Ancient ship whale falls, archeology enters the sea
China News Weekly reporter: Ni Wei
Published in the 1129th issue of "China News Weekly" magazine on February 26, 2024
In the darkness, Song Jianzhong sank slowly.
He curled up and sat on the floor, crossing his legs in front of him.
My posture was somewhat uncomfortable, I couldn't stretch, let alone move.
Everything was silent, there was no sound.
40 minutes later, there was a "pop" sound and the lights suddenly turned on.
Before my eyes, countless plankton floated past, like dust floating in the first ray of sunlight in the morning.
Destination, arrived.
He looked intently, adjusting to the long-lost light.
Ten meters away, a pile of porcelain loomed.
This is the northwest slope of the South China Sea, about 1,500 meters below the sea surface, and the nearest coastline is 150 kilometers away.
In front of you is a Ming Dynasty shipwreck that sank here 500 years ago. Perhaps all the crew members were buried in the belly of the fish, but the Chinese porcelain full of it remained on the seabed.
The South China Sea was the main route of the ancient Maritime Silk Road. By the late Qin and Han Dynasties, it had formed a maritime channel from China to Southeast Asia and South Asia. In the Tang and Song Dynasties, it could enter the Red Sea and reach East Africa and Europe.
For more than two thousand years, except during the maritime ban period, merchant ships traveled frequently in the South China Sea, and a large number of ships perished in the stormy seas.
This is the first time for China to explore ancient deep-sea ships up close.
Song Jianzhong is a researcher at the Archaeological Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and director of the Underwater Archeology Committee of the Archaeological Society of China. He is the leader of the deep-sea archaeological team in the South China Sea.
His deep-sea vehicle is the famous manned submersible "Deep Sea Warrior". The main driver sits in the middle, and on the left is the co-pilot, both professional submersibles, also sitting on the ground.
This spherical cabin with a diameter of about two meters has precious space and is fully capable of carrying three people without any seats.
This day is May 23, 2023. The first phase of the archaeological investigation of the shipwreck on the northwest slope of the South China Sea was dived.
At 1:30 in the afternoon, Song Jianzhong entered the cabin with two submariners. The "Deep Sea Warrior" slid to the rear deck. The A-frame of the mother ship "Exploration One" gently picked up the red and white "Deep Sea Warrior" and slowly Put in water.
Until leaving the cabin at 11 p.m., Song Jianzhong lived in the narrow cabin for nearly 10 hours.
From May to June and September to October, the Archaeological Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the South China Sea Museum of China (Hainan) jointly conducted a two-stage archaeological investigation of two shipwrecks on the northwest slope.
As archaeological team members dive into the deep sea, China's underwater archeology opens up a new world.
Deep sea treasure
Two species of marine life have been devouring wood from shipwrecks on the northwest slope for 500 years.
Sea maggots burrow into the wood and eat away at it from the inside, while armored shrimp lie on the surface and eat away at it from the outside.
Their combined efforts left parts of the two ships exposed above the seabed, with almost no hulls remaining.
"It's like after a whale falls, only the keel remains, and maybe some are left in the mud." Song Jianzhong described to China News Weekly.
The "Deep Sea Warrior" has a moving radius of several kilometers on the seafloor, and the submersible is used by the submersible to patrol and take photos above and around the sunken ship.
The core area of Shipwreck No. 1 is a pile of pottery, porcelain, ironware and other goods piled into hills, with a maximum height of nearly 3 meters, densely distributed in a ship-shaped outline.
Further outward, a circular scattered area extends.
Outside the ring, there is a "tail" that is nearly 300 meters long and 50 meters wide, with objects falling along the way, like a streamer.
This special layout solidifies the last moment of the sunken ship.
After the sunken ship entered the water, it slowly fell to the bottom of the sea. In the ocean current, it did not fall vertically.
In the process of sinking to the bottom of the sea, porcelain was thrown out from the tilting and rocking ship, scattering it as it went, forming a 300-meter-long scattering belt.
