Part IKing Wen gossipIt is said that King Wen of Zhou was released by Shang after he ate his son's flesh in pain. This seems to be a wild legend. But in the remains of the merchants' ruins and oracle bone documents, this kind of behavior is not more common......
More than 1,000 BC, the life of King David of Israel in the Old Testament, the legendary era of "Romance of the Gods". In the prime of life, the Shang king ruled over the "world" and ruled the North China Plain, the easternmost point of the Eurasian continent. 
Map of the situation of the Shang Dynasty.
At this time, King Wen of Zhou was only a small tribal chief far away in the west (today's Shaanxi). For several generations, the Zhou people submitted to the Shang Dynasty. Zhou Chang, the king of Wen, was over fifty years old, and he was already a full old man at that time, and he was obsessed with weird gossip and divination, which shrouded this small state in a dull twilight.
A merchant army suddenly marched to the west, arrested Zhou Chang, and escorted him to Chaoge, the capital of the Shang Dynasty. This was a customary repropriation of businessmen. For hundreds of years, the Shang king maintained his rule over the hundreds of states and tribes he conquered.
This time, the results were very different.
Dusty nightmaresToday, 3,000 years later, in the Yin Ruins of Anyang, Henan, the loess buries the capital of the Yin Shang Dynasty.
Yinxu, Anyang, Henan.
Over the course of a century, archaeologists have unearthed a staggering number of mutilated corpses, along with oracle bone inscriptions showing that they died in the bloody ritual of the merchants. The bones tell the world that this is the place where the forgotten bloody civilization is buried, and the nightmare horror and long years are buried.
Next to a palace in Yinxu, more than 100 murderous sacrificial pits were excavated, and nearly 600 murdered bones were excavated. Most of these bones were separated from their bodies and heads, and they were beheaded and thrown into the pit. Seventeen young children were buried in the two pits. The foundation stone of the palace was also accompanied by murderous sacrifices: a skeleton was rammed under all the pillars; The gate was built on the bones of fifteen men, three of whom had only heads.
** during the excavation of Yinxu in the 1930s.
There is a human sacrifice field in the tomb area of the Shang king, which is more than twice the size of the playground, and nearly 3,500 human bones have been unearthed, which are buried in more than 900 sacrificial pits. Many of the corpses were in different places, and some pits contained only skulls, or only bodies, or even living people buried in struggle. There are also human sacrifice sites outside the royal tomb area. For example, in a pit in Hougang, there are 73 skeletons of the slain, most of them are male teenagers under the age of 20, and there are even more than a dozen bones of young children. Wherever the merchant culture went, such as the early Shang Dynasty ruins in Yanshi in Henan and Zhengzhou, and even as far southeast as Tongshan in Jiangsu, there were also ruins of large human sacrifice grounds.
Years of natural changes and man-made damage to the Yin Ruins site, and it is impossible to know for sure how many such human sacrifice sites were there in the entire Shang Dynasty. These sites are of different eras in the early and late eras, indicating that the practice of human sacrifice continued for many years. It is by no means the whim of a tyrant, but the norm of a civilization.
But until it was uncovered by archaeologists' shovels, there was never any mention of this custom of merchants in ancient Chinese historical documents.
The sacrificial pit in the ruins of the tomb of the king of Yinxu in Anyang @新华社.
After King Wu of Zhou, the son of King Wen, destroyed the Shang, Chaoge City was abandoned and buried, and this custom of the merchants also dissipated. But why did the people of the Zhou Dynasty delete the memory of that bloody era? What does this have to do with their rise, the destruction of Shang, and the establishment of the Zhou Dynasty?
Oracle and archaeological excavations have raised these questions to us. If we try to solve it, we must also collect rare and ethereal information from ancient Confucian scriptures and ancient historical documents, and combine them with archaeological materials to restore the nightmare that has been lost for 3,000 years—no, the facts.
The carriage and horse pit in the ruins of the tomb of the king of Yinxu in Anyang @新华社The Shang Dynasty and its vassals:Qiang, ZhouMerchants arose in the East. The core area of their rule was in the northeastern part of present-day Henan Province, which belonged to the east of the Chinese world. For the alien races in the west, the merchants called it "Qiang", and the oracle bone inscription resembled the head of a bighorn sheep, representing the people who lived in the mountains and herded cattle and sheep for a living. This is just a general term, and the "Qiang" people include countless loose states and tribes that do not belong to each other.
