【New Exhibition】
Guangming Daily reporter Wan Majia wang Wenjing
What did the "snow boots" worn by the ancient ancestors look like? When disaster strikes, how do people from four thousand years ago respond? Where did the world's first bowl of noodles appear? What materials and methods is it made of? What cultural relics were added to the Dulan Hot Water Tomb Group in 2020, which was listed in the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China"?
On November 30, the Qinghai Provincial Museum met with the public again. After half a year of exhibition and renovation, its exhibition area increased to 9450 square meters, and 1331 pieces (sets) / 2405 cultural relics were exhibited, including 191 first-class cultural relics and 248 precious cultural relics (sets). A few days ago, the reporter walked into the Qinghai Provincial Museum to understand qinghai's regional history and national culture in exhibitions such as "Qinghai Historical Relics Exhibition", "Qinghai Intangible Cultural Heritage Boutique Exhibition", "Qinghai Archaeological Achievements Exhibition", "Centennial Qinghai Revolutionary Cultural Relics Catalogue Exhibition" and so on.
Majiayao cultureMajiayao type dance pattern faience pot Courtesy of Qinghai Provincial Museum
Wisdom – When ancient humans met dirt
Walking into the exhibition hall of "Qinghai Historical Relics Exhibition", the first thing that catches your eye is a variety of colored pottery. Faience pots, faience urns, faience vases, faience drums, faience pots and other forms are different and exquisitely patterned. One of the faience pottery in the display cases that resembles modern snow boots is particularly eye-catching.
Look closely at this "snow boot", the boot barrel is painted with symmetrical double line back pattern, and the upper is decorated with double line stripe and triangle pattern. "Although the pottery boot is a kind of container, its shape is a direct reflection of the boots worn by the ancient ancestors. This faience boot unearthed in Liuwan Cemetery, Ledu District, Haidong City, Qinghai Province, was first found in China. Museum docent An Ruiting introduced.
Pottery originated from the ancient ancestors in the process of using fire to find that the burned soil will become hard and stylish, and some of the "mud blocks" raised upward on all four sides can also preserve rainwater, inspired by this, people began to consciously make the soil into the shape they wanted, and then put it in the fire to burn, pottery was born, and gradually became people's daily necessities.
The faience culture in Qinghai spans Yangshao culture, Majiayao culture, and the cultural periods of Zongri, Qijia, Xindian and Kayo. Unlike the industrial paints of modern pottery, the color of the ancestors' faience pottery came from mineral pigments and remained glorious for thousands of years.
Cartouches, serrated patterns, paperback patterns, frog patterns, circle patterns, triangle patterns, grid patterns... The pottery is equipped with different patterns according to the shape of the vessel, and some patterns directly reflect the production and life of the original ancestors. The dance-patterned clay pots in the exhibition hall of the "Qinghai Archaeological Achievements Exhibition" vividly show the scene of the collective dance of primitive humans: the clay pots are frescoed with two groups of people wearing round ball costumes and dancing hand in hand, and the whole picture seems to be static, but people feel the rhythm of dancing.
The pieces of faience pottery on display seem to tell how the ancestors carved out their own homeland paradise in this land thousands of years ago.
Faience boots Guangming Daily reporter Wang Wenjing photo /Guangming pictures
To rush - Qinghai as the "land of locks"
On the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau thousands of years ago, how did the exchange of civilizations between China and the West proceed? The copper spear of the round copper with wide-leaved barbs in the collection of the Qinghai Provincial Museum tells the story of "communication" 4,000 years ago.
This copper spear was found at the Shenna site in the chengbei district of Xining City, Qinghai Province, with a wide body and exquisite casting, which is very similar to the similar instrument shape of the Altai Mountain Seima-Turbino culture in the Eurasian grassland, and similar copper spears have also been found in the ruins of Xiawanggang in Huaichuan, Henan, and Yongfeng Village in Datong, Qinghai. This shows that as early as 4,000 years ago, the ancestors of China's central plains and western regions had contact with nomadic tribes from the Eurasian steppe, which was about two thousand years earlier than the civilization exchanges on the Silk Road.
