Three minutes to talk about popular science
Whenever we talk about Chinese civilization, it usually goes up and down for 5,000 years, and takes the Xia Dynasty as the starting point. As for the pre-Xia period, people only understand it as earlier based on the general name in the history booksThree Emperors and Five Emperors period.
Some people also feel that there was no written record before Xia, let alone a systematic history book, which is not a blank period in history. Even over the years, there has been some debate about whether the Xia Dynasty existed.
Similar debates are essentially about the definition of civilization. If there is a written record, it is called a civilization, but if there is no written word, can't it be called a civilization?
For a long time, there was a misunderstanding about when civilization appeared. In conventional cognition,As long as there is a written word or a large-scale urban settlement, it is judged to be the emergence of civilization. If you addSmelting metalstechnology, it can be determined that this is a sign of the emergence of civilization in a certain era.
This method of judgment cannot be said to be wrong, but it is too absolute and one-size-fits-all. Just think,The emergence of any civilized society, whether it is the writing used by people at that time or the smelting technology of metal, these will not be suddenly learned overnight, and there must have been a long evolutionary process in between.
So in this evolutionary process, you can say theirsCommunity OrganizationsIsn't it civilization?There is a more special case,Some civilizations had no writing at all in ancient times, let alone metallurgical technology, but it cannot be denied that they were not civilizations.
The most typical example of this is:The Inca Empire in South America。Historically, they had neither the modern concept of writing nor the technology to smelt metalHowever, this empire has created a glorious civilization, and at its peak, the territory exceeded 5,000 kilometers from south to north.
Another exampleIndus ValleySome of the older historical sitesAgain, there is no writing in the modern concept, and there are only symbols on the site.
These groups have indeed existed in history,If measured by the three standards of writing, city and metallurgical technology, they are not considered civilizations. However, there is growing evidence that the three elements of this civilization are too absolute.
Especially for the historical evolution of our country, this form of civilization identification is even more one-size-fits-all. Because through modern archaeological excavations,Not only the historical sites of the Xia Dynasty have been discovered one after another. Ruins more than a thousand years before Xia have also been discovered.
For example:Hongshan culture, Lingjiatan cultureWait a minute. Therefore, if we go back to the future, the origin of civilization in our country has existed since thenMore than 6,000 years. Among them, more than 5,000 years agoLiangzhu culture, which is one of the representatives of ancient civilizations.
Liangzhu culture, the earliest discoveries were made around the 30s of the last century. The site was first discovered in the town of Liangzhu in HangzhouTherefore, the later archaeological community named it Liangzhu culture. However, since the 30s the country is being beenJapanese invasion, so the archaeological excavations were carried out extremely roughly, and they were almost stopped later.
Until the 80s of the last century, the public security organs cracked a caseReselling cultural relicsof the case,The discovery of some of these jade artifacts dates back to 5,000 years ago, bringing the archaeology of the Liangzhu culture back into the public eye.
After large-scale archaeological excavations,With Liangzhu Town as the center, the related historical relics gradually expanded to the northern part of Zhejiang and the southern part of Jiangsu, and even later discoveries further expanded to other regions. Among them, the most significant discovery is the excavation of the Liangzhu cultureRuins of the ancient city.
The area of the ruins of the ancient city,It reached more than 2.9 million square meters。There are walls on all sides, and the length of the north and south is inAround 1900 meters, the length of the thing is in1700 meters or so
Due to the remnants of the city wall in some sections, the height of the remaining city wall alone exceeds 4 meters, and the width of the city wall is even more reached40 meters to 60 meters, more than the existing Xi'an city wall in China2 times to 4 times wider。As you can imagine, the walls are really even higher.
In addition to the ruins of the ancient city as a whole, archaeologists have found it in the interiorAltar, the total area reached300,000 square meters。Above the altarThere are a large number of cavities left by rammed earth, which shows that there were larger buildings on this at that time.
The ruins of this magnificent ancient city have been discovered in the country so farOne of the oldest in the world。Compared to historical sites from the same period,The scale of the ancient city ruins of Liangzhu is also the largest.
One can imagine what a glorious civilization it was more than 5,000 years ago or even further. But it is worth mentioning that such a magnificent civilization in archaeological excavations,No words in the modern concept have been found.
In the Liangzhu culture, a large number of jade artifacts were unearthed. These jade objects have special patterns, and the most common pattern is,An image of a feathered crest, a battle robe, and a beast of prey.
Archaeologists have seen this pattern in all kinds of jade artifacts unearthed, and some jade artifacts even have eight similar patterns. Archaeologists believe that this pattern resembles a modern logo.
In addition to this, by sorting out various unearthed artifacts,Archaeologists have collected at least 608 carved symbols. These symbols are certainly not words in the modern concept, but the arrangement and appearance of the objects are not chaotic.