The moment the bottom of the ship touched the bottom of the sea, a violent shock shook the ship full of porcelain. In the flying mud and sand, the surface porcelain splashed to all sides, slowly drifting under the effect of buoyancy, and fell within the range of a circular shock wave.
When the sediment dissipates, the seabed returns to tranquility.
Today, the remains of pots and pans are like a piece of amber, recording the process of the submarine event 500 years ago.
Archaeologists are communicating and cooperating with scholars in marine science, fluid mechanics and other fields in order to restore a more accurate fall process.
In people's minds, the depths of the sea are bright blue, covered with strange corals, and huge strange fish swim around.
The reality is completely different.
It is pitch black below 200 meters above the sea surface. When the submersible lights are turned on, what the archaeological team sees is a deep sea desert with long yellow sand, no corals, and no fish.
Last summer and autumn, the deep-sea archaeological team conducted a two-stage archaeological investigation on the two sunken ships. They made 41 dives on the "Deep Sea Warrior". They first surveyed the scope of the site, then conducted three-dimensional laser scanning and photography splicing, and finally extracted cultural relic specimens.
It was just a high-definition image of the core accumulation of the No. 1 sunken ship. They used nearly 10,000 photos to stitch it together.
Images with increasingly higher granularity provide a "navigation map" for subsequent work.
The archaeological team printed out pictures of the ruins and posted them in the conference room of the scientific research ship. They identified and checked the artifacts to be extracted.
On September 28, Dong Jiaxin, a newly hired assistant librarian at the Archaeological Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, looked at the picture in his hand and looked for the target through the porthole in front of him.
"That's a celadon-glazed porcelain jar," she pointed forward and said to the submariner.
The main driver Li Baosheng is a top submariner and the captain of the submarine.
Extracting cultural relics is an extremely demanding operation. There are only two people in the entire fleet who are qualified, and he is one of them.
Li Baosheng slowly drove the "Deep Sea Warrior" to the side of the jar, operated the manipulator to reach into the jar, and grabbed it once, but failed.
I tried a few more times but couldn't catch it.
Because the neck of the porcelain jar is short, it is difficult for the robot to apply force after reaching in.
Forget it, Dong Jiaxin said.
Continuing to try might move the surrounding objects and damage the appearance of the site, so she decided to give up.
At this moment, an enamel porcelain jar appeared on the other side of the celadon jar.
She immediately made a judgment and asked the submariner to extract the enamel device into the sampling basket.
Fahua ware is a kind of colorful porcelain that was first fired in the Yuan Dynasty and flourished in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Dong Jiaxin graduated from Beijing Normal University with a master's degree in ceramic archeology. She knew that enamel vessels were rarely found in archaeology, and they were unprecedented in shipwrecks.
This is a gap-filling discovery.
"This is a major breakthrough for ceramic archaeology," Song Jianzhong said.
Enamel wares are rare in China, but there are many collections in Western museums, but the chain of archaeological evidence in between is broken.
How are enamel vessels circulated?
How did you get abroad?
The discovery of Shipwreck No. 1 proves that enamel wares were a type of porcelain exported during the Ming Dynasty.
On that day, Dong Jiaxin cooperated with the submariners on the seabed to extract about 50 pieces of cargo. Two artifacts that were determined in advance were not extracted because they were too difficult.
In addition to the green-glazed porcelain jar, there is also a huge white-glazed bowl. Because of its large area and small curvature, the robot hand cannot work on it.
But generally speaking, this "claw machine" can catch successfully.
Underwater archeology still strictly follows the usual rules of the archaeological industry, such as trying not to change the appearance of the site and not conducting destructive excavations.
The accumulation of cultural relics in the core area is several meters high, and the items extracted by the archaeologists are all on the surface. This enamel vessel was an unexpected harvest.
Whether there are any rare artifacts in the sediments several meters below will remain a mystery on the seabed.
The mystery also includes some wooden boxes locked with copper locks.
There are many such wooden boxes scattered around the core area. Some are damaged, exposing layers of copper plates. It is unknown what is in other locked wooden boxes.
