"Yo, this is still a square piece!"

"This thing is not very common even in the Central Plains, I didn't expect Sanxingdui to have it!"

"And this one is still a relatively fine one, which is only owned by high-level nobles!"

Holding a brush lying on the floating plank, Chen Han was pleasantly surprised.

Fang Wei is a kind of wine container and water container in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, which is made of copper or pottery, and is shaped as a small mouth, oblique shoulder, deep belly, small flat bottom or round foot.

And the copper square will generally have complex ornamentation.

During the period of the Republic of China, a commercial vessel was unearthed in Hunan, which was a bronze vessel in the late Shang Dynasty, and was named after the inscription on the mouth of the vessel as "Vessel Tianquan is the father and respects Yi".

This piece of Fang Wei is the work of the pinnacle of bronze craftsmanship in the late Shang Dynasty, and it is very exquisitely made!

The height of the device is 84.8 cm, and the height of the device is 63.6 cm. The cover is in the shape of the top of the palace, and the body is made of a rectangular mouth, with a straight neck and a high circle foot. The whole device is based on the cloud and thunder pattern, and is decorated with animal face pattern, dragon pattern and phoenix bird pattern.

The shoulders are decorated with double ear rings, and a beast's head is placed under the front abdomen. The corners of the four sides and the center of each side are decorated with protruding long hook-shaped ridges.

The shape of the merchant vessel is huge, majestic and solemn, the carving is exquisite, magnificent, and it is the representative work of the heyday of the late Shang bronzes.

Reflecting the superb skills and breathtaking momentum of the heyday of Chinese bronze casting, it is known as a "divine product" with both "appearance and connotation", and is known as "the king of Fangli".

Its body is full of various reliefs and ornaments, and the exquisiteness is amazing even if modern people see it.

Now stored in the Hunan Museum, Chen Han once visited.

The Sanxingdui Fang Wei in front of him, in terms of exquisiteness, is definitely not comparable to the king of Fang Wei.

The square piece that Chen Han is cleaning up is relatively simple and simple, although the body is also decorated, but there is no exaggerated relief, and the overall look is very "ordinary".

However, the things contained inside this Fang Wei are not ordinary at all.

Wei is a kind of wine and water vessel unique to Chinese culture, except for Chinese people, people in other parts of the world will not make this special bronze ware.

Sanxingdui can be unearthed, which once again shows that Sanxingdui culture is a part of Chinese culture.

However, this kind of undoubted thing did not make Chen Han feel the slightest surprise.

To his surprise, this square was not used to hold water.

It seems that in the process of spreading the bronze ware of "Wei" to Shudi, the usage has changed.

On the side of the Shang and Zhou people, the Wei was used to hold wine, after all, merchants loved to drink, and most of the exquisite bronzes were created by holding wine.

The Zhou people inherited the bronze culture of the merchants, so this kind of ware was also retained, but it was not so commonly used in the Zhou Dynasty and became a niche bronze.

But in Shudi, it may be that Sanxingdui people's love for wine is not as exaggerated as that of merchants, so this Fang Wei used by merchants to hold wine is used as a storage device in Sanxingdui.

Similar to the role of a piggy bank.

Why?

Because when Chen Han was cleaning up, he found some shells and pearls scattered next to this square piece of soil.

Fang Wei's body was now stuffed with dirt.

However, through some of the shells and pearls scattered in the mouth, Chen Han could already determine that this Fang Wei should have been filled with shells and pearls when it was buried in the soil.

This discovery surprised Chen Han very much.

This shows that in the primitive trade system of the ancient Shu people, perhaps shells and pearls were their general equivalents!

What is a General Equivalent?

To put it simply, it is a special commodity that is separated from the world of commodities and is a unified expression of the value of all other commodities.

Before the advent of credit money, human societies all over the world used some commodities as general equivalents.

In the case of the civilization of the Central Plains of China, the earliest must have been the stage of bartering.

Later, shells and pearls were used as general equivalents, that is, to play the role of "money".

The reason is that the Central Plains civilization at that time lived in the Yellow River valley and did not rely on the sea.

Relatively speaking, shells and pearls, which can only be found by the sea, have become rare and precious.

Scarcity is expensive.

The more precious something is, the more valuable it is, and it can become a general equivalent.

Like the Qi country near the sea, until the Spring and Autumn Period, shellfish coins were still used as currency!

Of course, the general equivalent of shellfish coins was gradually replaced by bronze in the Bronze Age.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, knife coins, axe coins, cloth coins and other coins made of bronze have begun to circulate and replace shell coins.

Later, in the Iron Age, copper coins basically ran through the history of Chinese civilization, and until the Qing Dynasty, they were the most universal general equivalents.

Of course, cloth and silk have always been used as general equivalents among the people, and the most popular was the Tang Dynasty.

In the Tang Dynasty, "silk" was even better than copper coins, and the people used "silk" more to trade than copper coins when trading.

The main reason was the lack of copper at that time, and the warlords in the late Tang Dynasty, the central government could not issue copper coins on a large scale, and the copper coins issued were not enough to circulate in the market, so they could only use "silk" as a general equivalent.

In the late Tang Dynasty, when people went out to buy things, a little larger deals, they were all paid for with "silk" in discounts, no way, no copper money.

This situation continued to the following five dynasties and ten kingdoms.

It was not until the Song Dynasty vigorously developed Lingnan, and there were many copper mines in the Lingnan area, and the sea trade was opened, that the Song Dynasty did not lack copper money, and cloth gradually fell from the equivalent to the status of general trading goods.

Let's get back to the point.

In the Sanxingdui civilization, shells and pearls can be found in Fangwei, and they obviously have the meaning of "storage".

This shows that shells and pearls, perhaps in Sanxingdui society, play the role of "money".

There is a precedent for this in the Central Plains culture, and in the Central Plains Chinese civilization circle, a lot of shell coins have been unearthed.

These shellfish coins were collected by coastal tribes and fang countries, and then circulated to various regions.

Like Shudi, it is located in the Sichuan Basin and is surrounded by mountains.

Although there are freshwater shellfish that provide shells and pearls, the amount is very small, and it is considered a very precious item.

And Sanxingdui people also have extensive exchanges and trade with the Central Plains civilization.

So since there is trade, and there is trade at the level of "transnational", it is important that the two sides of the trade have a general equivalent under the same value system.

For example, the Ming Dynasty traded with the Spaniards, which was silver, because in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty and the Spaniards, silver was a precious metal, and it was something that could mint silver taels and silver coins.

For the Sanxingdui people and merchants before the Common Era, in addition to "bronze", it seems that there are only shell coins and pearls between the two, which can be used as settlement items in transactions!

(End of chapter)