On December 14, the reporter learned from the Yanshi Shangcheng Archaeological Team that a Shang Dynasty city gate site was found in the small town of Yanshi Shangcheng in Henan Province, and there were hidden canals under the city gate, which provided a new historical demonstration for the study of the road system, water system distribution, urban layout and functional attributes of Yanshi Shangcheng.
This discovery is the first gate site that can be confirmed at the ruins of yanshi shangcheng, which is the east gate of the small city. The gate is a single doorway, the width of the doorway is about 3.2 meters, the north and south sides of the doorway are distributed rammed earth column troughs and rows of column holes, there are 8 column holes in the south column trough, and 5 pillar holes remain in the north column trough.
Under the gates of the small city, a culvert was also found with a drainage of about 1.8 metres wide and 80 centimeters high. There are stone slabs above the canal to facilitate pedestrians to travel east-west. It can be seen that as early as the early Shang Dynasty 3500 years ago, a three-dimensional transportation system with pedestrian passages and drainage ditches in parallel was formed.
In addition, the latest archaeological excavations have basically revealed the two waterways running east-west through the small town of Yanshi Shangcheng. Chen Guoliang introduced that Yanshi Mall has the earliest and most complete urban water system found in the Shang Dynasty so far, the combination of urban light and dark water channels, and the internal and external water systems are connected, which not only creates a pond landscape of about 2600 square meters, but also undertakes the functions of water protection, drainage and flood prevention. (Reporter Guo Ge)
Source: Henan Daily