The Four Sheep Fangzun is the largest existing Shang Dynasty Fangzun. According to the available literature, in 1937, Jiang Jingshu, a native of Huangcai Town, Ningxiang County, Hunan Province, found a "stone" when he was digging the ground on the mountainside opposite his house, and he didn't care about it at the time, in April of the second year, Jiang Jingshu and Jiang Jingqiao, Jiang Xiqiao planted sweet potatoes on the mountainside, and then they got the "stone", and they wanted to get in the way, so they decided to dig it up, and as a result, they dug out a bronze treasure with a "buffalo head" at four corners, that is, Siyang Fangzun.
Later, Jiang's father sold Fang Zun to the mountain goods store in the town, and then several antique dealers bought Fang Zun from the mountain goods store. After Fang Zun was transported to Changsha, he was identified as "Gu Ding of the Zhou Dynasty". After several rounds, Fang Zun came into the hands of Zhang Zhizhong, chairman of Hunan Province. After the Japanese army invaded, Fang Zun was broken into more than 20 pieces. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, archaeologist and collector Cai Jixiang determined that Fangzun was cast in the late Shang Dynasty, and the so-called "buffalo head" on it was actually a sheep's head, so it was named Siyang Fangzun.
Siyang Fangzun's life experience is roughly like this, but these two paragraphs contain three very important pieces of information;First of all, Fang Zun discovered Ningxiang, Hunan, and in the "Historical Atlas of China" compiled by Tan Qixiang, Ningxiang did not have a Shang Dynasty city wall. Secondly, usually the bronze ritual vessels are in the tomb ** soil, but the four sheep Fangzun was found alone. Finally, and the most critical point, for a long time, down to farmers, up to ** and scholars, they all thought that Fang Zun was a buffalo head, and it was not corrected to a sheep's head until Mr. Cai Jixiang's research. In other words, the sheep are very rare in China, so there will be a long-term misidentification of everyone. Seeing this, I believe that friends want to ask, since it is rare, what kind of sheep is this, and where is it distributed?
In the scientific classification, sheep belong to the kingdom Animalia, phylum Chordates, Mammalia, Artiodactyl, Bovidae, Sheep Subfamily, Sheep Family. Underneath the sheep family, there are multiple genera, which are;
Barbary sheep
Bearded sheep are also called North African bearded sheep, Berberry sheep, and wild sheep. The bearded goat belongs to the large goats and is the only species of the bearded goat. It is mainly distributed in northern Africa, such as Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mauritania, Niger, Chad. Now there are also in the United States, mainly for hunting. I've looked at hundreds of **, and I think the overall similarity between the bearded sheep and the sheep on Fang Zun is more than 85%.
Goats are capra
There are many species of goats, the most common of which is the goat, which was first domesticated in Iran 10,000 years ago. There are also wild goats, Caucasian tur, Iberian ibex, Walia ibex, Pakistani markhor, etc. To put it simply, the goats of the genus are not like the sheep on Fangzun, and if you insist on pulling the general in the silk, it may be a slight resemblance to the Walia goats that are only distributed in the Seminen National Park in Ethiopia. The front image of this sheep is a little similar, but the side image is not like it at all. Overall similarity 10%.
Himalayan Tahr sheep of the genus Himalayan Tahr
This is a late Chinese native goat, mainly found in India, Bhutan, Nepal, and very few areas of China, and not in other provinces of China. The horns of these sheep are generally small, similar to those of takin. It has no resemblance to the sheep on Fang Zun and can be ruled out.
Rock sheep bharal
Rock sheep are produced in Asia, of which western China is the majority, also called cliff sheep, stone sheep, blue sheep. There are many species of rock sheep, and some have large horns, but in general, the similarity is still low.
Argali
Argali, also known as bighorn sheep and big-headed sheep. It is the largest sheep. It is mainly distributed in Central Asia. If you look at the shape of the horns alone, the similarity of the argali, should be the highest.
[Argali, Figure 1].
However, argali, the horns are very thick and large, and the distance between the two horns is very small, which is obviously different from Fang Zun's sheep.
[Argali, Figure 2].
Sheep spp
The ancestor of sheep was argali, which was domesticated in Anatolia, Turkey, 10,000 years ago and later spread to the valley of the two rivers. There are more than 200 varieties of sheep, which can be divided into meat, skin and wool. Some of the sheep have horns, but there is a big gap with the image of Fang Zun. Can be excluded directly.
There are several other genera of the sheep family, but because they are mainly distributed in North America and have nothing to do with the topic of the article, they will not be talked about. Looking at the above, it can be seen that although there are many genera of sheep family, there are only two kinds of preliminary conformity, namely bearded sheep and argali. If you look closely, there is a decoration on the front of the neck of the Fangzun sheep, and in line with this, there is only the bearded sheep produced in North Africa. Although there are often discrepancies between artistic processing and the facts, there is also a need for references. A single artifact will certainly provide limited information, but perhaps in the future, we will know more about the past.