✎ “No site can have the elements and symbols of the origin of civilization like the Taosi site. “The Taosi site is one of the three key sites in the Chinese civilization exploration project. It is a must-pass place to study Chinese history and ancient culture and perceive the spiritual connotation of the Chinese nation.
▲Taosi Site
On July 21, 2022, the academic seminar on “JingtianweiCinema Land of Shining in Four Directions—The Taosi Model of the Origin of Chinese Civilization” was held in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province.
This meeting was to explore the Taosi ruins, the first city site in the Central Plains region to enter the primary civilization stage, and to show its fruitful archaeological achievements, such as: an unprecedented city site, a magnificent palace wall, a regular cemetery, the earliest observatory in the world, the earliest writing to date, and a set of ritual vessels…
The original China
Since ancient times, the Taosi ruins have been a sacred place in the minds of the locals. According to the aerial film taken, for thousands of years, no matter how the nearby villages have developed and changed, they have been surrounding Komiks and seldom occupied.
▲Taosi Ruins Navigation
In the dark, it seems that there is a magical power protecting this ancient capital ruins. In the site of more than 4 million square meters, the Babaylan city site occupies 2.8 million square meters and nearly 130,000 square meters of the palace city. The entire site has clear functional distinction, exquisite layout, and distinct burial hierarchy, just like the basic form of the country.
Many scholars believe that Taosi is the “Yaodu Pingyang” recorded in classics, based on years of excavationJudging from the results, the gap between the rich and the poor in Taosi society was huge, and a few Komiks aristocrats accumulated a large amount of wealth and formed a privileged class. Social developmentKomiks By this time, the prototype of the country had been formed and a civilized society had arrived.
The Taosi site is a typical representative of early China.
The capital of Yao and Shun
There are only dialects near the Taosi ruins in the country, and the sun is called “King Yao”. Is it a coincidence? Or the inheritance of civilization? Or is it a certain worship? Has the great king Yao, who has been passed down from generation to generation, built a great capital?
In 2018, on the wall of the Taosi ruins palace city, archaeologists were surprised to find the “Qilou”-style door site left behind by Cinema.
The tall Que Tower has always been called the gate of etiquette. Two tall que Towers extend from the southern wall of the palace city, and the pattern is similar to the style of the Yingtianmen Que Tower in Luoyang City during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Even the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City later followed the Quelox model of more than 4,000 years ago.
▲The “Qulou Style” gate of the southeast gate
▲The Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City
The tall Quelou gate site shows the grandeur in the palace. Above the palace, Cinema has an area of more than 540 square meters. The cellar outside the palace city stores the country’s grain. The cellar diameter is 5 meters and the depth is 7 meters. The built-in spiral ramp can reach the bottom directly. These large cellar pits are almost exactly the same as Hanjia Cang in Luoyang during the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
After more than 40 years of excavation, the Taosi site has become the capital of the Yao and Shun era recognized by many scholars. Wang Wei, chief expert of the “Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project”, believes that no site can be as comprehensive as Taosi siteIt has the elements and symbols of the formation of the origin of civilization. The Taosi site is in its age, geographical location, and the level of civilization it reflects are quite consistent with Yao, and is an important fulcrum and cornerstone for empirizing the journey of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years.
The cemetery of the Chinese Dragon in the tomb of the king
The cemetery of the Taosi site is the largest in the Yellow River Basin. More than 40 years of excavation show that more than 4,000 years ago, the society here had already experienced serious polarization. Unlike the tombs of ordinary people with a large number of tombs, there are relatively few aristocratic tombs, very high-quality and particularly rich burial objects. In 1980, in the M3016 tomb, a round special pottery was revealed. This is not an ordinary pottery plate. The center of the plate is vividly painted with a dragon.
▲Taosi Panlong
In the entire Taosi ruins, only four such Komiks dragon plates were unearthed from the kingly tomb. Archaeologists believe that the dragon plate should belong to the king of the time and is a symbol of high-level status. The dragons drawn in the Taosi Dragon Pan are all shaped like Komiks coiled dragons, with crocodile-like scaly patches on their bodies, and the sides of the head are square like bear ears, with long jaws protruding, especially the image of branches holding mouths, which is very rare. The Panlong of Taosi is no longer the image of the dragon in the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties and later generations. Taosi is the original prototype of China, so Taosi dragon is the true Chinese dragon.
▲Longpan unearthed from the Taosi site
The world’s earliest observatory
More than 4,000 years ago, Taosi had a relatively advanced astronomical calendar and the world’s earliest observatory.
