Author: Lin Shuo (National Museum of China), the article was first published in the "Beijing Museum of Natural History Public Number".
In the "Power of Science and Technology" exhibition hall of the National Museum of China, a bronze shell storage vessel with a unique shape of textile scene is displayed. At the foot of the circle foot of this bronze shell reservoir, four bird-like animals with flapping wings are welded: an almost exaggerated long beak, which occupies almost 1/4 of the body.
For this bird shape, children who often watch animation may feel familiar: it is very close to the royal butler in "The Lion King", the hornbill Zazu.
Is the bird that "falls" on the shell reservoir a hornbill?
Photography: Ding Quan
The family Bucerotidae is a family of chordates, vertebrate subphylum, ornithischia, and hornbills. It is named because the mouth is thick and straight, and the mouth usually has a helmet protrusion, resembling a rhino horn. There are 74 species in 19 genera. It is widely distributed in south-central Africa, India, Indochina, Oceania and the Pacific Archipelago, and is a typical tropical forest bird. China is found only in Yunnan, southeastern Tibet, and southwestern Guangxi.
The land of this cultural relic is the ancient Dian Kingdom, which is an ancient kingdom established in ancient times on the southwest frontier of China, mainly distributed in the central and eastern regions of Yunnan Province centered on the Dianchi Lake area, with a warm and humid climate, which coincides with the distribution of hornbills.
There are five species of hornbills distributed in Yunnan, namely: crowned hornbills, white-throated hornbills, corolla creased hornbills, brown-necked hornbills and double-horned hornbills. According to the latest release of the "National Key Protected Wildlife List", all five species of hornbill birds in Yunnan have now been upgraded to the first level of national security.
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On the left is the crowned hornbill and on the right is the double-horned hornbill
Image source: forum.xitek.com
The white-throated hornbills on the left and the brown-necked hornbills on the right
Image source: www.birdnet.cn
Corolla Crumpled Hornbill Image source: www.birdnet.cn
By comparing this artifact with the helmet protrusions on the beaks of the five Chinese hornbills, the helmet protrusions of the crowned hornbills and the two-horned hornbills are the most obvious, and most similar to the bird images on the bronze shell storage vessels in the textile scene. Therefore, the author judges that the bird image at the foot of the bronze shell reservoir circle in the textile scene is likely to be a crowned hornbill or a two-horned hornbillon. Author: Lin Shuo (National Museum), the article was first published in the "Beijing Museum of Natural History Public Number".
Why did the image of the hornbilly appear on the bronze shellfish storage vessel of the ancient Dian Kingdom?
Let's start with this artifact. Shell vessel is a kind of bronze ware unique to the ancient Dian kingdom, the lid is cast with group portraits showing collective scenes, in addition to the textile scene, there are still curses, tributes, hunting and sacrifices and other themes, and so on, and so on, known as "silent history books".
This drum-shaped shell vessel with hornbills welded and cast, with a height of 27.7 cm, a cover diameter of 26 cm, and a bottom diameter of 31 cm, adopts a waist-retracting design, and there are eighteen characters welded and cast on the lid, as well as a chicken and a dog, depicting a group of women who are engaged in textile activities; they sit in the heart and are weaving cloth with a loom, showing the world a precious historical picture of the ancient Dian Dynasty, so that we can understand the stage of social development and the degree of civilization at that time.
The ancient Dian state belonged to the ancient southwest region of China, with Dianchi Lake as the center of the establishment of the divided regime, its ruling core was located in the Jinning District of present-day Kunming, Yunnan Province.
From 1955 to 1960, archaeologists successively carried out archaeological excavations in the Shizhaishan Ancient Tomb Group in Shangliang Town, Jinning, and unearthed a large number of precious cultural relics, including the "Seal of the King of Dian", including dozens of exquisitely made and unique bronze shell containers, that is, the so-called "PokerMan" in ancient times, that is, today's our piggy, piggy, or The piggy.
Today's children, most of them will put change and steel hammers into the piggy bank as a way to continue to buy snacks, comics or school supplies, but the bronze shellfish of the ancient Dian Kingdom is not a coin, but a "sea shell" from the Indian Ocean and the Pacific coast.
Image source: https://mbd.baidu.com/
Sea shellfish are shellfish that grow in the shallow tropical subtropical seas, which are bright in color, durable and easy to carry, so they are used as the general equivalent of commodity exchange. According to the Institute of Oceanography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the production area of sea shells unearthed in the ancient Dian Kingdom is roughly in the warm water areas of the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific Ocean, including India, Myanmar, the Philippines and other places.
How did the sea shells in these coastal areas enter the southwest hinterland of Our country?
Image source: https://www.sohu.com/
Mainly through the "South Silk Road". As early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the southwest region communicated with India and Southeast Asia, so we also found shell coins in the northern Indian Ocean at the Jinsha site in Chengdu and the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan. Before the Qin And Warring States, more and more Indian and Burmese merchants entered the southwest of China through the "South Silk Road". During the ancient Dian Dynasty, with the development of the economy, the demand for shell coins further increased, and haibei continued to enter Yunnan through the "Southern Overland Silk Road (South Silk Road)".
Hornbills are known for their loyalty and infatuation in the animal circle, and once they have chosen a mate, they will not abandon it, and they will grow old with white heads.
Because hornbills are cave nest birds, during the brooding period, the hornbills will use excrement and food debris to shrink the hole from the inside; the hornbill father will cooperate from the outside to close, pinching inside and out, leaving only a thin gap in the hole. In this way, the female bird is responsible for hatching and feeding in the hole, and the male bird becomes a full-time nursing father, feeding food to his wife and babies.
The ancient Dian people created the image of the hornbill on the bronze shell storage vessel, which is related to the women's textile scene on the lid, perhaps borrowing the biological characteristics of the hornbill husband singing with the woman and the division of labor, implying that women can hold up half of the sky, and it is not known. Author: Lin Shuo, Deputy Research Librarian of the National Museum of China, dedicated to the historical research of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the articles are scattered in Xinhua Digest, Guangming Daily, Beijing Daily, People's Political Consultative Conference Daily, National Museum of China Journal, China Museum, etc.
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