Some symbols exist individually, others appear in groups of several, and archaeologists believe that this is a systematic expression of a certain meaning. Such a regular symbol,Archaeologists have identified it as a systematic symbolic script, which is not a cohesive script, but more akin to hieroglyphics.
A long time before that,We all believe that the oracle bone inscription, which dates back more than 3,600 years, is the oldest script of Chinese civilization. With the gradual cracking and research of Liangzhu cultural sitesOur words, or symbols, have advanced by at least 1,000 years.
In fact, not only the Liangzhu cultural site, at about the same time,Archaeological discoveries have found that Jianghan, Liaoxi, Central Plains and other regions in China also have similar civilization processes. And these civilization sites, all toIt is older than the Xia Dynasty.
This shows that if we still measure the standards of the emergence of past civilizations, that is, writing, metallurgical technology, and cities, it is impossible to classify the historical sites that appeared before the Xia Dynasty.
For example, Liangzhu culture,There are text-like symbols, there are a lot of jade,But the presence of metallurgical technology has not been found, can you say that they do not belong to the civilization community?
Therefore, modern people's division of the beginning of ancient civilization is too one-size-fits-all. On the contrary, the ancients were much more detailed in the emergence and division of ancient civilizations than modern people.
When he was still in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the manufacture and use of ** in the "Book of Yue Jue" was proposedStone, jade, bronze, ironThe concept of four stages。In other words, according to the understanding of the ancients, they believed that when human beings began to use stone and jade tools on a large scale, it was also the beginning of civilization.
In addition, modern people think that some ancient legends are fake, but with the excavation of some historical sites, some legends may be true.
The Classic of Mountains and Seas records that during the period of the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor, there was one further southFeather**, here the people are known for:The bird is a totem。In addition, in historical classics such as "Huainanzi", there are also records of Yu **.
According to the modern study of Liangzhu culture, some people put forward a point of viewThat is, Liangzhu culture is the legendary feather **. The pattern on the unearthed jade, the image of wearing a feather crown on the head, is consistent with the records in the history books.
In addition, the geographical location of the Yu ** described in the history books is similar to the scope of the Liangzhu cultural site unearthed. So this seems to show that the Liangzhu cultural sites found now are the historical Yu **.
As for who founded the feather **, there is no empirical evidence now. There is an opinion thatThe founder of Yu ** is Chiyou. Legend has it that Chiyou's tribe had a big battle with the Yan and Huang tribes, and in the end, Chiyou was defeated and Yu ** perished.
There is also an opinion that Yu ** was not defeated in the war, but because of historyThe Great Flood。Even the point of view thatIn that year, Dayu reached Huiji Mountain, and then took the opportunity to kill the leader of Yu **, so Yu ** was included in the ruling sequence of the Central Plains Dynasty.
There are many related theories, and some even believe that after the Great Flood,The descendants of Yu ** migrated to the north, thus merging with the tribal states in the Central Plains at that time. But for some reason, this important historical process was erased by the historical records of later generations.
According to this point of view, it is because the Liangzhu culture at that time was more advanced than other civilizations. Therefore, for the sake of rule, these contents were hidden in the historical records of later generations, and the evolution of civilization was deduced to start from the Central Plains.
This is originally a conjecture of modern people, who would have thought that with the Liangzhu culture being more in-depth research in recent years, it has evolved into a modern oneTerritorial disputes.
Because according to the traditional records in the history of our country,Chinese civilization gradually spread from the Central Plains to the surrounding areas. However, contemporary archaeological excavations have found more relics of civilization in other areas outside the Central Plains.
So,Controversies arose over which civilization was the starting point and which civilization was more advanced at the time. Of course, this controversy is limited to the daily discussion of the general public. From a more rigorous point of view of archaeology, more empirical evidence is needed to gradually outline what the situation was in antiquity.
Some people also think that it is because there is no later historical record in ancient times that the current controversy has arisen.
Whether it is recorded or not, this actually goes back to the question at the beginning of the article, that is, the emergence of civilization should be accompanied by the appearance of writing.
There are no historical records of antiquity, only related legends, according to more archaeological excavations nowIt's not that they didn't have writing at that time, but that people recorded the symbols at that time, and modern people can't decipher the meanings of them.
More critically,This symbol is disconnected and has no continuity. Even if one day in the future, archaeologists don't know that more ruins have been excavated from **, even if there are a large number of symbols in these ruins, they will not be able to decipher what they mean.
At the end of the day,Human civilization is a gradual evolutionary process, in which both words and other cultural meanings are gradually produced from one region, and gradually expanded, and then may merge with other civilizations. Among them, there are certainly cases where certain symbols and cultural meanings have been lost. And modern people, how to understand it.
Maybe another five or six thousand yearsWhen future generations dig up our current historical sites, they may not understand what this represents. After all, time and loess will dilute and isolate everything.