Eggs are no stranger to everyone, almost everyone has eaten eggs, China as a food country, even a small egg has a different practice of steaming and frying, so why are archaeologists reluctant to dig out eggs? Is it really that weird?
The history of the chicken is longer than chinese civilization, just in the literature, the chicken has a history of more than 4,000 years, in the oracle bone, the chicken is a neck straight shooting, meat crown standing, neck Si Chen image, but for fear of people pronouncing the word wrong, it added a "Xi" next to the pictographic "chicken" as a sound note, becoming a shape sound character.
In the golden text, there are very few chicken characters, the inscription "chicken" on the Shang Dynasty chicken fish Ding is also a hieroglyph, from the agricultural era, the chicken has been domesticated, because there was no timer such as clocks and watches in ancient times, the chicken became a timer, so there are words such as "Golden Rooster Announces" and "Smell the Chicken Dancing".
In the "Commentary on the Interpretation of Words": "Chicken, Know the Time animal also", the "Jade Chapter" also says: "Chicken, Bird of Knowledge", the fourteenth year of Hongwu (1381 AD) This year happens to be the Year of the Rooster, Zhu Yuanzhang wrote a poem about the chicken: the chicken cries a pluck, the chicken cries two pouts, three calls out fusang day, sweeps away the remnant star and the dawn moon.
It can be seen that the chicken also occupies a place in Chinese civilization, and there are many places in China that have customs about chickens, what is the "auspicious" of everything, "no chicken is not a seat", the chicken is also a symbol of auspiciousness, since it is an auspicious symbol, then why are experts afraid of eggs?
Archaeology, in the Chinese language appeared very early, the Northern Song Dynasty scholar Lü Da Lin once wrote "Archaeological Map", the department of archaeology at this time is called "epigraphy", from the end of the 19th century to the 1930s, there were a variety of explorers and archaeologists in the West, and their appearance also laid the foundation for Chinese archaeology.
In April 1979, the Chinese Archaeological Society was officially established, and China's archaeological cause began to move on the right track, but the archaeological work is very cumbersome and complex, these ancient tombs, after hundreds of years, thousands of years, the remaining cultural relics have undergone qualitative changes, once excavated, may cause damage.
Therefore, in the archaeological process, they are very careful and careful, and the subsequent cleaning is more important, and in the concept of the ancients, pay attention to thick burial, as a rich family, there is certainly no shortage of eggs, and the poor people will not put precious eggs into the grave.
Therefore, the unearthed eggs are rare, so far, the earliest excavated eggs are from the Western Zhou tombs dating back to 2800 years ago, the eggs are the Western Zhou geometric printed hard pottery urns, not only eggs, even clay pots are precious cultural relics, although experts want to study eggs, but they are afraid of breaking it.
There is also a saying about eggs, it is feng shui, it is said that a fresh egg was buried in the tomb, and it was dug out a year later, if it is still fresh, it means that the feng shui here is good, but this is only superstition after all.