Archaeologists speculate that the locked wooden box may be the personal collection of the people on the ship, and the objects inside are relatively exquisite and precious luxury goods at that time.
But they have no plans to withdraw it yet.
Unlike the Northwest Slope No. 1 shipwreck, which was loaded with porcelain, the cargo of the No. 2 shipwreck was Persimmon ebony, which was tightly arranged and neatly stacked on the seabed.
These ebony are produced in Sri Lanka, southern India and other Indian Ocean regions, and imported to China.
Ebony is dense and hard and can sink to the bottom of the sea.
Experts preliminarily speculate that it may be because of its hardness and medicinal properties that it has not been eaten by sea creatures.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, China imported large quantities of ebony from South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Ebony is often used in traditional Chinese medicine and is a valuable wood that can be considered a luxury product.
In the residences of the upper class, ebony is often used as a raw material for furniture such as beds, cabinets, coffee tables, and tables. It is also made into small and elegant objects such as fan bones, rulers, chopsticks, and musical instruments.
When Yan Song, a corrupt official in the Ming Dynasty, had his home ransacked, nearly 7,000 pairs of ebony chopsticks were found in his home.
Although Shipwreck No. 1 and Shipwreck No. 2 are only 12 nautical miles apart, they belong to two dynasties. Shipwreck No. 1 was about the Zhengde period of the Ming Dynasty (1506~1521), and shipwreck No. 2 was about the Hongzhi period of the Ming Dynasty (1488~1505). .
The two properties are also different.
According to research by Deng Qijiang, a research librarian at the Archaeological Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and Zhao Songyuan, an assistant librarian at the center, tribute trade gradually declined in the mid-Ming Dynasty, while private trade flourished. The No. 2 sunken ship is likely to be a ship from Guangdong and Fujian. Private merchant ships along the coast.
After selling Chinese goods in Malacca and purchasing ebony, the ship returned to China via the South China Sea and was wrecked on the way.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, China mostly had a surplus in international trade, and the shipwrecks were mainly export ships, while almost no ships returning from imported goods were found.
This is a special feature of Shipwreck No. 2.
Searching for the South China Sea
Without the "Deep Sea Warrior", China's deep-sea archeology would still be just a dream.
The "Deep Sea Warrior" is China's second deep-sea manned submersible, with an operating capacity of 4,500 meters underwater.
After it was officially delivered to the Institute of Deep Sea Science and Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (referred to as the Institute of Deep Sea Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences) at the end of 2017, the first expert to officially carry out scientific expeditions on it was Song Jianzhong.
In April 2018, Song Jianzhong conducted the first deep-sea archaeological survey in the North Reef of Xisha Islands.
That year, the Underwater Cultural Heritage Protection Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Institute of Deep Sea Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences jointly established the "Joint Laboratory of Deep Sea Archeology", and deep sea archeology began.
Important results will be produced after 4 years.
In October 2022, on the northwest slope of Southeast Hainan Island and northwest of the Paracel Islands, the "Deep Sea Warrior" discovered a sunken ship on its 499th dive, and then discovered another ship on its 500th dive.
These two shipwrecks are Northwest Slope No. 1 and No. 2.
China's underwater archeology started off the coast in 1987 and reached a bottleneck 30 years later. "There are basically no new clues," Song Jianzhong said.
There must be a large number of sunken ships offshore, but they are difficult to find because the offshore and shallow sea environments are complex and changeable, with layers of sediment deposits. Sunken ships will be completely covered after being submerged for many years.
The equipment will detect some abnormal signals, but after a thorough investigation, it is basically not a shipwreck.
Active archaeological discovery in offshore areas is a worldwide problem.
"Just like the Shanghai Yangtze Estuary No. 2 sunken ship that was salvaged as a whole in 2022, although it is less than 10 meters deep, it is basically completely covered by silt. The river course has changed in recent years, and it has opened up a little, and only a little is exposed." Song Jianzhong It is said that a large number of clues about offshore shipwrecks come from unexpected gains in marine engineering or fishermen's operations.