There are three ways to write "Qiang" in oracle bone inscriptions.
Two hundred years before the Shang Dynasty, a Shang king's queen "Nuhao" led an army to conquer the West and expand the Shang Dynasty's power to the Qiang region. That expedition was the largest in oracle bone literature, with an army of 13,000 men. Compared with the western barbarians, the merchants had advanced bronze smelting technology, and their weapons were strong and sharp; They also had a unique technique for recording language: writing, which led to the formation of a vast military and administrative apparatus and a civilization with a high division of labor. This is unimaginable to the Savage Tribes.
The tomb of the woman
Nuhao led 13,000 troops to attack the Qiang side's Bujia: Xin Sibu, Zhen, Dengwu Hao 3,000 Denglu 10,000, Hufa (Qiang).
The businessman never changed the idea of barbarians with his own culture. They just want to keep the military conquest alive. Shang kings were accustomed to parade the frontier with their armies, using force to intimidate the surrounding states and keep them subservient, and if necessary, to engage in a war of punishment that killed chickens and monkeys. The Shang Dynasty was not much larger than today's Henan Province.
For the Western tribe of "Zhou", the merchants were a little confused about its origin, because it was too small. The epic of the Zhou people tells their early history, which is also mixed with a large number of myths. Legend has it that the ancestor of the Zhou clan was a woman named "Jiang Yan", who stepped on the footprints of giants in the wilderness, became pregnant and gave birth to a child, and gave birth to the Zhou clan. In the Shang and Zhou languages, Jiang is Qiang, so the Zhou people also belong to the Qiang people in a broad sense, and after they formed a tribe, they gave themselves the surname "Ji", and called the other surrounding tribes the surname "Jiang". This is a sign that their blood ties have become estranged and they can intermarry with each other. According to Western customs, people with the same surname and race are not allowed to intermarry.
It was not until the grandfather of King Wen Zhou Chang, the generation of Gu Gong's father, that there was a more reliable record. The Zhou people originally lived in the mountains, no different from the barbarian people (in fact, their close relatives, the Qiang people). Gu Gong's father and his people moved out of the mountains, along a small river to the edge of the Weihe Plain, and began to carry out agricultural cultivation, from then on out of barbarism and into a more "civilized" way of life.
These epics are mixed with the self-aggrandizement of the Zhou people, and are only partially reliable. Judging from the archaeological excavations, the civilization forms in the Weihe River valley in Guanzhong during this period were almost the same, and there were only a few thousand or more people in each ethnic state, living a life of planting millet and sorghum, and raising cattle and sheep. Their main agricultural tools were polished stone tools, and the household used rough gray pottery, and the upper patriarchs had a little imported luxury, such as jade and bronze ware. The Zhou people were not much more "civilized" than their Qiang neighbors. In the eyes of businessmen, they are all equally backward and not respectable opponents at all.
The biggest change brought to the Zhou clan by Gu Gong's father was that he defected to the powerful Shang Dynasty and became the ruler of the merchants in the Far West.
Tongge Henan Anyang Xiaotun Village Yin Ruin good tomb unearthed
The tomb of Yinxu women in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan Province was unearthed.
The women's good copper circle is full of Yinxu women's tomb in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan.
At that time, the Zhou people were just a small tribe of more than 10,000 people, what was the use of the huge Shang Dynasty, which ruled millions of people?
As the archaeological excavations of Yinxu have revealed, the merchants believed that God and ancestral gods were in charge of all the good and bad things in the world, and that the flesh and blood of the aliens were the best gifts to be offered to God and ancestors—the word "sacrifice" in the oracle bone inscription means that one hand holds a piece of meat and sacrifices it to the altar. The most important thing for them to sacrifice and employ people is the Qiang people. In the oracle bone inscriptions, the Qiang people accounted for more than half of the people killed. They are called "human animals."
After the oracle bone inscription "sacrificed" his father and led the Zhou people to join the merchants, his main duty was to provide Qiang people and livestock for the Shang Dynasty. This is a history that was deliberately buried and forgotten by the later Zhou people, but the unearthed oracle bone inscription leaked a little information.
