"How brilliant is Liangzhu?"

Chen Han couldn't help but ask himself in his heart.

5,300 years ago, this is a magical time period.

It was as if civilizations all over the world had exploded in that instant.

Ancient Egypt in the Nile Valley was unified, forming the world's first unified royal state.

The Sumerians established a city-state civilization in the southern plains of Subupotamia.

The Harappan culture emerged in the Indus Valley.

And on the land of China, the Liangzhu civilization on the north bank of the Qiantang River appeared.

And Liangzhu is now attracting worldwide attention.

Just now, Chen Han heard the latest news.

In the Maoshan ruins, more than 20 kilometers east of the ancient city of Liangzhu, more than 80 acres of rice fields were discovered.

Among them, the east-west irrigation canal and the north-south braised clay ridge divide the neat rows of rice fields, which is breathtaking.

Surplus food is the most important condition for the formation of culture and civilization.

To put it bluntly, only when you are full will you have culture and civilization.

At present, the carbonized rice unearthed in the ancient city of Liangzhu has a total amount of 20-300,000 catties.

Such large-scale rice cultivation is inseparable from advanced production tools.

5,300 years ago, when other farming cultures were still using a tool similar to today's shovels, and turning the land with a spade, the Songze culture, the predecessor of the Liangzhu civilization, had already used the split stone plough after technical improvement.

In fact, cultural settlements in other parts of China during the same period also farmed, but most of them used shovels made of animal bones or stones (the ancients called Lei Yun) to dig the ground and grow things.

Strictly speaking, it is not called "farming culture", it is called "horticultural agriculture", to put it bluntly, it is impossible to scale up, and it is impossible to feed the population of tens of thousands in a city.

And Liangzhu is different.

20-300,000 catties of carbonized rice can be preserved to this day more than 5,000 years later, indicating that Liangzhu's food storage is very advanced and the yield is very large.

At least one farm warehouse can have a stock of two or three hundred thousand catties of grain, which shows that Liangzhu was very rich in grain at that time, and the scale of farming operations was very large.

The need for water conservancy projects for large-scale farming has become very urgent. The construction of water conservancy projects will inevitably require a part of the population to detach themselves from food production and specialize in this work, and it will need to be managed by organizational leaders.

This is why civilization, i.e., state, was born in the first place.

The Liangzhu water conservancy project is very ambitious, although the individual dams may not seem very "grand", at least not as good as the Egyptian pyramids.

But in fact, the amount of work of the 11 dams in Liangzhu is also comparable to that of the Egyptian pyramids.

The dam in Liangzhu will take 10,000 people to build for 10 years.

Such a large amount of work shows that the Liangzhu civilization had a very strong agricultural foundation 5,300 years ago, with high-output grain production and a large amount of grain reserves to support so many laborers to do such projects without grain production.

The Liangzhu civilization has a huge earth-and-stone structure of the inner and outer city walls, and it was first discovered on February 11, 1969, six days before the Lunar New Year, when the American keyhole satellite took a photo overlooking Liangzhu.

It was winter, the vegetation withered, and it was the revolutionary era, development and construction were not the main social activities, the landform was basically intact, and the ancient city wall and dam system of Liangzhu were clearly displayed, which helped China's archaeologists to discover the ancient city of Liangzhu 5,000 years ago.

The ancient city of Liangzhu has realized the separation of urban and rural areas, and all agricultural settlements are located outside the city to provide food for urban residents. The ancient city of Liangzhu is a typical "water town in the south of the Yangtze River", the traffic in the city is mainly rivers, and the means of transportation are mainly boats.

Previously, estimates of the size of the entire city were conservative.

It is simply based on the differentiation of the inner and outer city walls, and it is believed that the Mojiaoshan palace area, the center of the city's rights, is about 300,000 square meters

m, the inner city, that is, the main handicraft area, about 3 million square meters, 3 square kilometers.

The outer city is the main grain-producing area, covering an area of 6.3 square kilometers.

This is the scope of the ancient city of Liangzhu.

There is nothing wrong with this range, the ancient city of Liangzhu 5,300 years ago is indeed so large.

However, new archaeological excavations have shown that although the city of Liangzhu is such a range, it does not mean that there are no people living outside the city.

In the Maoshan ruins, which were found more than 20 kilometers east of the ancient city of Liangzhu, more than 80 acres of rice fields were found.

This shows that at least outside the ancient city of Liangzhu, in the 20-kilometer radiation area, it still belongs to the agricultural work area of Liangzhu.

There are still some "wild people" scattered on the vast plains outside the city, carrying out agricultural operations and producing food to supply the lives of the people in the ancient city of Liangzhu.

Perhaps, the ancient city of Liangzhu, the capital of Liangzhu, was inhabited by far more people than archaeologists imagined.

There are a large number of people in the city, who live on agriculture within a radius of 20 kilometers, not just on the 6 square kilometers of agricultural areas in the outer city!

Moreover, more and more "technological" sites have been discovered.

The archaeological team of Zhejiang University found an ancient well in front of the temple site in the city, and there were wooden shelves in the well.

Wooden shelves themselves are not unusual, and Neolithic people already used wood to make tools.

Strangely, these wooden shelves are fastened with a mortise and tenon structure!

Mortise and tenon joint is the main structural method of traditional Chinese architecture, furniture and other equipment, which is a connection method that combines concave and convex parts on two components.

The protruding part is called tenon (or tenon), and the concave part is called tenon (or tenon, tenon).

The Chinese timber building framework generally includes columns, beams, fangs, backing plates, truss purlins (truss purlins), bucket arches, rafters, lookout boards and other basic components. These components are independent of each other and need to be connected in a certain way to form a house.

In Chinese architecture, in principle, the way of mortise and tenon connection is adopted, and iron nails are also used if necessary.

Huaxia furniture's "mortise and tenon" method of connecting various parts is the main structural method of furniture modeling. Various mortise and tenon joints have different methods and different application ranges, but they have the "joint" function of the shape and structure on each piece of furniture.

If the mortise and tenon joints are used properly, the two wooden structures can be tightly fastened together, achieving a "seamless" level. It is the basic skill that ancient carpenters must have, and the level of craftsmanship of the craftsman can be clearly reflected through the structure of the mortise and tenon joint.

The ancient buildings of the Chinese dynasties, as well as most of the wooden tools, have always used the mortise and tenon structure, which is the biggest difference between the Chinese civilization and the Western civilization.

Westerners use nails to fix buildings, while Chineses mostly only use mortise and tenon structures.

Including the large-scale Forbidden City, all the buildings are also fixed with the help of mortise and tenon structure, which is the crystallization of the wisdom of the Chinese people.

However, there has always been controversy in the historiographical circles about when the "mortise and tenon" construction method first appeared.

Many people believe that this is a woodworking technique invented by Luban.

Because Luban is a well-known woodworking inventor, and the legendary Luban lock is to use the characteristics of mortise and tenon.

The era when Lu Ban lived was in the late Spring and Autumn Period, about five or six hundred years B.C.

However, this conjecture can now be disproved.

The mortise and tenon technology of the Chinese people was born far earlier than imagined!

It was born 5,300 years ago during the Liangzhu civilization!

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