After 2017, there are fewer and fewer clues.
These complex conditions in the shallow sea almost do not exist in the deep sea.
The sediment burial rate in the deep sea is extremely low. In some areas, it only takes thousands of years to cover up to 10 centimeters, and sunken ships are basically exposed on the seabed.
Therefore, deep-sea exploration is extremely efficient. Geophysical equipment scans and areas without abnormal signals can be ruled out. If abnormal signals are found, submersibles or AUVs (Autonomous Underwater Vehicles) can be lowered for underwater photography, and it can be clearly seen whether It's a shipwreck.
In 2023, important archaeological progress was also made on another South China Sea shipwreck.
At the Guangdong Maritime Silk Road Museum located on the beach of Hailing Island in Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province, a 10-year archaeological project has reached a key node - all cultural relics on the Nanhai No. 1 have been successfully extracted.
Since the excavation started in 2014, archaeologists have extracted 180,000 Song Dynasty cultural relics in 10 years.
Compared with the attention received during the overall salvage of the Nanhai No. 1, subsequent progress appears to be much lower-key.
In 2007, the Nanhai I was salvaged from the water as a whole by the "Hua Tianlong" crane ship with a lifting capacity of 4,000 tons. It was then entered into a museum specially built for it and placed in a steel caisson.
For more than ten years, archaeologists carried out archaeological work in the caisson, extracting cultural relics from the ship while protecting the fragile hull structure.
This work is not over yet.
"The Nanhai I is being protected, excavated, and displayed at the same time. Now that the ship's cargo has been basically cleared, the archaeological work can come to an end. But the subsequent protection work may be more arduous. The protection of large wooden sunken ships is also a challenge for the world. A difficult problem." Sun Jian, deputy director of the Archaeological Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and leader of the Nanhai No. 1 conservation and excavation project, told China News Weekly.
Nanhai No. 1 is the beginning of China's underwater archaeology. This is a story that lasts nearly 40 years.
In 1985, at Christie's special auction of Chinese cultural relics in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, one piece of porcelain was bought and sold.
These porcelains were produced in China and salvaged from China, but now they seem to have nothing to do with China.
Sitting in the front row, Chinese cultural relic experts Geng Baochang and Feng Xianming, armed with US$30,000 in state funds, were ordered to come to purchase, but they couldn't resist the wealthy people who frequently increased their prices by 10 times.
These cultural relics came from an early Qing Dynasty shipwreck on the bottom of the South China Sea and were salvaged by an Englishman named Michelle Hatcher.
Michelle Hatcher established a commercial salvage company in Australia to salvage artifacts from ancient merchant ships in the South China Sea and made huge profits.
This auction strongly stimulated the Chinese archaeological and cultural relics circles. After returning to China, Geng Baochang and Feng Xianming wrote a report to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
In 1987, the China Underwater Archeology Coordination Group was established, with member units including the Navy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries, the Ocean Administration, and the Cultural Relics Administration.
Thus began an almost entirely new discipline.
Where will China's first underwater archaeological team be established?
Yu Weichao, the then director of the China Museum of History and a famous archaeologist, shouldered the heavy responsibility and established China's first professional underwater archaeological institution at the China Museum of History.
Later, some people called Yu Weichao the founder of China's underwater archeology, while others directly called him "the father of China's underwater archeology."
Yu Weichao's idea at the time was: "With the development of my country's scientific and cultural undertakings, and in order to prevent various acts of destroying my country's underwater archaeological data, it is urgent to carry out underwater archaeological work in my country."
In 1987, when China's underwater archeology started, an underwater archaeological team made a discovery in the South China Sea, but its actual value would not be revealed until many years later.
One day in early August that summer, at around 9 a.m., Chinese and British joint salvage crews used sonar to detect the seabed in the Chuanshan Islands of the South China Sea and discovered unusual images.
The divers dived to the abnormal area and explored with their hands. The mud was too thick and nothing was found.
Then, the British lowered a one-ton grab and accidentally picked up 247 items, including porcelain, bronze, silver, gilt, etc.
