Changing the Xia Dynasty to the Xia Period, archaeology reveals misunderstandings
Dynasties is a technical term used to distinguish between periods of different regimes, and is generally used in academic and general history readings, but some monographs will use it"generations"to refer"Towards", for example, the Xia Dynasty refers to the Xia Dynasty.
In the long course of history, the time span of a "dynasty" is usually longer than that of a "dynasty", such as the famous War of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, which involved multiple independent feudal dynasties.
Similarly, the meaning of the Xia Dynasty is the continuation of time under the premise of taking the Xia dynasty as the ontology, and the extension to which stage depends on the needs of dynastic research.
However, the situation in the Xia dynasty seems to have been much more complicated than that of later dynasties. In January 2021, in the news report that a city ruins were discovered in Yusi Village, Mengzhou City, Henan Province, the official ** used the time and space word "Yuxia period"; In March 2022, in the news report of the Dongqu site discovered in Jishan County, Yuncheng, Shanxi, the official** used the expression "summer period".
The Xia period is not only limited to the Xia Dynasty stage of time, but also includes the ancient kingdom stage with the Xia people as the main body before the establishment of the Xia Dynasty. Spatially, it may also include other archaeological cultures that were contemporaneous with the Xia Dynasty (state) but did not belong to the category of Xia culture.
In conclusion, "summer period" is a very broad term.
The National Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasty Dating Project determined that the Xia Dynasty existed from 2070 BC to 1600 BC, so why can't the historical period in this time period be called the "Xia Dynasty Period", but vaguely called the "Xia Period"?
This mainly involves the definition of Xia culture, that is, whether Xia culture refers to the culture of the Xia Hou tribe or the culture created by all different groups during the reign of the Xia Hou clan.
1.Mr. Xu Xusheng pointed out that Xia culture originated from the Xia clan, including the Xia Hou clan mentioned in the "Historical Records" and related cultures such as the Hu clan, the Shen Xun clan, the Shen Ge clan and the Qi clan.
2.On the contrary, Zou Heng, a professor at Peking University, believes that Xia culture refers to a type of archaeological culture that belongs to the Xia Dynasty, to be exact, the Erlitou culture.
3.In fact, according to the absolute age of stratigraphic superposition and carbon 14 determination, the Erlitou culture is located in Yanshi, Henan, which is later than the Longshan culture (Neolithic) and earlier than the Shang culture (Erligang culture).
Before the establishment of the Shang Dynasty, there was a mature political entity in the Yiluo Plain of the Central Plains, and after a long period of development, this political entity had broken through the ancient state stage with blood ties and became a geopolitical group.
However, the exact length of this political entity's existence has become a point of contention. Through carbon-14 dating and tree-ring correction, the absolute age of the Erlitou culture was determined to be between 1750 and 1530 BC.
This also means that the early Erlitou culture could not be connected with the Longshan culture in Henan, and there was a blank period in the middle, and the late period had entered the Shang Dynasty, and even overlapped with the Shang Dynasty for nearly 100 years.
In other words, if 1600 B.C., when Zhengzhou ** rose, was taken as the dividing point of Xia and Shang, then Xia, as a dynasty, existed for more than 100 years at most, which is far lower than the "Bamboo Book Chronicle" recorded in the "Bamboo Book Chronicle" "From Yu to the 17th Dynasty, there are kings and no kings, with the age of 471 years", that is, around 2070 BC.
So, is it possible that Erlitou was only the capital of the late Xia Dynasty, and the capital of the early Xia Dynasty has not yet been discovered? From an archaeological point of view, the cultural relics created by different social groups must be different, while the cultures created by the same groups must be in the same line.
This is also the reason why archaeologists can judge the age of the remains based on the shape of the unearthed cooking utensils and drinking utensils and burial customs.
Archaeologists generally believe that the Erlitou culture did not originate from a single source, but was the product of cultural exchanges and integration in multiple places. The artifacts found in the site include not only the pottery of the local Longshan culture, but also the pottery of southern Jinnan, Liangzhu jade, and the cultural elements of Dawenkou in Shandong and Zaolutai in eastern Henan.
