To the south of Lajia Village, about a kilometer or two away, a rural wilderness known locally as Xiala, is in full swing.

Hundreds of local villagers with hoes are digging a large construction site with a radius of about 200,000 square meters, waving their hoes vigorously against the sunny day.

Don't think that the people who work on the archaeological site are archaeologists.

There are less than 50 archaeologists in the Qinghai Archaeological Institute, and nearly half of them are responsible for scientific and technological archaeology, data analysis, cultural relics restoration and other indoor work.

There are only twenty or thirty people who can really participate in field archaeology.

If you want to excavate this 200,000-square-meter site with just twenty or thirty people, you have to dig it until the Year of the Monkey?

In fact, most of the excavation work on the site was done by the archaeological institute to hire local villagers to help.

Therefore, in many archaeology-related documentaries, there will always be a bunch of uncles and aunts in their forties and fifties at the archaeological site, holding hoes in their hands, and looking at the camera with a curious expression.

Of course, these temporary villagers usually do the most basic work, and every farmer will do it.

Dig a pit and turn over the earth!

Archaeologists are responsible for the preliminary exploration, surveying, and determining the location, and when it is determined that the excavation will begin, they ask the villagers to help dig the soil together.

When the cultural relics layer is dug and cultural relics or grave pits and relics begin to appear, the archaeologists will come to the field with hand shovels, bamboo sticks, soft brushes and other tools.

When Chen Han and the others arrived at the excavation site, what they saw was a fiery scene.

About one-fifth of the construction site has been excavated with dozens of large and small probes, each of which is of different sizes, from hundreds of square meters to four or five square meters.

A pile of archaeological team flags fluttered next to the construction site, and dozens of local and other archaeologists from Qinghai and other regions were carefully exploring and excavating the ruins.

On the other side, nearly 100 local villagers are also wielding hoes and continuing to dig new ways according to the plan.

It is estimated that some of them will be explored, and the next will be the place where Chen Han and them work and struggle every day.

The staff of the Qinghai Archaeological Institute who led the team stood beside the construction site with their waists in their hands, and introduced the situation of the Lajia site to Kong Wenjian, Chen Han and his party with great emotion.

"The excavation of the Lajia site has been going on for more than a month, and this site is very large."

"We worked day and night for more than a month to clean up a very small part."

"That's why we reported to the top and applied for support."

He smashed his mouth and said with a sigh: "The discovery of this site is purely accidental. ”

These familiar words made Chen Han couldn't help laughing.

90% of archaeological discoveries are basically carried out because of some accidental circumstances and accidents, and there are very few archaeological topics that archaeologists take the initiative to carry out.

Especially now, more and more attention is paid to the protection of ancient tombs, and it is rare for the upper authorities to approve the application for active excavation.

However, the prehistoric ruins are not counted in the "ancient tombs", and excavations are still encouraged.

After all, the study of prehistoric sites is of great help to the tracing of Chinese civilization and even the improvement of anthropology.

The staff of the Qinghai Archaeological Institute continued: "At the end of March, when a villager in Lajia Village was taking soil to build a house, he dug up a lot of old artifacts from the soil and reported them to the relevant departments. ”

"The institute sent a few researchers to visit and found that the artifacts excavated in Lajia Village were not common cultural relics of the Ming and Qing dynasties."

"What was dug up was actually a precious jade!"

As soon as everyone from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences heard that it was a jade bi, they all whispered in amazement and discussion.

Jade bi is a kind of flat round jade with a perforation in the center, which is one of the traditional jade ritual vessels in China.

Jade is the earliest variety of Chinese jade that has been continuous, and it is a very important jade.

In the past, when archaeological excavations were not abundant, scholars generally believed that the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty was the heyday of jade.

However, with the continuous excavation of many jade and other jade artifacts in prehistoric sites in recent years, the development history of Chinese jade has been pushed forward by thousands of years.

According to archaeological evidence, at least in the Neolithic Age in the third or fourth millennium BC, the Chinese ancestors had widely used "jade" as a carving wear and burial objects.

This thing is not only a symbol of power hierarchy, but also a gift or token in social interactions, and was widely used by the Chinese ancestors.

Jade appeared in Lajia Village, and it was dug up with the soil, not in the coffin of the tomb.

It can be inferred from this that there may be a Neolithic site in Lajia Village.

Because only the jade in the prehistoric site will be dug up directly from the soil.

Most of the jade from the Warring States period to the Han Dynasty were unearthed in coffins or chambers.

Even if there is geological movement, it is difficult to run directly from the chamber to the soil layer.

Unless it's casually discarded by tomb robbers, but that's less likely.

Everyone is engaged in archaeology, so naturally they understand this truth when they think about it.

The staff of the Qinghai Archaeological Institute did not explain in depth, and after skipping the process of identifying the site in the middle, continued: "After confirming that there is a very likely Neolithic site in Lajia Village. ”

"The deputy director of our institute personally led the team and dispatched most of the researchers in the institute to Lajia Village for a field trip."

"I don't know if I don't inspect it, I'm shocked when I inspect it."

"The scope of the ruins of Lajia Village is not ordinarily large!"

"Even now, we're not sure how big the site really is."

"At present, the core area explored is about 200,000 square meters, and the non-core area is also 200,000 square meters, and the exploration continues!"

"Let's go, I'll take you to see a few detectives that have been cleaned up."

The staff of the Qinghai Archaeological Institute opened the cordon and took the lead into the construction site.

Kong Wenjian, Chen Han and more than 30 archaeologists from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences hurriedly followed his footsteps with anticipation and curiosity.

The site of more than 400,000 square meters can be regarded as a relatively large gathering tribe in the new era, even if you are a descendant archaeological institute of the central government, you can rarely come into contact with it!

Soon, the staff took them to the first excavation site of the Lajia Village site, and it was also the first to be cleaned up.

Unexpectedly, as soon as you arrive here, the first thing you see is an area in the exploration that is more than ten meters wide and two or three meters deep, and the soil color is obviously different from the color next to it.

This area of no other way is so conspicuous!

"This! Is this a trench? ”

"So wide?!"

"Unprecedented!"

The archaeologists of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, including Chen Han, all had shocked expressions!

This Lajia ruins, as soon as they met, they put a big bomb on everyone!