"Loulan" is a name that only existed when Emperor Wen of the Western Han Dynasty (Liu Heng) was opened up, and thanks to the opening of the Silk Road, Loulan, which was at the hub of transportation, developed into a prosperous and rich country.
The Silk Road is divided into two through Loulan: one passes through the north of Loulan, west along the Tarim River, through Kuqa and Aksu, to Shule, and then through Tashkurgan across the Pamir Plateau to Central Asia, West Asia, Southwest Asia, and to Europe. The other route passes south of Loulan, to the southwest, through Ruoqiang, Zhimu, Hotan, and finally merges with North Road in Shule.
(Zhang Qian's envoy to the Western Regions stamp map)
The Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu had constant frictions, and the Ancient State of Loulan happened to be located between two great powers, and its embarrassing situation could be imagined. Therefore, it is also decided that it can only swing between Han and Hun, choose left and right, and suffer hardships and anger. In the fourth year of the Reign of Emperor Yuanfeng of han Zhao (77 BC), the assistant chancellor Huo Guang sent the general Fu Jiezi to lead a group of assassins to assassinate angui the king of Loulan who was secretly communicating with the Xiongnu, and publicly declared Thatu Qi, the brother of An Gui, who had been a hostage in the Han Dynasty, as the king of Loulan.
After Wei Tuqi succeeded to the throne, he changed Loulan to the State of Shanshan and was incorporated into the territory of the Han Dynasty, becoming an important town in the Western Regions. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, at the invitation of King Shanshan, the Eastern Han Dynasty sent Ban Yong, the son of Ban Chao, to be the governor of the Western Regions and responsible for the local Tunshu. During the Three Kingdoms period, the State of Shanshan became a vassal of the State of Wei, and during the Western Jin Dynasty, King Shanshan was made the Marquis of Guiyi.
Around the fifth year of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (330 AD), the Loulan people were forced to abandon their fallen homeland and chose a tragic evacuation and migration. Thus, one day, about seventy years later, when the monk Fa Xian was traveling west through Loulan, there was already a desolate scene of "no birds on the top, no beasts on the bottom, looking at the extremes, and the desire for the place is unknown, but the dead man is the sign of the ear." It is conceivable that at that time, how Fa Xian's heart was lost and confused.
In the 22nd year of the Reign of Emperor Yuanjia of the Southern Song Dynasty (445 AD), the state of Shanshan was destroyed by the DingZhi people (ancestors of the Uyghurs and Turkmen).
In the early years of the Tang Dynasty, Master Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty took the sutra and returned to Loulan, and what he saw was "the city is lonely, and the population is cut off." Obviously, at that time, Loulan was already an empty city, and only the magnificent city remained. Although time did not allow him to repeat the same life trajectory with the Fa Xian monk, they met unexpectedly in the ancient country of Loulan. Traveling through the distance of time and space, bringing the same to two people, I am afraid that only a blank face.
With the vicissitudes of nature, the entire Lop Nur where the Loulan Kingdom is located has become a desert, and the ancient country of Loulan has also been submerged in thousands of miles of yellow sand, which was once forgotten, and people even doubted whether there was such a country.
Many mysteries are in front of people: what kind of people are the Loulan people? What kind of language and writing do the Loulan people use? Where did the Loulan people flee after the fall of the country? Where is the ancient city of Loulan? In fact, there are people who are more desperate than we need to unravel the mystery, because for western explorers who are keen to investigate the Asian hinterland (in fact, they are literally antiquities thieves), these are undoubtedly a huge temptation. Therefore, it was destined that Lou Lan would have a day of being awakened, even if it was a mutilated body.
The "Awakening" of the Ancient Kingdom of Loulan
In the early spring of the 26th year of the Qing Dynasty (1900), the Swede Sven Hedin led an expedition team into the Lop Nur area of Xinjiang, China under the banner of exploration. Subsequently, they trekked hard in the long yellow sand, and the tired team almost missed the sleeping Loulan. At noon one day, the expedition team found some living red willows in the desert. Experience tells people that where there are plants, there must be water, and Sven Hedin decided to stop and dig for water, but the shovel was gone, and it turned out that the guide Aldek had forgotten at yesterday's campground.
So the guide decided to look for the shovel, but when he finally found the shovel, the desert suddenly blew up the sand. The wind and sand revealed a ruin. At noon the next day, the guide who had finally caught up with the party handed over a carved plank and a few copper coins he had picked up on the ruins to Sven Hedin, who was waiting for him. The Swede dropped his jaw in shock as he found that the pattern of the planks had a typical Greek art style, and the intuition of explorers and archaeologists told him that the guide must have discovered an ancient city with a glorious history in the desert. He was convinced that he might be the first to unravel the mystery of the Taklamakan desert civilization. But after thinking about it beforehand, he decided to start all over again the following year, like a high jumper, taking a few steps back, just to accumulate the strength to sprint violently.
