When I woke up in the morning, it was not yet dawn, and most people were still asleep. I knew that the two-hour time difference had not yet been reversed, and when I got out of the tent, I saw a mirage in the distance, which was also a very wonderful view, and I couldn't help but look at it carefully for a while.

Today is finally the time to excavate, remembering that Mr. Shen said it lightly, and I came here from M City, not to mention the arduous journey, but also experienced a life and death catastrophe, it can not be said that it is not difficult, I must find this "old liar" when I go back.

Because of the preciousness of water resources, after moving the materials yesterday, Team Chen instructed everyone to use as little water as possible, such as washing their faces and bathing as much as possible, and being sloppy in the desert is a kind of self-protection for the human body.

There is only one person who has the privilege - Abidan, she is the only one on the construction site who can wash her face every day, but it is nothing, a big girl in the family cannot be unkempt like us.

After breakfast, we marched towards the big sand dunes with a huge procession of guys. The so-called guys are nothing more than dustpans, brushes, some small tools, and some pen and paper. This is very different from the hoe and shovel of the field gold. To be honest, I didn't know what a person was doing with a dustpan at first, but when I thought of yesterday's "slide", I seemed to understand.

Sure enough, we climbed to the top of the big sand dune, and began to shovel sand one by one, and then fell up the "slide", and there was a four-wheeled camel pushing at the bottom, and then it was firmly caught in the sand, and then pushed down by two strong men to a short place, piled up into a wall of sand.

Jinshi, can be said to be a very physical profession, not to mention the previous squatting in the pit to scrape the surface, the hoe to dig the ground, just say today, although a dustpan of sand does not have much weight, but we keep doing squatting, back and forth running I don't know how many times, only at noon when the hottest time to have lunch rest, the rest of the time is to repeat that kind of artificial sand clearing activities all day.

At the end of the day, I had back pain, but fortunately, the wood underneath had gradually appeared, and Team Chen said at dinner that the wood was not far from the tomb, and the tomb might be excavated tomorrow. Hearing this finally brought a touch of uplift to my tired body.

The next morning, we went to the dunes again and started to go to the sand. At dinner just now, Team Chen told me that the first time I excavated the tomb, I would find someone to guide me, and I would be able to work independently after I learned it.

It didn't take long for an upside-down oar-shaped stake to emerge from under the sand on my side, and the oars were painted black.

When Abidan saw it, he smiled and said to me, "Yo, I'm lucky to hit the tomb so quickly."

I asked her, "How do you see that?" Is this a coffin board or a tombstone? "In my mind, I thought it was the kind of coffin board of the Qing Dynasty tomb at that time that was not rotten, blackened, and smelled musty.

"No, you're new and don't understand anything. This symbolizes a woman. ”

"Female?" I didn't react for a moment, "What is it?" ”

"It's fertility worship, women." She said to me with the sand in her hand.

When I heard this, my face turned red, and she laughed when she saw me blushing. I may sound like a joke, but it's a pity that I'm a big girl in front of me.

"What, what's so embarrassing about this?"

I said, "Uh-huh, well, nothing." Then she turned her head and continued to shovel the soil, only to hear her still laughing, and she continued, "It's nothing, the ancestors here have a very strong fertility cult, and under this blackened oar is a man buried, and over there, you see," she said, pointing to a cylindrical stake with a red tip, "the one that symbolizes the man, and the woman is buried underneath."

To be honest, the opposite sex had never discussed such explicit things with me before, so I was very embarrassed, and Abidan looked at my reaction, and although he smiled, he didn't say anything more.

We continued to clear the sand until we reached the bottom of the handle of the wooden paddle, and we finally found the coffin underneath, which was wrapped in a thick layer of fur, which should be the cowhide that Chen had said. This is a boat-shaped coffin unique here, exactly the length of a person. There are many theories as to why the coffin was ship-shaped, and the farthest one is even the one that crossed the River Styx.

What I agree with the most is that this is not a desert, but a lake, because the ancients had water to survive, so the canoe may be an indispensable part of their life, and it is naturally very scientific to take it for burial.

Abidan continued to instruct me to slowly shovel out a gentle sand pit with a large diameter around the coffin, and then use a wooden plank to secure the surrounding area in case the sand poured down. Then she asked me to get a brush, a knife, and an iron wedge from the pile of tools, and to stand with me on the side of the coffin, one left and one right, and brush the sand off the hide.

She squatted down with a knife and said to me, "Come next to me and see how I got it, next time you'll have to do it yourself."