Unfortunately, some of the porcelain was damaged by the grab, and the salvage was subsequently halted.
This joint mission is an application submitted by the British Ocean Exploration and Salvage Company to the competent authorities of the Chinese government.
According to Dutch documentary records, in 1772, the merchant ship "Rheinburg" of the Dutch East India Company sank near the Chuanshan Islands in the South China Sea of Guangdong, carrying tin ingots, silver and other cargo. The British hoped to find this ancient ship.
After the bucket of artifacts was salvaged ashore, Chinese personnel determined that it was not a Dutch merchant ship, but an ancient Chinese ship from the Song and Yuan Dynasties, much earlier.
Two years later, the British Ocean Exploration and Salvage Company has collapsed. China and Japanese archaeological experts have returned to the unveiled sunken ship.
They found that the area of the sunken ship exposed above the mud on the seabed was only one square meter and protruded about 30 centimeters high. Most of the hull should be under the mud.
More than 10 years after the investigation, no further archaeological work was started on the ship, and it seemed that it was forgotten on the seabed.
Until 2001, an underwater archaeological team composed of 12 people returned to the waters of Kawashima. For nearly a month, this team failed to find the mysterious sunken ship.
One day when funds were about to run out, a few pieces of porcelain were brought out of the fishing net hooked by the anchor.
This small breakthrough led to the discovery of Nanhai I.
Nanhai I is located on the seabed at a depth of 26 meters, which is relatively deep among China’s underwater archaeological projects.
From 2002 to 2004, the Chinese underwater archaeological team conducted underwater exploration and partial test excavations on Nanhai No. 1 four times.
More than 6,500 exquisite cultural relics were salvaged ashore. In addition to a large number of brilliant-as-new ceramics, there were also goldware, lacquerware, bronzeware, silver ingots, copper coins, etc.
In 2005, archaeologists determined a plan to salvage the Nanhai No. 1 as a whole and submitted it to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage for approval, which was officially implemented in 2007.
The salvage project lasted nearly 9 months, with 21 ships and 3,016 divers launching. The whole process attracted the attention of the whole society.
But in Sun Jian's view, the technology for salvaging the Nanhai No. 1 is not difficult and is far from reaching the limit of China's marine engineering capabilities.
The real difficulty comes after landing.
After entering the museum, the Nanhai I faced a severe test of the environment, and the protection of the ancient ship has been constantly being explored and revised.
For example, the "Crystal Palace" where the shipwreck is housed uses external lighting. Sunlight shines directly into the pavilion from the roof glass. High temperatures cause seaweed and other aquatic organisms to breed in large numbers, accelerating the corruption of water quality.
The museum had no choice but to put up light-shielding films to improve the ambient temperature.
In addition, the seawater in the Crystal Palace is directly pumped in and has not been inactivated. It carries a large amount of marine life. After eutrophication, it is extremely detrimental to the health of the sunken ship.
After long-term storage of steel caissons stored in shipwrecks, the internal sea mud becomes weakly alkaline. In a weakly alkaline environment, the steel caissons will continue to suffer corrosion and even become thinner, deformed, and broken, which will have a great impact on the strength.
Sun Jian remembered that when the Nanhai I, which had been soaked on the seabed for more than 800 years, came ashore, the moisture content of the hull wood was so high that a hole could be made by pressing even a little force with his fingers.
In order to preserve the hull, conservation personnel thought of many ways.
The interior is filled with wood with macromolecule materials for structural reinforcement; the exterior is supported by a complex frame, like dense scaffolding.
Now, they are gradually replacing the frame supports with curved tire frames to hold the hull up without affecting the display.
Protecting the fragile hull requires a lot of chemical and physical methods, and the process is very long.
Sun Jian has been fully involved in the archaeological work of Nanhai I for more than 20 years. He believes that the most important experience in the Nanhai I project is to explore the complete links including survey, salvage, excavation, protection and display, and "blaze a trail." Come".