(Sven Hedin)
In March of the twenty-seventh year of Guangxu (1901), Sven Heding and his party made a comeback as scheduled. After excavation and clearance, they found the ancient city of Loulan, which had been flooded by the desert for a long time. The well-preserved courtyards under the fine sand, living utensils, pieces of paper, wood janes, leaves, and every object surprised them with treasures. Sven Hedin imagined the life of the Guloulan people while excavating, and when a complete house was cleared, facing the wooden door that opened outward, he wrote with great excitement in his Journey to the Heart of Asia: "This must have been the door opened by the last inhabitant of this ancient city 1500 years ago when he left his home!" ”
As the excavation progressed, the expedition found many ancient coins on the site, including five-baht coins from the Chinese Han Dynasty, a large number of utensils and utensils, as well as pottery for food and lacquered wood. Amazingly, there is the Galuvian script, which has been widely used since the beginning of the Common Era, as well as Greek and Roman art, Persian carpet fragments, and frescoes in roman and Persian styles. In the end, the cultural relics thieves used the excavated cultural relics back to the West, and proudly announced to the world: pompeii in the desert, Guloulan has reappeared in the world!
(Model of the restoration of the ancient city)
The mystery of Lou Lan was thus unveiled, and the news shocked the world. It has also attracted many world-class expeditions and archaeologists, the Huntington Expedition of the United States (1905), the Stein Expedition of the United Kingdom (1906), and the Mitsurui Otani Expedition of Japan (1908-1909). They came to the desert one after another, their greedy eyes scanning every inch of the land here, not sparing every precious artifact that might be hidden under the sand and gravel. Ostensibly to unveil the mystery of Guloulan, it is actually a race to seize the treasure house of Chinese cultural relics. In this way, the sleeping Loulan Ancient Kingdom was awakened by the noise of a group of uninvited guests, and since then it has amazed the world.
The real Lou Lan
After layers of excavation, the ruins of Gulou Lancheng City appeared in their original form. The ancient city is located at 89 degrees east longitude and 40 degrees north latitude, 220 kilometers southwest of the present-day Ruoqiang county seat in Xinjiang, and 28 kilometers east of the west bank of Lop Nur. It was built in a low-lying place with gentle terrain, nearly square, with an area of about 16,000 square meters, and there was a small river passing through the north of the city, which coincided with the history records of Loulan Chengguo. What is even more shocking is that Chinese archaeologists excavated a female mummy in the Loulan tomb group in 1980 AD, which was determined to be 3,000 years old. The dry corpse is completely decorated, with a high nose and deep eyes, and a beautiful face. It has some characteristics of caucasians, and is poetically defined as "Loulan Beauty".
Who established Loulan - Loulan race
Returning to reality, if you think about it carefully, it is not difficult to find that the history of mankind is actually a history of hungry people looking for food. It was under such an opportunity that the ancestors of Loulan staggered forward, tossed and turned, came to western China, and finally established the homeland of their dreams.
As early as 3000-2000 BC, the rich crops, grain-filled granaries, and dazzling luxuries in the cities at the heart of ancient civilizations on the edge of Eurasia tempted the impoverished and impoverished nomads of the deserts of the steppes. So the Semitebs in the southern deserts, the Indo-Europeans in the western Eurasian steppes, and the Huns, Ruorans, and Turks in the eastern steppes that later sounded the horseshoe of Europe, began a series of invasions and migrations that changed history vigorously.
However, only the ancient Indo-Europeans mentioned above are related to Loulan, so we go straight to the subject. The ancient Indo-Europeans originally lived in the present-day Volga and Don river valleys, and around 3000 BC, the Blonde-haired, white-skinned Caucasian Nodic race, divided into four parts, left their homeland, and sprinkled like seeds blown away by the wind, desperately sprinkling every corner of the earth that could be reached.
1. South Road Column
Around 3000 BC, the pioneers of the Indo-Europeans, known as the Hittites, crossed the Caucasus Mountains and appeared on the peninsula of Asia Minor. In 1595 BC, the Hittite kingdom, which invented the mature chariot, destroyed the glorious ancient Babylonian dynasty. In 1269 BC, the Hittite kingdom concluded the first recorded international treaty with ancient Egypt, dividing up the sphere of influence in present-day Syria and Palestine. At the end of the 13th century BC, the Hittite kingdom was conquered by the later Mycenaeans (another branch of the Indo-Europeans).