I walked up to her and crouched down to see what she was going to do.

I saw that she skillfully used a knife to make a cut between the cowhide and the coffin, and the cowhide was not tough because it had been in such an environment for a long time, so it was easily picked off, and she said: "The coffin here is not wrapped in the skin of a cow, you see, there are dried blood stains on the coffin." This shows that this is a cow that was slaughtered alive at the time of burial, and there is more than one. ”

I thought to myself, is this really a site from 4,000 years ago? You must know that in many dynasties it was illegal to kill a ploughing ox, because of low productivity, a cow can top several people. At the site 4,000 years ago, a few cows could be used to make livestock for a person, so it is conceivable that the productive forces at that time were still quite developed, and the life should have been relatively rich.

Peeling off the hide, Abidan and I cleaned up and brushed the sand off the coffin.

Before the coffin was opened, I was full of anticipation. Although I saw the dried corpse in the LL Collection, it felt different from cleaning it out by myself.

The coffin here is also different from our common coffin, I thought that the boat-shaped coffin is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, but in fact, it is not the case, it is narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, just like the ship has overturned, and the coffin cover is the "bottom of the ship", which is covered by several wooden planks respectively, not like our one coffin board.

In fact, it is far less difficult to open the coffin than we usually do, because the small planks are not heavy, and they are a piece when they are opened. Abidan asked me to do it, and I went up and uncovered one, only to see a dried corpse lying quietly inside, and its face looked like a man.

Seeing that I was very calm and picked up the plank and put it aside, Abidan asked me a little disappointed, "Huh? Why weren't you taken aback by him? ”

I said, "Wow sister, do I look so timid?" It's too embarrassing to see the corpse scared. ”

"I was so ashamed that I blushed just now, but I wasn't afraid when I saw the corpse, strange, is it more terrible for girls than this?"

I'm speechless about her logic, is that the same thing? I had to look at her helplessly, who looked like a little girl, smiled, and continued to move the small plank.

When the planks were taken down, all the people in the boat-shaped coffin were revealed, this is a person wearing a felt hat and boots, wrapped in a dyed wool cloak, this outfit, you say that he is an ethnic minority in the Song and Yuan dynasties, I don't think it's strange, but it's so long, at that time, the Central Plains was still about Xia Shang.

They say that the people of the XH cemetery are of Indo-European ethnicity, and they may speak Tocharian, in short, not in some sense. This may have been an early civilization in the area. However, no traces of life have been found so far, which is also a strange thing, and it may be buried under the desert, and there is no way to detect it. Only sand dunes such as XH Cemetery can be seen by people who are high above the ground.

After taking notes on the real Big Brother, I took out graph paper, pen and ruler and began to draw. After all the work was done, a few strong colleagues who were responsible for transporting the coffin used a container similar to a spliced box to reinforce the coffin as a whole, and then transported the box directly under the mound and then carried it onto the camel.

I asked Abidan, "Is this going to be shipped back to the lab?"

She said, "yes, let's go to the station first, and then transport it back to the lab, what's wrong?"

"Then just transport it back and open the coffin, it's over, what are we bothering here?"

"This is different, not all tombs have to be transported back, yours is relatively intact before being transported back, and some tombs are still kept in situ after the records are made. Besides, there are men and women in it, some are people, and some are not people, all of them must be recorded on the spot, and it will inevitably be confused after going back, and if you encounter someone who is not a person, you don't have to transport it back. ”

"Not human?" I don't understand, is it a cat or a dog?

"Yes, there have been several tombs here before, all of which are wooden people, carved from poplar wood, with heads, bodies, hands and feet, and the burial is the same as a normal person. If you encounter this kind of situation, you don't have to worry about the overall transportation, and it's okay to transport the wooden person and the coffin separately, saving a lot of effort. ”

"Why are they burying wood?"

"If you call me good sister again, I'll tell you." She smiled mysteriously.

"Hehe, if you don't say it, don't say it, I'll go back and read the book by myself."

"Cut, it's not in the book, if you don't believe it, go back and read it." There was no smile on her face for an instant.

After all, I didn't want to make her angry, so I said, "Okay, okay, good sister, just say it." ”

She put a bright smile on her face and said, "Actually, I don't know, I'm going to tease you."

A woman's face, the wind-blown pages, are not fake.

Not all the coffins here are in good condition, and a lot of scattered coffin boards have been cleaned up, and when I got off work in the evening, I helped everyone carry them down in rows in the open space.