"Qinghai Changyun Dark Snow Mountain, isolated city looking at the Jade Gate Pass." Located in the intersection of Eastern and Western cultures, Qinghai is the junction of the farming culture of the Central Plains and the nomadic culture of the grassland, and the Tangbo Ancient Road and the Tea Horse Ancient Road cross Qinghai, where different economic forms, complex ethnic structures, and various cultural factors blend and converge, leaving more than 6,000 brilliant cultural relics.
A set of Persian Sassanid silver coins in the display case is the product of the exchange between China and the West in the Qinghai region. Persian silver coins are one of the international currencies of ancient Central Asia, which were already circulated and used in various countries in the Western Regions during the Wei and Jin Dynasties. Due to the opening of the Qinghai Road of the Silk Road and the trade between the East and the West in Tuguhun, Persian silver coins also circulated to Qinghai, and its excavation reflects the important position of Qinghai in the trade between China and the West from the end of the 4th century to the beginning of the 6th century AD, and also confirms the prosperity of cultural exchanges and commercial trade on the Qinghai Road of the Silk Road.
Exquisite - the cultural relics of the Touraine Hot Water Tomb show the life of the ancients
Exhibition scene Guangming Daily reporter Wang Wenjing photo /Guangming pictures
How exquisite was the life of the ancients on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau? Dazzling gold and silverware, exquisitely decorated silk fabrics... The excavated cultural relics of the Dulan Hot Water Tomb Group in Qinghai may give you the answer.
The Hot Water Tomb Group is located in the Blood Wei Grassland of Zamari Village, Hot Water Township, Dulan County, Qinghai Province, and was announced by the State Council as the fourth batch of national key cultural relics protection units in 1996. From 2018 to 2020, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology of Qinghai Province jointly excavated the 2018 Blood Wei No. 1 Tomb in the Hot Water Tomb Group, and unearthed more than 1,000 pieces of various cultural relics such as gold and silverware, bronze, ironware, lacquered wood, leather, jade, glassware and textiles.
In the exhibition hall of the "Qinghai Archaeological Achievements Exhibition", 24 cultural relics excavated from Dulan's 2018 Blood Wei No. 1 Tomb made their debut in the "Golden Hill - Hot Water Tomb Group" unit, attracting many viewers to stop and watch. Through miniature landscapes, theme propaganda films, scene restoration, documentary promotion and other forms, with sound, light, color and other auxiliary means, the audience tastes unique cultural charm during walking.
The double lion Sun and Moon gold medal ornament excavated in the 2018 Blood Wei No. 1 Tomb in the exhibition cabinet is one of the important cultural relics on display, the center of the gold medal ornament is a pattern of the combination of the sun, moon and baoxiang flowers, and there is a squatting male lion on each side of the pattern, the male lion or the sun or the arch moon, the mane is angry, the front leg bow, on the treasure phase flower, the hind legs are curved, the tail is curled in a ring, the lion body is inlaid with a purple crystal; next to the double lion Sun and Moon gold medal ornament is a beautifully shaped turquoise phoenix, also unearthed in the 2018 Blood Wei No. 1 tomb, the phoenix stands on a foot Another foot sticks out from the chest of the bird, and the bird is inlaid with turquoise all over the body...
"Tomb No. 1 is one of the high-grade tombs with the most complete layout, clearest structure and most complex shape found in the Hot Water Tomb Group and even in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau area, which provides an important physical basis for studying the burial system, burial customs and the history of tang-Tibet relations with ethnic minorities, the history of Silk Road transportation, and the history of material and cultural exchanges on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau during the Tang (Tubo) period." An Ruiting said.
Guangming Daily (09/12/2021)