Panlong City, Huangpi County, Hubei Province, excavated the base site of the Shang Dynasty palace and the tomb of slave martyrdom
Xinhua News Agency, Wuhan, February 13, 1975
A Shang Dynasty palace site and slave burial tomb 3,450 years ago have been excavated in Panlong City, Huangpi County, Hubei Province.
The excavation site has become a new battlefield for the forest and the hole. At the scene of the burial of the remains of the slaves, the local poor and lower-middle peasants and the masses who came to visit held a meeting to criticize Lin Biao and criticize Kong, and launched a revolutionary criticism of Lin Biao's crime of imitating Kong Lao'er's "self-denial and retribution.".
The Shang Dynasty ruins of Panlong City were noticed as early as the early liberation period. Over the years, in the construction of farmland water conservancy projects, bronzes, jades and pottery from the middle of the Shang Dynasty have been unearthed continuously. In September 1974, the excavation team of the Shang Dynasty ruins in Panlong City, composed of cultural relics archaeologists from Hubei Province and teachers and students of the Department of Archaeology of the Department of History of Peking University, together with the local poor and lower-middle peasants, cooperated with the water conservancy construction project to carry out a large-scale excavation of this site. The Shang Dynasty ruins here, like the Shangcheng found in Zhengzhou, are the earliest known ancient cities in China so far. Its excavation proves that the Culture of the Shang Dynasty has expanded to the Yangtze River Basin, providing important scientific data for the study of the history of slave society in China.
The base site of the large palace excavated this time is rectangular, 38.2 meters from east to west, and 11 meters from north to south. Judging from the base site, the palace was built on the foundation of the rammed earth platform at that time, it consisted of four rooms, and there was a cloister outside, and there were forty-three large cornices around the cloister, and in addition to the cornices, some thinner peach eaves pillars were preserved. This kind of building has many similarities with the Shang Dynasty palaces recorded in ancient books, and it is also similar to the early Shang Dynasty palace buildings found in Yanshi Erlitou, Henan. As can be seen, the original shape of this palace is spectacular. In the middle of the Shang Dynasty, under the condition of a large number of labor tools such as stone axes and stone chisels, such a spectacular building could be built, which fully demonstrated the wisdom of the working people.
In the excavated slave burial tombs, a large number of precious materials have been preserved. There are coffins and rafters in the tomb, although the wood has decayed, but the shape is visible. The outer wall of the wooden rafter is carved with very delicate patterns such as animal face pattern and cloud thunder pattern, which is the earliest surviving wood carving artwork in China. There are more than 60 pieces of bronze, jade and pottery buried with them. The largest piece of copper is fifty-five centimeters high. A piece of bronze is forty-one centimeters long and has a dragon pattern and a cicada pattern on it, which is a rare fine product. The shape and pattern of the cultural relics unearthed this time are almost the same as those unearthed in Zhengzhou Mall. It was in this tomb that the remains of three martyred slaves were found. Under the slave system, slave owners were inhumane and could slaughter slaves at will and use them to be buried. This historical fact once again forcefully criticizes the so-called "benevolent government" advocated by Kong Lao'er.