It's like a standard underwater archeology textbook, left to future generations.
South Merchant Ship North Battleship
In December 1997, when China's underwater archeology ushered in its first decade, Yu Weichao published "The Main Results of China's Underwater Archeology in the Ten Years", in which he wrote: "The navigation activities and maritime trade in ancient China were roughly There are two aspects: one is for Southeast Asia, South Asia and even West Asia. The activities of seaports in Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian and even Zhejiang today mainly serve this aspect; the other is for Northeast Asia such as the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago. The ports along the Bohai Bay today mainly serve this purpose. For these two aspects, the existing results are extremely small, but with the advancement of science and technology, the strengthening of national strength, and the development of international cooperation , on the basis of our understanding of ancient China’s maritime exploration activities, we believe that there will be a series of important new results in the next century.”
In November 2003, Guangdong Province decided to build a museum for the Nanhai No. 1 on Hailing Island in Yangjiang. Yu Weichao, who was on his deathbed, learned of the news and wrote a trembling message.
In the port of Portsmouth, England, the British built a museum for the sunken battleship "Mary Ruth" in the 16th century. Yu Weichao compared the two shipwreck museums in the east and the west, calling it "merchant warships, reflecting the east and west."
25 days later, Yu Weichao died.
Behind him, merchant ships and warships have also become the two major fields of underwater archeology in China.
From the Maritime Silk Road in the South China Sea to the Yellow Sea battlefield in the late Qing Dynasty, the north and south shine.
Today, the key waters of China's underwater archeology are still the two large areas painted by Yu Weichao.
Before the excavation of Nanhai I had started, from 1991 to 1997, the Chinese Underwater Archaeological Team carried out investigation and excavation of the Sandaogang Yuan Dynasty shipwreck site in Suizhong, Liaoning.
This is truly the first underwater archeology China has carried out on its own.
The technology at that time was not the same as today. Sun Jian, who participated in the project, remembered that due to the lack of positioning technology, every year when the archaeological season returned to the water, he spent more than a week re-searching for the location of the ruins.
Even under such difficult conditions, the archaeological team remained enthusiastic.
From 1989 to 1990, China and Australia jointly held the first training course for underwater archeology professionals, with 11 participants.
This is the "Huangpu Phase I" of China's underwater archeology.
The Sandaogang Yuan Dynasty shipwreck site project in Suizhong is a collective training exercise for China's first generation of underwater archaeologists, and all the young people are gearing up.
Subsequently, the Chinese underwater archaeological team conducted investigations and excavations on the Huaguang Reef I in Hainan, Nanao I in Guangdong, Xiaobaijiao I in Ningbo, and Yuan Dynasty shipwrecks on the Holy Grail Island in Zhangzhou.
In 2022, the Shanghai Yangtze Estuary No. 2 sunken ship will be salvaged in its entirety. This is the second sunken ship in China to be salvaged in its entirety after the Nanhai No. 1.
China’s underwater archeology has also gone abroad to carry out international underwater archaeological cooperation in Kenya and Saudi Arabia.
In the north, underwater archeology will unveil a history with mixed emotions.
In 2014, an underwater archaeological team investigated an armored warship in the waters near Dandong, Liaoning, and named it "Dandong No. 1."
Later, archaeologists salvaged a porcelain plate with the inscription "Zhiyuan" and confirmed that the battleship was the famous battleship "Zhiyuan" of the Beiyang Navy.
Taking this as a starting point, in the past 10 years, China has successively discovered the main battleships of the Beiyang Navy such as Zhiyuan, Jingyuan, Chaoyong, Yangwei, Dingyuan, Laiyuan, and Jingyuan on the seabed of Dandong, Weihai and other waters.
More than 100 years later, the tragic history of the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War has physical evidence.
In October last year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage announced the latest information on the three ships Dingyuan, Laiyuan and Jingyuan.
An identity plate belonging to "Laiyuan Third Class Sailor Yu Shengyuan" was salvaged from the Laiyuan ship.
Yu Shengyuan has been documented in the literature. According to the literature, he once received a pension of 40 taels of silver.