2. Southwest Column
Known as the "Guti" by the Assyrians, this column appeared in the western part of the Iranian plateau around 2300 BC, and they first overthrew the Babylonian dynasty, the political star of the Two Rivers Valley, and thus became famous. It was conquered by the Sumerians in 2082 BC and has since disappeared from the history of the Near East (now the Middle East).
3. West Road Column
Around 2000 BC, an Indo-European force moved west and south along the west bank of the Black Sea, crossing the beautiful Danube River, crossing the Carpathian Mountains, entering the Balkan Peninsula, destroying the great Greek love sea civilization and opening the Bronze Age of Greece. After that, groups of Indo-Europeans successively entered Mycenae, Thrace, Italy, Northern Europe and other places, and gradually became the dominant europeans. Later, some of the energetic and tireless Indo-Europeans also crossed the sea to the North American continent and became the local masters.
4. East Road Column
The ancient Indo-Europeans of the Eastern Road, who called themselves the "Aryans", crossed the mountain pass between the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas and then divided into three parts to complete the feat of migration. One of these branches descended south to the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra valleys around 1500 BC, establishing a splendid "Hindustan"; the other branch entered Iran from the Afghan plateau in the 11th century BC, creating a glorious ancient Persian civilization.
There is also a branch of the Tocharians (some say the Guti who retreated from Babylon) into the Xinjiang region of China. Around 1000 BC, one of them went further east into the Qilian Mountains of China, occupying the Hexi Corridor, which was called "Yu Zhi" or "Yu Shi" by ancient Chinese books, that is, the Yueshi Kingdom later recorded in the "Records of History". The last remaining fishing and hunting tribe created the great Loulan in the Lop Nur region.
As early as 4700 years ago, the Loulan people multiplied on the Peacock River. The Loulan people and the Guizi people, who also belong to the Thirty-Six Kingdoms of the Western Regions, are all compatriots of the Yue people. Tracing back to the poor source, the Yueshi people belong to the ancient Indo-European Tocharian race, so the Loulan people are the ancient Indo-European race.
In addition, although from an ethnographic point of view, the early Loulan Turks were close to the Pamir Sek race, the Andronovo race, and the Yueshi people near Dunhuang, from a literary point of view, the Loulan people used the Central Asian Pailu (an ancient Indian script, also known as the "Nya colloquial language") as the official script, while the Loulan native language was the Indo-European Tocharian language. Therefore, it is certain that in distant antiquity, a blonde-haired and white-skinned ancient Indo-European tribe traveled a long way to the Lop Nur region, and they were the ancestors of the Loulan people.
History is a meandering river, although the ancient country of Loulan has disappeared, but the Loulan people have not been exterminated. So where are the tens of thousands of Loulan people? 1500 years later, trying to find an accurate answer is like climbing the Shu Dao, fortunately we can deduce it from some fragmented historical memories.
Descendants of the Loulan people
According to the "Biography of Wei Shu Shanshan", in the third year of the Yongchu Period of emperor Wu of the Southern Dynasty (422), more than 4,000 Loulan people, the crown prince of Bilong, the king of Shanshan, surrendered to the Northern Liang King and moved to Gaochang, and were placed in an oasis called Puchang on the northern edge of the Kumutag Desert. Today's residents of Turpan are the remnants of the Shanshan country.
After another 70 years, the state of Yanshan was attacked by the Ding Zeros, and some of the Loulan people fled north to Build a City in Yiwu (present-day Hami, Xinjiang). The city they built was named Naji, which was the ancient city of Ravchok in the north of the village of Sibao in today's Hami Wubao Township.
Of course, there are also some Loulan people who have migrated to the Central Plains, but the result can only be like water droplets flowing into the sea, and it can only be said that water droplets have always existed, but they cannot distinguish themselves.
There is also a tribe of Luobu people (also called Luobu Nu people) in Xinjiang, who are also said to be descendants of the Loulan people. They live by fishing and hunting, isolated from the world, living next to the lake for generations, gathering places called "Abudan", fishing canoes called "Kabon", reed huts called "Satoma", grass on the ground called "Rob Ma" and so on. It seems that everything in the world has a name in their hearts that is poetic and that we cannot read.
More than 100 years ago, tarim and gradually shortened, the loaves of the lobu people to survive in the lakes have dried up, they had to abandon the boat ashore, from fishermen to herders, and along the Peacock River west to Ruoqiang, Yuli, Luntai, Luopu four counties, so far the registered population has reached tens of thousands.
The latest research data shows that after the fall of the country, the people of Loulan did not all flee, some people stuck to Lop Nur and lived in the water, and the evaporation of the lake forced them to continue to migrate until 1972 AD, when Lop Nur completely dried up, and the last batch of Loulan descendants moved to the territory of today's Shanshan County. That is to say, the migration of the Loulan people spanned 1500 years of time and space.