Located about 300 meters east of the Qingquan Township Government in Yumen City, Hexi Corridor, Gansu, the Huoyaogou Cultural Site is named after the laterite ravine and the color of the earth is like fire.
In 1976, this ancient cultural site was excavated, unearthed a large number of faience pottery and part of the metal tools, according to preliminary analysis belongs to the Neolithic cultural relics, dating back about 3700 years ago, known as the fire ditch type culture.
As early as September 2002, we interviewed Wu Dongmin and Zhang Huaide of the Yumen Municipal Cultural and Historical Materials Committee, who were working at the Yumen City Museum, and many precious cultural relics are like mysteries to show the human civilization in this area.
Unique fire-burning ditch culture
The author | a long way to go
The intellectual youth brought the clay pots back to Lanzhou
In the spring of 1976, yumen Qingquan Commune Middle School broke ground, and it was very difficult to clean the foundation. Because there are many ancient tombs in this area, and there are several layers up and down. Judging from the excavated burials, most of them are some stone products and clay pots, but there are also a small number of copper products. At that time, the engineering team did not know that this was an ancient tomb site, bulldozers bulldozed some tombs, most of the stone and pottery products were destroyed, and a small number of complete clay pots and bronzes were robbed.
At that time, there were several young people from Lanzhou who went to the countryside in Qingquan Commune, and a male Zhiqing named Yang Ming was very sorry to see many clay pots that had been broken into pieces at the scene, and immediately thought that one of his relatives was engaged in archaeology, and told him a lot of knowledge in this regard, and he knew that these clay pots were precious cultural relics. When the zhiqing returned to Lanzhou, he showed the clay pot to the relatives of the archaeological team, concluded that it was a cultural relic of a long time, and the province sent someone to Yumen to organize excavations.
100,000 years ago, there were human activities in the Yumen area
The area of Qingquan Commune is a slab sandy soil structure, with very little rainfall and a dry climate all year round, so that the ancient tombs of thousands of years have been well preserved. The archaeological team excavated for more than a month and cleaned up a total of 312 tombs. These 312 tombs are roughly divided into three periods: one is the tomb of the Neolithic period, the second is the tomb of the Han Dynasty, and the third is the tomb of the Wei period.
From the perspective of stratigraphic analysis, experts believe that in ancient times, at least about 100,000 years ago, there was human activity in this area. Judging from the cultural relics excavated from the lowest tombs, it basically belongs to the Qi family culture type, according to about 4,000 years. Later, the provincial museum believed by experts that the time of the burning ditch foundation burial was about 3700 years ago in the late Neolithic period (at the same time as the Xia Dynasty). Although this ancient site type belongs to the Qijia culture, it has its own uniqueness, and it is called "Huohuogou Culture" because of its place name.
The twilight pit is mostly east-west, and without exception, the bones are all head-to-head. In the middle foundation burial, a phenomenon was also found, that is, some large tombs had graves that were nine feet apart from each other, and the heads were all facing east. Why is this happening? The basic view of the experts is that at that time, the ethnic minority tribes mainly of the Qiang were active in this area, which was a national custom of theirs. Another view is that the number "9" must have their specific meaning. Head to the east, because that's where the sun rises. This can only be an inference.
Humans wore gold earrings 3,700 years ago
There are many kinds of cultural relics excavated from the Fire Burning Ditch site, and there is a phenomenon of gold, copper, stone, bone ware and clay pots coexisting. 3700 years ago, when it was still in the transition period from primitive society to slave society, the tools of human production were mainly grinded stone tools and a small amount of pottery, and most of the living utensils were pottery products. However, in the tombs that were cleaned and excavated at that time, a small number of gold nose rings and gold earrings were found.
These gold products are incredible. Because from the general common sense, the Shang Dynasty had bronze ware, the Warring States Period appeared iron, which is for the developed Shang Zhou Land (that is, the current Central Plains region), and located in the Great Northwest Gobi Desert Hexi Corridor of the Yumen area, production is not yet developed, how in ancient times there will be gold products appear? So far, there is no authoritative conclusion on this phenomenon among archaeologists.
The funerary items in the tomb are very complicated, and even sea shells appear. Some of them are shells in the mouths of the dead, and some are stored in pottery, apparently given the function of money, buried as monetary wealth. Although the Huoyaogou site was excavated and formed an independent ancient culture type, it should be noted that it is not the whole of this cultural type, and many aspects are still blank in this culture.
For example, before the age of about 3700 years, the dwelling places and fire pits of the primitive human cave dwellers in Huoyaogou have not been excavated. So, will it still be buried in the area around Qingquan Middle School? In addition, judging from the cultural relics and treasures of the "humanoid faience pot" that the teachers and students of Qingquan Middle School unintentionally excavated when planting trees in the spring of 1989, there will undoubtedly be more abundant remains in the unexplored central area of the Fire Valley site.
Ancient code tool - Tao Xi
In 1976, more than twenty very exquisite cultural relics were unearthed from the fire ditch, its shape is like a goldfish, the size of an egg, there are blow holes on it, there is a hanging hole on each side, there are three sound holes, can blow out all the tones of the five-tone scale and the seven-tone scale to form four full tones of 6123, which is Tao Cheng.
According to relevant experts, the taoba is an ancient musical instrument today. It is inferred that in the beginning, the Tao Xi was probably not an authoritarian musical instrument, but a simple vocal instrument (known locally as the "whistle"), because at that time the Huohuogou people were mainly engaged in herding livestock (especially sheep), and in the vast grasslands, the shepherds conveyed information and expressed a meaning to each other (such as defending against tiger and wolf invasion, livestock drinking water, returning, grouping, etc.), using Tao Xi to blow out a kind of agreed code to connect. Later, people opened a few holes in the pottery, which could make different sounds, and could play the tune, so that it may later become a blowing instrument.
The life of the People of Huoyaogou has long been lost in the vast historical smoke waves of the Gobi Desert. Today, the relevant departments of Yumen City used this ancient cultural site to build the "Original Village of Huoyaogou" for people to understand that period of history and understand the people of Huoyaogou. (This self-media welcomes human geography and history submissions)