Jiang Bo, a professor at the School of History and Culture of Shandong University, said with emotion: "The rich cultural relics out of the water allow us to see the true history of the Beiyang Navy officers and soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country, allowing the study of history to move in a more flesh-and-blood, detailed and even emotional direction."
In the history of world wars, the Sino-Japanese War of Sino-Japanese War has unique significance.
Sun Jian said: "This is the first large-scale naval battle in human history that uses steam as power, artillery as weapons, and metal as armor. This is what is written in the U.S. Navy textbooks." The Beiyang warship is a steam metal warship. Unlike the sailing trading ships of the South China Sea, it is a new type for underwater archeology.
During the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, there were frequent wars in the Yellow and Bohai Seas. In addition to the Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War at Lushunkou and the Japanese-German War in Qingdao Bay all lit up the sea. There are countless metal warships on the seabed. Underwater archeology will have New discoveries.
While China's field archeology continues to make shocking discoveries, there is always an archaeological team fighting against the sea.
Unlike deep-sea archeology using submersibles, offshore archeology relies on diving operations by archaeologists.
Ten years after the first underwater archeology training class was held, China has held 9 training classes so far, training a total of 165 underwater archaeologists, including 8 foreign students. They have become the main force of China's underwater archeology for more than 30 years.
Different from each province having its own field archaeological institution, since there are not many underwater archaeological projects and each project has high requirements for funds, equipment, and professionals, China's underwater archaeological projects are all managed by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage's Underwater Archaeological Research Institute. Center takes the lead.
Whenever a new project is started, underwater archaeological personnel from each province are temporarily assembled and then dispersed after the project is completed.
In recent years, with the development of underwater archaeology, provincial underwater archaeological institutions have also begun to be established. Shandong Province has established my country's first provincial underwater archaeological center.
China has also successively built underwater archaeological bases in Yangjiang, Ningbo, Beihai and South China Sea to facilitate long-term and sustained archaeological surveys and excavations.
Zheng He's Fleet or Taiping Ship
On June 11, 2023, the first phase of the investigation of the shipwreck on the northwest slope of the South China Sea was completed.
A week later, the "Titan" deep-sea submersible of the American Ocean Gate Exploration Company was launched into the water to begin the exploration of the Titanic sunken ship. It lost contact after 1 hour and 45 minutes of diving.
The Titan imploded on the seabed, killing all its crew.
"This accident has had some impact and shadow on our hearts." Song Jianzhong said.
The wreck of the Titanic, sleeping more than 3,800 meters under the sea, has been attracting the attention of explorers from around the world for more than 100 years.
Hollywood director James Cameron has filmed documentaries there, and commercial exploration companies have also developed it as an adventure destination.
Over the past 25 years, commercial exploration companies have continuously launched charging projects to take passengers to visit the Titanic wreckage, with the fee rising from US$30,000 to US$250,000.
Whether it is the Nanhai I or the shipwreck on the northwest slope, we cannot know their original names today.
The archaeological discoveries that attract the most public attention and are the most topical often correspond to historical figures and historical facts, such as the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Egypt, the Terracotta Warriors of Qin Shi Huang, and the Titanic.
Is it possible to find those famous shipwrecks through underwater archeology?
In January 1949, the China United Shipping Company passenger ship "Taiping" sailing from Shanghai to Keelung, Taiwan, was overloaded and sailed at night without navigation lights. It was hit by a freighter and sank, killing nearly a thousand passengers.
In 2015, director John Woo made this tragedy into the movie "The Wheel".
Among the passengers on the ship, there were many high-ranking officials, wealthy businessmen and celebrities, and it was compared to the "Titanic of the East".
This is the most famous Chinese shipwreck in modern times.
Song Jianzhong said that active archaeology of famous modern ships such as the Taiping Wheel is currently not in the plan.
Especially for shipwrecks that may contain human remains, archeology also needs to take into account conventions and ethics.
The International Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, adopted in 2001, stipulates that appropriate respect should be ensured for all human remains found in the sea.