This fully proves that the Erlitou site is the capital of various ethnic groups and cultures, rather than a single place of origin.
Before 1750 BC, that is, in the middle and early Xia Dynasty, what was the scene like in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River? In this regard, Professor Xu Hong, the former leader of the Erlitou archaeological team, once came to this conclusion: "In the first two hundred years of the Xia Dynasty recorded in the literature, various groups in the Central Plains were independent of each other, and there were endless wars, and archaeology did not find a 'dynastic atmosphere' consistent with the handed down documents. ”
After years of archaeological research, Professor Zou Heng and his team have concluded that it is difficult to discover new archaeological cultures in the Central Plains, that is, in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River.
In short, if the Xia Dynasty did exist for 471 years, then during this period, only about a hundred years were real dynasties, and for the remaining 300 years, the Xia Dynasty was still in the ancient kingdom stage.
Some scholars have tried to extend the existence of the Xia Dynasty to more than 400 years by considering the late Longshan culture (2000-1900 BC) and Xinqi culture (1870-1720 BC) in Henan as part of Xia culture.
However, they were unable to explain the significant differences between the Longshan culture and the Erlitou culture in Henan.
Among the sites of the Longshan culture, the circular bag-shaped ash pit is the most common, but it is rare in the sites of the Erlitou culture. On the contrary, the Erlitou culture generally appeared in the shallow ash pits with rounded corners and ovals of different sizes.
Even the Xinqi culture, which is regarded as one of the predecessors of the Erlitou culture, although it has some similar factors with the Longshan culture and the Erlitou culture in Henan, shows different innovative characteristics from the first two in terms of cultural characteristics.
This is directly evidenced by the archaeological discoveries in Yangcheng.
According to the "Historical Records", Xia Yu Duyang City (now Dengfeng, Henan). Now, after the excavation of archaeologists in the site of Yangcheng in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty near Dengfeng Wangchenggang, the cultural relics with the stamp of "Yangcheng Cangqi" in the Warring States Period have been unearthed.
This further confirms that the Yangcheng city of the Xia Yu period is near the current Wangchenggang ruins. After carbon 14 dating, archaeologists have identified two city sites from the Longshan culture era as 2050 BC and 1935 BC.
An Jinhuai, an archaeological expert who presided over the excavation, believes that the site of Longshan City in Wangchenggang is likely to be the Yangcheng of the Xia Dynasty. However, the core pottery assemblage of the Longshan period at the Wangchenggang site is a pot, a ding, a bowl and a cup, while the core artifacts of the Erlitou culture are a round-bellied jar, a cup, an oblique belly basin and a jue.
This difference between drinking, eating, and drinking utensils shows that the Erlitou culture is the product of the fusion of multiple groups, and the Xia Hou clan is only one of the "genetic factors".
In the absence of written records, we are faced with two unsolvable problems: first, we cannot accurately distinguish between the pre-Xia culture, the Xia culture, and the Xia immigrant culture; Secondly, we cannot determine at what stage the Xia culture became an ancient kingdom and at what stage it entered the dynastic stage.
Judging from the archaeological finds, the cultural form of Yudu Yangcheng is significantly different from that of Erlitou, which shows that in the Yu era, the political form of Xia was still a tribal alliance.
There is even a possibility that is more extreme, that is, the royal family of the Erlitou civilization is not the Xiahou clan, but the Yan clan or other non-Dayu direct clans.
In the case of the Qin Dynasty, although it only existed as a dynasty for 14 years, Qin culture has been around for more than 500 years, starting with Qin as princes. If we rely solely on archaeological discoveries and leave aside the documents, we cannot accurately distinguish which periods were the Qin state and which became the Qin dynasty.
Similarly, although Ying Zheng's accession to the throne marked the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, the father-son inheritance of Dayu or Qi was only a symbol of the establishment of the family system within the Xia Hou clan, and did not prove that the Xia Dynasty had been established at that time.
Therefore, looking for the Xia Dynasty itself is a misunderstanding.
Out of an abundance of caution, some scholars, including Xu Hong, no longer refer to the Xia dynasty directly, preferring instead to use terms such as "Xia culture", "Xia period", or "Erlitou culture".