Archaeologists discovered 13 arcs for the first timeBabaylan When the rammed earth pillar base was arranged in a shape, it was confused by the strange combination of “the walls are not like walls, and the roads are not like roads”.
According to the records of “Shangshu Yao Dian”, astronomy during the Yao Emperor’s period was very developed, and the astronomical calendar was related to agricultural production and had become part of the royal power. The observatory was a necessary building in the capital.
These 13 strange stone pillars, Could it be the observatory from more than 4,000 years ago?
After years of exploration and verification and simulation observation, archaeologists finally discovered the secret of the observatory. It turned out that the ancestors determined the season and solar terms by observing the observation slits of the pillars and the sunrise direction of Taer Mountain. From the second observation slit, the sunrise is the winter solstice, and from the 12th observation slit, the sunrise is the summer solstice. Both the spring and autumn slits are seen from the seventh observation slit.
▲Taosi Ruins Observatory
▲Restoration of Taosi Ruins Observatory
This is the earliest observatory in the world and is also the Chinese The origin of the 24 solar terms of Komiks. It is 500 years earlier than the Stonehenge Observatory in the UK.
The mysterious Zhu Shu text
In the excavation of the gray pit H3403 in the Taosi site in 1984, two “characters” written in cinnabar were written on a broken flat pot, causing a great sensation.
One of the red characters is not much controversial, and many scholars believe that he is very similar to the “character” in oracle bone inscriptions.
▲Zhu Shu Pinghu
The second controversial word, what is going onIt is still unclear whether it is the word “Yao” or “王”.
Although it is just two simple words, it is the earliest text clearly discovered in China. It was about 800 years earlier than the mature oracle bone inscriptions.
The initial formation of “ritual and music civilization”
29 musical instruments unearthed from the Taosi site, including turtle drums, earth drums, special chimes, pottery bells, copper bells, oral string zithers, etc. The combination of turtle drum and special chime is the earliest known instrument of the same kind.
▲The drum and the restoration of the copper bell are the earliest metal instruments discovered in China. The oral stringed zither is the smallest ethnic instrument in China. To this day, the Qiang, Mongolian, Yi and Oroqen peoples are still in use.
▲Oral string calves
The drum that uses crocodile skin mask only appears in the kingly tomb. The same is true for earth drums. Among them, one pair of turtle drums, one stone chime, and one earth drum are all placed in a fixed combination on the lower left side of the tomb owner of the noble tomb. The combination of turtle drums and special chimes was inherited from the Shang and Zhou dynasties and became the unique burial tool of the nobles.
Tao Temple also unearthed jade ritual instruments such as jade axe, jade cong, jade bi, and jade gui. They and the above-mentioned instruments indicate that the “ritual and music civilization” had been initially formed at this time.
▲Jade artifacts unearthed from Taosi site
▲Jade beast face
The earliest astronomical measurement instrument
In the autumn of 2002, it was left in TaosiThe middle-term tomb of Komiks found a wooden pole with black, green and red markings on it, which caused archaeologists to verify the “Guibei”.
Guo Biao is an astronomical instrument that measures the length of sun shadow in ancient my country. It can measure the sun shadow in the earth and determine the location of the capital; it can conduct geodetic measurements, recognize the actual range and range of the world; it can also be used to formulate a calendar.
Study proves that the wooden pole found in the M22 tomb is a ruler. The discovery of Taosi Guizhi also shows that the instrument used in ancient China’s astronomical measurements first appeared in the middle of the Taosi culture 4,100 years ago.
▲Guizi unearthed from the Taosi site
From this point of view, the Taosi site is an early capital ruin that has been discovered in China so far, which has all the functional elements of city walls, palaces, cemeteries, musical instruments, observatory platforms, large storage areas, etc.
All kinds of archaeological signs also show that as early as more than 4,000 years ago, Taosi entered the national stage and entered a civilized society. First, the Taosi culture period was not an equal society, but a serious social hierarchy differentiation occurred. For example, the burial differences mentioned above actually reflect the social status of the tomb owner. Second, the emergence of the “king” in Taosi culture and society, which means that a country dominated by royal power emerges. Third, in Taosi society, the ritual system was initially formed and became the essence of the social system to be passed down in future generations. Fourth, the material and spiritual civilizations created by Taosi society were mostly inherited and developed by the Xia, Shang, Zhou and later generations, and are in line with the lineage.
It can be said that Taosi was “the original Chinese and the main vein of China.”