The Zhou themselves did not have a written word. The oracle bone inscription "Zhou" was coined by merchants. The merchant had a special verb for homicidal sacrifice: "to use". Countless oracle bone inscriptions on sacrifices record that the Shang king "used" Qiang men and women, cattle and sheep to offer to the gods. The interpretation of the word "Zhou" in "Shuowen Jie Zi" is "from use, from the mouth" - in the eyes of merchants, the characteristic of the "Zhou" people is the population who pay for "use".
There is an even more terrifying way to write the word "Zhou" in the merchant: the small square of the word "use" is full of dots. This dot of the oracle bone represents blood, which comes from the slaughtered human animals, and is the freshest food for the gods. The oracle bone inscription also depicts the sacrifice of blood: on a raised altar, blood dripping with dots.
Engraved words Bujia Yin Ruins Museum collection.
In terms of blood relationship, this behavior of Gu Gong's father and Zhou people is a shameless betrayal of the people of his hometown. By hunting the Qiang people, the Zhou people became the bloody ** people of the Shang Dynasty in the West, and they also received corresponding rewards. Sharp copper weapons can help them capture their prey; The military technology of the merchant horse-drawn chariot may have also been imported into the Zhou clan at this time.
For three generations and nearly a hundred years since his father, the Zhou people have been trying to attach themselves to the Shang Dynasty. According to traditional marriage customs, the leader of the Zhou clan should marry a wife surnamed Jiang from generation to generation. My father's wife was from the Qiang people, indicating that he had not turned his back on the Western Alliance when he got married. However, his son Ji Li and grandson Zhou Chang (King Wen) both married their wives from the East, which shows their attitude of defecting to the Shang Dynasty.
The Zhou people claimed that the two ladies were merchants, and even the daughters of Shang kings. This is just their boasting about the surrounding Qiang people. Merchants practice intra-clan marriage, strictly protecting the purity of their noble bloodline, and will never marry the daughter of the royal family to a distant barbarian. The surname of the merchant was "Zi", while the two wives of Ji Li and Zhou Chang, surnamed "Ren" and "Ji", respectively, were just from small peripheral countries that were subject to Shang. However, the home countries of the two ladies Ren and Ji are still much more advanced than those of the Zhou people. In the eyes of the Zhou people, they are like goddesses descending from the heavenly realm, and the epics of later generations are full of praises for them, and even call them "Da Ren" and "Da Ji" ("Book of Poetry, Daya, Siqi", "Historical Records: Zhou Benji").
Two generations of oriental brides brought great changes to the upper class of the Zhou people. A husband may not understand the language of his wife's family, but the mother will inevitably influence the son's generation across the board. Oriental culture followed them to the west, and the most mysterious and "advanced" was the oracle bone divination technique, which combined writing, arithmetic and spiritism to communicate with ghosts and gods, and was used to the extreme by merchants. Among them, the part that interprets and calculates the pattern of the divination bone belongs to "Bagua". By the time Zhou Chang, the king of Wen, was old, he became obsessed with this mysterious computing technology from the East. As a result, the fate of the Zhou people and ancient China began to take a turn.
King Wen ambition:GossipKing Wen Zhou Chang inherited the position of patriarch when he was young. In fact, it is likely that his father, Ji Li, died early and did not become a patriarch. Ji Li's wife, Zhou Chang's mother, Da Ren, came from the East, and the Shang dynasty apparently supported the young Zhou Chang to succeed him as the head of the Zhou clan. When he became an adult, he continued to marry his wife Da Ji from the East, also following the policy of his grandfather and father to join the Shang Dynasty, while protecting his own authority.
The oracle bone divination and gossip calculation techniques are mastered by wizard families, who have passed down this profession for generations, keeping it a secret as a family heirloom. Later generations have said that during the imprisonment of Shang Wen, King Wen of Zhou deduced the gossip into sixty-four hexagrams, which may have a certain origin, but the beginning of Zhou Chang's contact and calculation of gossip must have been earlier. It is conceivable that when the elderly Zhou Chang became interested in "gossip", he must have used both soft and hard methods to the soothsayers, and finally forced them to confess the principle of hexagram operation.
In the Shang and Zhou dynasties, there were occasional upper-class people who were addicted to divination, but the astonishing act of the elderly Zhou Chang was to gain inspiration from it to betray the Shang Dynasty and replace it. This is obviously far beyond the duty of a merchant vassal, and it is a departure from the foundation of the country since the founding of my grandfather and father.
