"Why do we say this is a sacrificial pit, and not a cellar pit for runaway nobles like the one found in Zhou Yuan?"

"It's because in this pit, there are many phenomena that point out that it is not a hastily dug pit, but a pit dug seriously for some kind of ritual."

"For example, the four walls of this straight and neat pit are treated very straight, even accurate to the centimeter."

On the edge of the No. 8 sacrificial pit in Sanxingdui.

Students from the Department of Archaeology at Sichuan University are receiving field teaching from their teachers.

The Zhou Yuan in this teacher's mouth is the ruins of Zhou Yuan.

The ruins of Zhouyuan, located in the area of Fufeng and Qishan in BJ City, Shaanxi Province, are 70 kilometers long from east to west, about 20 kilometers wide from north to south, with a total area of about 33 square kilometers.

This is a large-scale ancient site from the 11th century BC to the 8th century BC, and a large number of bones, armor, and a large number of precious national treasures and bronzes have been unearthed.

After archaeological determination, Zhou Yuan was the birthplace of Zhou culture and the settlement of Zhou people before the destruction of Shang.

That is, the place where King Wen of Zhou and the Zhou people before King Wen lived for generations.

Since 1976, Zhou Yuan has carried out large-scale archaeological excavations on the site and unearthed more than 10,000 precious cultural relics.

The most distinctive archaeological discovery in Zhou Yuan is the "cellar".

Most of the burial cellars of Zhou Yuan's bronzes are located near the residence site, and there are no traces of repaired pit walls, and the bronze age is as late as the Western Zhou Dynasty.

According to the research of later scholars, these bronzes that were stored in the cellar and underground should be the nobles who lived in Zhou Yuan at that time, who hid the bronzes underground in a panic, and once hoped to take them out again in the future.

As for why the bronzes were buried in the ground in a panic?

This is to learn the history of King Ping's eastward migration.

The bronzes in Zhouyuan's cellar are not only very large, but also have a lot of cultural relics left by well-known families in the history books.

For example, Mao Gongding, which is now stored in the National Palace in Taipei, comes from Zhou Yuan's cellar.

The inscription on the bronzes in the Zhuangbai cellar shows that their owners, the Wei family, can be traced back to Wei Ziqi, the elder brother of the Shang Dynasty, and after the fall of the Shang Dynasty, the family was changed to Shi Zhou, and the hereditary historian of the new dynasty continued the illustrious background.

And, it's not just the Zhou people.

It is hard to imagine that in the ancestral land of the Zhou people, the land of Longxing, many cultural relics of merchants and nobles have been unearthed.

According to the inscription, the owner of the tomb, Xi Ji, was probably a scholar-level nobleman from the Shang Dynasty, but he had close contacts with the high-ranking nobles of the Zhou Dynasty.

16 tombs of the Western Zhou Dynasty with merchant features such as waist pits and dog martyrs have also been discovered.

And also found in Zhouyuan the "Bo Society" built for merchants!

And batches of oracle bones were also found, in tens of thousands.

Obviously, in the Zhou Dynasty in the first millennium BC, the rulers of the time had already understood that the best way to suppress the enemy aristocracy was to move them to their own base.

This is the same approach as when Qin Shi Huang later moved the nobles and royal families of the Six Kingdoms to Xianyang.

There is no place more than the land of their ancestors to suppress the remnants of the previous dynasty.

In Zhou Yuan, all the people living in Zhou were the clansmen of the great nobles of the Zhou Dynasty, and it was impossible for these merchants who had emigrated from far away to rebel!

However, these nobles who lived in Zhou Yuan at that time probably never thought that they would flee in a hurry one day.

Even because he was in such a hurry, he didn't even have time to bring these valuable bronzes, so he could only hastily dig a pit and bury them all in the ground, thinking that he would dig them out when he came back in the future.

As a result, I didn't expect that this wait was two or three thousand years, and it was not until the 20th century that it saw the light of day again.

Chen Han stood next to the pit, quietly listening to the teacher, and was teaching with the students.

These students also wore protective clothing, and gathered around the edge of the pit one by one, carefully examining the bronzes in the pit.

The discovery of the Sanxingdui site in Sichuan can be said to be a continuous talent training base for the archaeological force in the province.

And in the foreseeable future, this base will only get bigger.

There are still too many places in Sanxingdui that have not been excavated, and there is time to use them to train generations of excellent archaeological workers for Sichuan.

This kind of benefit, Wei Lai is quite envious.

Although he said that he was from the Academy of Social Sciences, he worked in the capital.

But his hometown is Min Province.

Fujian Province is notoriously archaeologically weak.

The archaeological power in the province is very fragile.

There is no way, all over the province, and there is no archaeological base that can be used as a long-term archaeological base to cultivate the archaeological force in the province.

Unlike Yinxu, Sanxingdui, Zhouyuan, Longshan culture, and Hemudu culture, you can carry out long-term archaeological work and exercise experience.

To say that Chen Han, who is from Fujian Province, is not envious, it must be false.

But envy is useless.

Fujian Province does not have any large-scale archaeological projects for long-term archaeology, even if you look through the history books, at most you can only find some celebrity tombs after the Tang Dynasty.

The archaeological status quo in Fujian Province is embarrassing.

Beyond the history of China, more than 5,000 years ago Neolithic sites, but a lot of them have been discovered.

After the Tang Dynasty, many tombs have also been discovered.

However, the archaeological discoveries from the Xia, Shang, Zhou and Qin and Han dynasties are very rare.

And it is precisely the archaeology of this period that is the most important for the tracing of the origin of Chinese civilization.

Because for the Chinese civilization, the history before the Qin and Han dynasties, whether it is recorded in historical books or actual archaeological discoveries, is incomplete, intermittent, and urgently needs to be supplemented and complete.

For example, this Sanxingdui complements the history of the Shang Dynasty and the civilization before the Shang Dynasty in the Sichuan Basin, and adds a strong proof to the theory of the diversified development of Chinese civilization!

What is the theory of diversified development in China?

Even now, many scholars in the academic community believe that in ancient times, China should have developed in a diversified way, rather than a single line of development.

There were multiple civilizations that existed at the same time and merged with each other, and finally became a complete whole after the Zhou Dynasty.

This statement may be more in line with Chinese history.

Shu, Chu, Yue, and Wu all existed before the Zhou Dynasty, and each developed a civilization in its own territory.

Shu now has the ancient Shu Kingdom of Sanxingdui as a support.

However, there are no earlier ruins found in the Chu Kingdom, the Yue Kingdom, and the Wu Kingdom in the same period as the Shang Dynasty.

There is a high probability that it may be superimposed under the capitals of these countries, just like Zhengzhou.

Now many scholars are calling for a systematic exploration of the strata in the capital areas of these ancient countries, which may be able to discover the ruins of 3,000-4,000 years ago and find one of the earliest sources in China!

Chen Han is undeniable about this.

He thinks that with this effort, it is better to concentrate archaeological forces and dig up the Yinxu and Sanxingdui first, and the effect may be better!

(End of chapter)