring culture
On the day the "sacrifice pit" No. 1 and 2 was discovered in 1986, I was excavating at Sanxingdui.
Among the cultural relics unearthed from these two pits, what impressed me most was a huge bronze mask with vertical eyes.
The mask was turned upside down the moment it was unearthed, and it looked like a chair placed in the "sacrifice pit".
When we turned it over, we saw that this was a bronze mask with two huge eyeballs, two huge ears and a huge square hole. It was a heavy bronze object that had never been seen before.
Although archaeologists have not yet discovered in Sanxingdui, Ding Hegui, a bronze ritual vessel that expresses rank and order in the Central Plains, we have recently unearthed more than 7 bronze statues in the No. 3 "sacrifice pit".
It shows that Sanxingdui, like the Central Plains, has a tradition of using bronze vessels as ritual vessels.
There are also some unearthed artifacts in Sanxingdui, which are rare in the bronze culture of the Central Plains. In addition to the bronze masks, there are also a large number of bronze figures, heads, sacred trees, as well as eyes, sacred trees, and sacred birds worship.
The golden rod, golden face mask and bronze sacred tree made of pure gold are artifacts that have never been discovered in the history of Chinese archaeology.
Eye worship and sacred tree worship are one of the common features of ancient civilizations in the world.
Eyes are not only the windows through which mankind observes and understands the world, but are also an important focal point for accommodating thousands of worlds. Therefore, in the systems of ancient civilizations in the world, there is worship of eyes.
There are also solar trees and cosmic trees in other ancient civilization systems in the world.
Data map: The most representative giant longitudinal-eye bronze face in Sanxingdui cultural relics.
Photo by Du Jia Source: Visual China
The Sanxingdui culture also has its own strong characteristics, such as a large number of divine bird elements.
Among them, the sacred bird on the bronze sacred tree nearly 4 meters high may have something to do with the sun.
According to ancient documents such as "Shan Hai Jing", it supports the sun to soar every day and is a carrier of the sun, so it actually symbolizes the sun.
How to understand this phenomenon?
First of all, the Sanxingdui culture is an integral part of the long-standing Chinese civilization. Whether it is the use of zun as a sacrificial ritual, or the large number of unearthed jadebi and jade cong, it is inextricably linked to the Central Plains culture.
Secondly, judging from the geographical environment where Sanxingdui is located, it does have the conditions for material exchange with West Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.
According to ancient records, the Cancong of Sanxingdui was the founding monarch of ancient Shu. He first lived in the Shishi of Minshan, which is the upper reaches of the Minjiang River in northwestern Sichuan, and is located in the northwest of the Chengdu Plain.
It can be connected to China's Gansu and Qinghai regions, and further west is the ancient southern Silk Road since the Han Dynasty.
When we look at Sanxingdui culture today, we must not only see its richness and diversity, but also need a global vision.
Sanxingdui is a distinctive regional culture in China during the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. At the same time, Sanxingdui culture is also a material evidence of exchanges, mutual learning and mutual influence between the early Chinese civilization and other civilizations.
Some of Sanxingdui's myth and worship system, plastic arts and aesthetic concepts cannot be ruled out being influenced by some more distant civilizations.
For the latter, more physical evidence of archaeology is needed to connect the chain of its spreading influence.
Data map: Archaeologists work at the excavation site of Sanxingdui site.
Photo by China News Agency reporter An Yuan
Unsolved mystery is left to the "golden age" of archaeology
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese archaeology.
The nearly 90 years of archaeological excavations at the Sanxingdui site reflect the development of Chinese archaeology.
A long time ago, the Chinese archaeological community had abandoned the concept of "aim at artifacts and excavate", but hoped to trace and restore ancient history through archaeological excavations.
At the 6 pits currently being excavated, the archaeologists "will not let go of the unearthed soil", have made a lot of observations of phenomena that are invisible to the naked eye, and also applied the latest technology to the excavation of the "sacrifice pit" in Sanxingdui. .
This is the first time in the world that a fully enclosed large shelter has been used at an archaeological excavation site, and a closed excavation capsule like a space capsule has been built in it.
We have also equipped the excavation space with very sophisticated observation and recording instruments and multidisciplinary laboratories, which can quickly perform on-site analysis, information extraction and cultural relic protection of the unearthed artifacts.
New archaeological concepts, new archeological techniques, new archaeological organization systems... From this perspective, Chinese archaeology has ushered in its "golden age".
But from a research perspective, the Sanxingdui culture raises more problems than we can solve.
At present, our research on Sanxingdui is still in its infancy. Mankind has just reached the gate of the mysterious "sacrifice pit" in Sanxingdui, and there are still many problems that have not been resolved.
The future research on Sanxingdui culture should enter a new stage of comprehensive research.
Archaeologists should also work side by side with mythologists, folklorists, historians, and ancient philologists to interpret the Sanxingdui culture from different perspectives.
Doing so, although I dare not say that it will completely restore the truth of history, it can help us get closer to the truth of history step by step, and come up with some reasonable explanations for the mysterious and splendid Sanxingdui culture.
(The author is a distinguished professor of Sichuan University, the curator of the Sichuan University Museum, the dean of the School of History and Culture, and the director of the Chinese Society of Archaeology)