How Zhou Chang deduced and demonstrated it is now unknown. However, the part of the "Yi Ci" in the existing "Zhou Yi" is said to have been written by Zhou Chang, the king of Wen, and some of the language does reveal the heart of the disobedient, such as "Yi Jianhou", "Perform the emperor's throne", "Jianhou Xingshi" and other languages, which have obviously exceeded the duties of courtiers, and are full of rebellious and murderous opportunities (tun, fulfillment, and Yu hexagrams).
The "Speech" of multiple hexagrams all show that "the northeast loses friends, and the southwest gains friends". The northeast is unfavorable while the opportunity is in the southwest. Hebei, the center of Shang rule, was to the northeast of the Zhou people, which undoubtedly indicated that the time had come to break with the Shang king, and it was necessary to contact the Qiang people in the west and even the various ethnic groups in the mountains in the southwest as allies. Later, when King Wu destroyed Shang, the southwestern ethnic groups Shu, Ji, and Wei did participate in the war (Kun, Jian, and Jiehexagram); King Wen's "Yi Ci" ** is the most present, is the word "Li Shi Dachuan" - from Guanzhong to Shangdu Chaoge, must cross the Yellow River, the Zhou people who are accustomed to mountain dwelling are not accustomed to water, which is obviously the most concerned issue of the elderly Zhou Chang (need, lawsuit, homo, Gu, big animal, Yi, Ding, Zhuan, Zhongfu and other hexagrams).
Zhou Chang, who was immersed in hexagram calculus, overlooked the fact that the soothsayers he consulted came from the merchant-controlled East, and they had close ties to their counterparts in their hometown. It is entirely possible that the disobedience of the old patriarch of the Zhou people was transmitted to Chao Ge through the communication network of the soothsayer, and the chief priest of the Shang Dynasty was the confidant of the Shang king. So, the Shang Dynasty army took the old Zhou Chang away.
During the Wuding period, it was unearthed in Xiaotun, Anyang, Henan, and was collected by the National Museum of China.
Historical Records and other documents do not say that this was a war at all. Perhaps the Shang army came to the Zhou tribe as they used to collect Qiang people's livestock, and took Zhou Chang with them by the way. Judging from the comparison of strength at that time, Lao Zhou Chang's idea of rebellion was really whimsical. All the people of the Zhou clan, including his sons, who later became Wu Wangfa, Zhou Gongdan, and others, were apparently frightened by this idea. The ease with which the merchant army took Zhou Chang away was enough to show how deeply the Zhou people were shocked: they simply did not have the strength and courage to follow the leader and confront the merchants.
Zhou Chang was captured, leaving all the problems to his sons. Mrs. Da Ji gave birth to several sons for Zhou Chang, the eldest son Bo Yi Kao, and the second sons Zhou Fa and Zhou Dan were adults at this time. The only thing they could do was to go to Chaoge and plead with the king of Shang, begging him to forgive Zhou Chang's delusions due to old age and confusion.
According to the Historical Records, several courtiers who defected from the Shang Dynasty to Zhou (Hong Yao, San Yisheng, etc.) brought gifts to the Shang capital to pray for the king. This is obviously not the whole truth: seeing the traitors will only increase the anger of the Shang king, not to mention that it is difficult for the Zhou people to attract the Shang Dynasty's defectors at this time. Shang Xuan was an unusually smart person, "knowing enough to admonish and words to disguise wrong", and if Zhou Chang's sons did not come forward, he would definitely not forgive the Zhou people ("Historical Records of Yin Benji").
Carved words are in the collection of the Yin Ruins Museum.
The humiliating experience of the sons of King Wen who went to Chaoge this time was only concealed after they destroyed the Shang and seized the world. In fact, what they experienced in Chaoge was far more than just grievances and humiliation, but also a bloody tragedy like a nightmare.
Tianyi Shang:The world of ghosts and godsFragmentary records of the old history say that after Zhou Chang's eldest son Boyi was admitted to the court song, he was executed by the king of Shang and made into meat sauce. Zhou Chang was released only after he had eaten his son's flesh (Huangfu Mi, "The Imperial Century"). This is indeed too absurd, and it seems that it can only be a wild history. But with the archaeological discoveries and oracle bone documents of today's Yin Ruins, we know that this kind of behavior is no longer normal for merchants.
