"Wait a minute, isn't this Steinhuin the ruins of the ancient Shanshan Kingdom building found, why does it seem to have become a water tomb in your mouth." What Yue Guanchao heard a few days ago was clearly a building ruins, and asked questioningly.

Song Siyuan pointed to the photo of Steinhein and his party: "It's okay to say it's a water tomb, or it's okay to say it's a building site, the two don't conflict, they seem to be mixed together." ”

Anyway, she motioned for the group to look at the photograph, which showed a limited number of images, but they could still see the many fragmented hills on the saline tidal flats behind Steinhein, with geometric lines on the hills that were not naturally formed.

This means that most of the tombs were built on hills, and between them, there are many abandoned desert cities that have been weathered and ruined.

Yue Guanchao shook his head: "People and tombs live together, and they are not afraid of bad luck?" It's a corpse. ”

Song Siyuan hurriedly stopped him: "Stop, stop, don't look at exotic funeral customs from a self-righteous point of view, depending on death as life and burial as peace is the funeral custom of China, maybe people in other parts of the world don't understand it like this......"

For example, the Egyptians believed that after death, people would be reborn with the intervention of certain forces, and before that, the organs of the dead must be preserved for future resurrection, and they mummified the corpses in order to preserve them in the desert environment.

The so-called mummies are actually human bodies that are air-dried and hardened in the desert environment, because the desert environment is hot and dry, they want to preserve the corpse for a long time, and they must do something about the corpse.

After death, their relatives would invite a shaman to pray for them, and then in the presence of the shaman, the internal organs would be removed, smeared with a preservative made from a variety of herbs, dried and placed in four jars.

At the same time, after the internal organs were removed, the corpse was only a bone and a piece of skin, which happened to be coated with antiseptics inside and outside, and then packed into a coffin after being wrapped in layers of cloth tape, and those jars containing internal organs were placed in the four directions of south, east, west, and north.

According to the understanding of the ancients, the Egyptians' method of disposing of corpses was extremely undignified, even to the extent of insulting them.

First of all, people are not buried after death, but wrapped into a dried corpse and stored it, which already belongs to making the corpse unable to enter the ground.

Unable to enter the earth for peace, dead without a complete corpse, these two situations, in the eyes of the ancient Chinese, are already insulting corpses and rebellious to human ethics, but in the eyes of the ancient Egyptians, it is indeed the best way to preserve the corpses of relatives.

In addition to mythology, the reason why the Egyptians were able to preserve their bodies in this way was more due to the influence of the natural environment.

Most of the Egyptians lived near desert oases, a hot and dry environment that was ideal for preserving corpses, even if they were not mummified, they could maintain their appearance in a dry climate for years without decomposing.

On the contrary, if the corpse is buried in the desert, under the erosion of wind and sand for many years, the corpse will be quickly eaten by the insects in the desert, and at the same time, the quicksand in the desert is changing all the time, even if it is marked in advance, it is likely that after a few years, the corpse will move with the quicksand and move to other places long ago.

In order to remember the ancestors and at the same time fix the corpse, it is inevitable that they will not be able to bury the corpse in the desert, and under the influence of the myth of rebirth, the state of mummy preservation of the corpse has naturally developed.

This is the adaptation of human funeral culture to the natural environment.

Speaking of this, Song Siyuan continued: "Leaving aside people in other parts of the world, different regions within China have different attitudes towards funerals. ”

She paused, and her face became mysterious: "For example, there are many mountains and few places in the southwest, and it is difficult to find land to bury the living after they die. ”

"For another example, cave burials were once popular in the Lingnan region, and after the death of a loved one, the local people would look for a feng shui treasure cave, place the bones of their relatives in it, enter the cave every year to worship, and wait for a few years later, they would pick up the corpse and worship it."

"As for the burial method on the snowy plateau, it is very different from the Han land, and it is completely different from the concept of the Han land."

When Song Siyuan said this, her eyes lit up: "The form of funeral is closely related to the tomb culture, geographical environment, humanistic thoughts, skills and technology, and it will never be produced out of thin air. ”

After that, she knocked on the clue board: "Let's go back to the Western Desert, I guess that this form of people living together with tombs is related to the living environment of Shanshan people!" ”

The ancient Shanshan Kingdom was born in 200 BC and perished in the early Tang Dynasty, enjoying the kingdom for about 600 to 800 years.

Before the Han Dynasty, the ancients did not know much about the Western Regions, and did not have too many records of the Western Regions, and the names of the Western Regions countries appeared for the first time in the Han Dynasty history books since the time of Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty.

The ancient Shanshan country was fashionable and called Loulan, not very famous, they are really frequently recorded by history, or because of the trade between the east and the west, after the trade was unimpeded, in the following thousand years, Shanshan or Loulan began to be called by various dynasties, and has continued to this day.

The original Shanshan people, living in the valley of the Tarim River and the Peacock River, is a small country with only tens of thousands of people, to the early Han Dynasty, but also was conquered by the Huns, became a certain tribe of the Huns, if nothing else, such a small country and oligostate, after being ruled by the Huns for a hundred years, will be completely assimilated, integrated into the Xiongnu tribe.

It's just that history is never short of surprises!

During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty experienced nearly three or four generations of recuperation, the national strength reached its strongest, the people multiplied, the society was extremely rich, the grain in the barn was rotten and mildew, and it was not eaten in time.

In this case, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty decided to no longer endure the provocation and embarrassment of the Xiongnu, and sent Wei Qing and Huo Qubing to expel the Xiongnu for thousands of miles, which directly hurt the vitality of the Xiongnu, and even the Xiongnu tribe was divided into two, and it was difficult to restore the former majesty.

At this point, the Han Dynasty finally solved the great problem that had plagued them for nearly a hundred years, and Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty began to send envoys to the Western Regions to open up the Silk Road in the Western Regions and open up the trade of the Celestial Empire.

In the war between the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu, many tribes and small countries were wiped out because of the mistakes of the warband, and at the same time, there were also many small countries, because of the correct team, with the Han Dynasty won the Xiongnu and got rid of the predicament.

If understood in the opposite direction, a drop of water from a big country falling on the head of a small country is destined to become a river gushing spring, and these opportunities will eventually make some small countries rely on the Han Dynasty to open up the Western Regions and soar to the sky with the help of trade facilitation.

Among these small countries, there is the ancient Shanshan country.

Shanshan originally had only one city-state, Loulan, but in the case of the Han Dynasty's opening up of the Silk Road trade, they continued to expand their territory along the Peacock River to the west, and finally in a few decades, they annexed Milan, Jimo, Ruoqiang, and Niya on the south bank of the desert, and grew into a powerful dynasty near the desert.

At its most prosperous, the ancient Shanshan Kingdom stretched from Guyangguan in the east, to the ancient city of Niya in the west, to the Altun Mountains in the south, and to Hami in the north, ruling almost half of the Western Desert, and only the Tianshan countries on the north shore of the desert could compete with it.

Even, because Loulan City is located at the pivot point of the Hexi Corridor, it has also become a circulation zone of the East-West trade route, relying on the East-West trade, Shanshan has also developed into the richest country on the south coast of the desert.