"In terms of hope, I hope to find a ship from Zheng He's fleet, but it is difficult for you to plan for this thing. I think it is meaningless." Sun Jian said with a smile.
Regarding deep-sea archeology, Sun Jian believes that "the decisive factor is the progress of China's deep-sea technology. Our country now has three deep-sea submersibles: Struggle, Deep-Sea Warrior, and Jiaolong, which are the most in the world."
Bathyscaphes provide a platform that can provide clues and tools to various disciplines, and future deep-sea archeology will depend on their discoveries.
In 2023, after the two phases of shipwreck archeology on the northwest slope are completed, China's "Underwater Archeology Work Regulations" will be released.
The regulations regulate all aspects of archeology and conservation of underwater sites. For example, after excavation, the exposed area should be protected with protective backfilling or reinforcement.
Song Jianzhong said that offshore archeology often uses backfilling to return the remains to the seabed, such as using sandbags to suppress underwater cultural relics.
On top of the sunken ship Nanao II in Guangdong, conservation staff covered it with a steel mesh cover to prevent it from being stolen.
Plans for protecting the shipwrecks on the northwest slope have yet to be determined.
Archaeologists cautiously speculate that there are at least 100,000 pieces of cargo on the Northwest Slope No. 1 sunken ship.
Nanhai I was initially expected to carry 60,000 pieces of cargo, but the final number cleared was 180,000 pieces.
Song Jianzhong told China News Weekly that based on the size of the ship's hull, the cargo of the Northwest Lupo No. 1 sunken ship should be more than that of the Nanhai No. 1.
However, sunken ships on the deep seabed do not have the conditions for overall salvage. It is too expensive and unrealistic to salvage all cultural relics in batches.
Archaeologists initially plan to extract about 1,000 pieces, and more than 600 pieces have been extracted in the first two stages.
"This is an approximation," Song Jianzhong said. "The criterion for selection is not whether the cultural relics are good-looking or not, but representativeness. Try to involve different parts and categories of the sunken ship."
After ashore with the mother ship, Dong Jiaxin worked at the South China Sea Museum in China (Hainan) for more than 20 days, cleaning up the salvaged cultural relics one by one, numbering them, taking photos, making text descriptions, establishing "files" and making "ID cards" for them.
When she personally touches these porcelains that have been lying dormant on the seabed for more than 500 years, she, who majored in ceramic archeology, is often shocked. "Compared with the porcelain from other kiln sites, the bodies of these porcelains are very white, the glaze is evenly applied, and there are few flaws."
She told China News Weekly that these underwater relics will bring many research topics.
"It is not an end, but a new beginning." Song Jianzhong summed up this South China Sea archeology.
Whether it is China's underwater archaeology or the entire Chinese archaeological undertaking, this deep-sea archeology is another milestone after Nanhai I.
"It opens up a new space for our archaeology," Song Jianzhong said. "As long as we give time and funding, I am 100% sure that there will be a large number of continuous discoveries in the South China Sea." At present, China's underwater archeology Mainly shipwrecks. In fact, underwater ports, ancient cities, villages and towns, as well as relics of early human activities on the coastal continental shelf, etc., all belong to the category of underwater archeology.
One hundred years after the birth of modern Chinese archeology, a brand new ancient world is being opened.
In 1989, Yu Weichao named the sunken ship discovered in the South China Sea "Nanhai I".
This name actually goes against the convention of naming sites in the Chinese archaeological community, which is generally named after the smallest geographical unit, such as a small village, a mountain or a river.
But almost no one denies that this atmospheric naming is so reasonable and shows an ambition to open up a new world.
More than 30 years later, when two Ming Dynasty shipwrecks were discovered in the deep sea, archaeologists no longer named them after Nanhai No. Ⅱ and No. 3. Instead, they returned to convention and named them Nanhai Northwest Slope No. 1 and No. 2.
Because China’s South China Sea archeology has moved from a dream to reality.
"China News Weekly" Issue 7, 2024
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