For decades, the Zhou had been supplying Qiang captives to the Shang Dynasty. The Zhou people may have some vague understanding of the fate of these people in Chaoge, but they will not have too specific perceptions, because there are no human sacrifice grounds for merchants in the west. It was only after the elder Zhou Chang and his sons arrived at Chaoge one after another that they witnessed the fate of the captives who had been given to the merchants by their own hands.
According to oracle bone inscriptions, there are many ways in which merchants sacrificed their lives. The more common is the "Mao" sacrifice, which is the shape of a person or livestock after being hollowed out of their internal organs and cut in half and hanged, just like the pigs and sheep hanging on the slaughter line today. In fact, Qiang captives were often killed along with cattle and sheep.
Oracle rubbing.
Other forms of sacrifice included the offering of human and animal entrails, blood, and heads. The processing methods of human and livestock include barbecue, boiling soup and stewing, air-drying into bacon, etc., all of which have special oracle bone characters. It's all about processing food, because they're the food that is offered to the gods. According to custom, the gods also inflict blessings when they enjoy the offerings, so after the ceremony, the sacrificers will share the offerings.
This naturally leads to a frightening inference: merchants, especially those of the upper class, are most likely cannibals. But it's not just archaeological evidence. In historical documents, except for Bo Yi Kao, it was made into meat sauce; Another small monarch who had a disagreement with the king, the "Oni Hou", was also made into jerky and distributed to other kings for food.
According to the concept of merchants, the chiefs and nobles of different races are the most advanced human animals, and they call this kind of chief "Fang Bo", and no matter how many ordinary people and animals are not worth a Fang Bo. Zhou Chang or his heir is a "Qiang Fangbo" in the eyes of merchants.
Oracle rubbing.
But why was it Bo Yi Kao who was "used" this time, not his younger brother Wu Wangfa, Zhou Gongdan, or the old Zhou Chang himself who caused this turmoil?
In ancient times in the Jewish Old Testament, God was most fond of accepting the firstborn as a sacrifice. Merchants did not necessarily have this custom, but they did prefer to sacrifice young men or children, and rarely older people (or young women for certain gods). Moreover, the merchants were accustomed to using divination to choose sacrifices, and they should have carefully examined and calculated the brothers Bo Yi Kao, Zhou Fa, and Zhou Dan to determine who was most suitable for making meat sauce. After all, the cattle and sheep used for sacrifice should also be carefully inspected in advance to see if their coat color, fatness, and whether there are any scars and dark diseases, which is not uncommon in the "Spring and Autumn Period". How did the sons of old Zhou Chang go through this and how did they feel? No one else will ever know.
In any case, the old Zhou Chang regained his freedom. Moreover, he and his sons had a windfall.
The bronze retort contained steamed human heads, and this kind of sacrificial supplies had been unearthed in Yinxu more than once First of all, the king of Shang was very satisfied with their repentance, especially Zhou Chang's performance of eating his own son's meat. This presumably symbolizes his sincere naturalization into the civilized world of merchants. The Emperor granted Zhou Chang the status of "Xibo", allowing him to manage the wider Western affairs on behalf of the Shang Dynasty.
Also, during this trip to the court, Zhou Chang and his son had the opportunity to observe the businessman's senior management face-to-face. In addition to the bloody sacrifices that drove people crazy, they also discovered that the Shang Dynasty was far from the "Tianyi Shang" they imagined when they were in the west—a sacred city suspended in the sky like a fairy world. Although it is magnificent, all the people, from the king of Shang to his brothers and daughters, are as ordinary as the Zhou people, and there is nothing sacred.
Crucially, the merchant world is not a cohesive whole. Like any patriarch or leader (and even more so), the king is surrounded by disgruntled brothers and clan members, and his sons are fighting for succession. Hong Yao, San Yisheng and other Shang courtiers who secretly sent Qiubo to the Zhou people should have established contact with Zhou Chang's father and son at this time. Wu Geng, the puppet and son of Shang Xuan, who was supported by King Wu of Zhou after destroying Shang, must have also tempted and wooed the Zhou people at this time, not to mention the uncles and brothers of Shang who were already disgruntled, such as Bi Gan, who was executed later. In the eyes of these people, the Zhou people and their western relatives, the Qiang tribes, may be potential forces that can be exploited. If the Shang kings insisted on going their own way and did not respect the interests of these nobles, it was necessary to contact the foreign races and carry out a coup d'état.
Neither the Shang King nor the pretenders around him thought of the dangers that might come from supporting the Zhou clan.
Merchants have dominated the Central Plains for six hundred years, and no foreign threat has ever been able to shake its rule. Moreover, the merchants unanimously believe that the gods and gods of the heavenly realm are in charge of all the good and bad fortunes in the world. The Shang kings and nobles who have died have also entered the heavenly realm to become gods, possessing divine powers of different sizes. Those gods are very "realistic" and only bless those who sacrifice to them. The more people, animals, cattle and sheep that were offered, the more happy the gods would be, and they would ensure that the sacrificers enjoyed everything on earth.
The most important job of the Shang king was to make sacrifices to the gods of heaven and earth, mountains and rivers, and ancestors, and the sacrificial schedule was full, like a nutritionist's menu. According to the oracle bone inscriptions, the Shang kings would slaughter and sacrifice 3,000 animals and 1,000 cattle at a time. The oracle bone inscriptions that have survived to the present day are only a drop in the bucket, and this is certainly not the largest sacrifice of the merchants.
Since the Shang king monopolized the right to worship the gods, he also enjoyed the blessings of the gods exclusively, and it was natural for him to conquer and rule all the peoples on the earth. Of course, this was also to provide more sacrifices to the gods.
In this way of thinking, the merchant naturally became a people known for its indulgence. Those who sacrifice to the gods and the people are blessed by God, and they do not have to worry about any moral precepts, let alone worries about the future. The "Historical Records" recorded all kinds of absurd behaviors such as the construction of wine ponds and meat forests by the king of Xu, and the collective fornication of men and women. In fact, this is the same as the story of his bones, which concentrates the ugliness of the entire Shang clan on one person. All kinds of torture and bloody sacrifices were the entertainment of the merchant collective, not the king alone.
Jade unearthed in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan.
Yujue Henan Anyang Xiaotun Village North unearthed.
They are also indulged in alcoholism from top to bottom, and there are few sober people all day long. Since the reign of King Zhou, the number of people and animals from the west has decreased, but the grain used as a raw material for brewing has been increasing (after Zhou Chang's sabotage, King Zhou is trying to open up new people and animals in the southeast).
The nobles under the Shang kings became minor gods after their deaths, but they also had to bless the future Shang kings and not just take care of their own children and grandchildren. More than 200 years before the king of Zhou, the Shang king Pangeng had just moved the capital to Chaoge, and most of the nobles around him were dissatisfied. Pan Geng gathered them together and lectured, and openly threatened: Don't think that your dead ancestors will help you, because they are all by the side of my ancestor and have enjoyed the sacrifices I offered, so they will give priority to protect me Pan Geng, and will not condone you!
I hereby enjoy it to the previous kings, and I will follow and enjoy it. For blessings and disasters, they dare not use non-virtue. If you are in trouble, if you have the ambition to shoot!
It is said that the merchants were a people who engaged in animal husbandry and commerce in the early days, so they treated the people they ruled as livestock, and used the mind of a merchant to deal with the gods ("The Classic of Mountains and Seas: The Great Wilderness and the East Classic", "The World Books: Writings"). The king of Shang felt that the world was his own inheritance, and other merchant nobles also believed that the throne could only be inherited within the merchants. The Zhou people are just their tools, and there is never a possibility of climbing to the master's seat.
Taigong conspiracyWhen Zhou Chang's father and son were circling around in the court, they may have also met a figure who later participated in the rewriting of history, that is, Taigong Lu Shang, the so-called "Jiang Taigong" in later generations. His surname is Jiang, and he belongs to the traditional alliance of the Zhou people, the Qiang people.
Portrait of Jiang Taigong.
The Historical Records say that Taigong Lu Shang was a "native of the East China Sea", who was reused when he met King Wen while fishing by the Weishui. This narrative mode comes from the lobbyist story of "Warring States Policy", which is not credible. The later wild history** "Romance of the Gods" has the story of Jiang Taigong selling flour and being a butcher in Chaoge City. At the time of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, it was impossible to change the hereditary class identity, and there would be no nouveau riche from the common people. Taigong must have come from the Lu clan among the Qiang people, and was the son of a typical "Qiang Fangbo".
But this does not rule out that Taigong had the experience of living in Chaoge. What is recorded in the "Historical Records" is that Jiang Taigong played a huge role in the later Zhou people's cause of destroying the merchants, especially providing many conspiracy secrets, "There are many military powers and strange schemes, so the words of the later generations and the Yin power of the Zhou are all the original plots of the Taigong of Zong." This kind of conspiracy and calculation is incompatible with the simple and simple life of the Qiang people and the Zhou people in the western mountains. Only the "civilized" world can shape such gloomy and scheming people.
So, why did Taigong Lu Shang, who was born in the upper echelons of the Qiang people, have such a complex and elusive experience, and finally came together with the Zhou people?
Combined with the previous work of the Zhou people for the Shang Dynasty, it can be speculated that Taigong, as the son of the leader of the Lu clan of the Qiang people, may have been captured or entrapped, and then sent to Chaoge as a human animal. At that time, both Taigong and King Wen were still young. However, some accidents saved his life (such as the divination results were not suitable for the sacrifice, etc.), so he lived as a pariah in Chaoge City until he met the escorted old Zhou Chang and his followers.
Chaoge, now Qi County, Henan Province.
In this case, the reunion between the old prince and Zhou Chang in the Chaoge City must be extremely dramatic, especially after the old Zhou Chang's father and son experienced all kinds of encounters as "Qiang Fangbo" and Bo Yi was "used". The details of this encounter have been confused and cannot be recovered in various legends, but the outcome is clear: these people who had the same tragic experience came to a consensus that Taigong forgave the Zhou people's past atrocities and approved of the old Zhou Chang's dream of destroying the Shang dynasty, although the motive came from gossip speculation that he did not necessarily understand. He quietly returned to the west with Zhou Chang's father and son, and devoted himself to the great cause of destroying the merchants.
With the horror, sorrow, new knowledge and harvest of Zaichaoge, Lao Zhouchang and the remaining sons returned to their hometown. They left with only worry and despair, but when they returned, they were united and led their whole clan into this big gamble: the merchants. This undertaking has engulfed all kinds of political forces, including the Zhou people, from the eastern commercial capital to the distant mountains in the west, and once it is opened, it is impossible to stop, like a drifting boat in the deep mountains and valleys, or struggling to reach a vast and rich new home, or crashing into pieces in the torrent and rocks.
In this business, the newly joined Taigong Lu Shang provided great help to the Zhou people. According to Sima Qian's "Historical Records", what the prince planned for Zhou Chang, the king of Wen, and Zhou Fa, the king of Wu, and his son were all conspiracies and secret room schemes, and most of them were not recorded. But the lessons he can teach the Zhou people are more than that.
Compared with the Zhou and Qiang people, the civilization of the merchants was more developed, and the division of labor was more specialized and the production efficiency was higher. Taking the slaughtering industry that Taigong may have engaged in in the Chaoge City as an example (not only from the joke of "The Romance of the Gods", in many early civilizations, the butcher profession was indeed closely related to the status of untouchables), this industry in the Shang capital has long been out of the stage of small workshop operation. After slaughtering, the meat and bones of human animals are fully utilized, and different parts and organs are sorted and classified into the next round of production. In the Yinxu handicraft workshop area excavated in the 1930s, there are workshops specializing in processing human leg bones, and the leg bones of adults who have been preliminarily selected are tied together and waiting for the next step of fine processing, which may be to make hairpins for hair bundles. In other Shang Dynasty workshop areas, there are also relics of bowls made from human skulls. The Zhou people would not use human bones in this way, but this division of labor and specialized production method was the real progress that Taigong could bring.
Collection of the Bone Bamboo Museum of Yinxu.
The bone hairpin was unearthed in the tomb of Yin Ruin in Xiaotun Village, Anyang, Henan.
In addition, the young Zhou Fa (King Wu) also married the daughter of the Taigong, and Zhou Gongdan may have also married another sister. As a result, the Zhou people renewed their generational marriage with the Qiang people, and the two kinship tribes finally united under the great cause of destroying the Shang.