Huoyaogou Cultural Site is one of the six ancient cultural sites in Gansu, excavated in 1976. It is a site of human culture from the late Neolithic period, dating back about 3700 years. The site is located on the side of National Highway 312 in Qingquan Township, Yumen City, with an area of about 20 square kilometers, a central area of 0.2 square kilometers, and 20 kilometers away from Yumen City.
In 1976, the Gansu Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Team carried out large-scale excavations, excavating 312 ancient tombs on the edge of the center of the site, and unearthing a large number of precious pottery, bronze, jade, bone and some gold and silver ware. Because there are laterite ravines in its site, the earth color is red like fire, and it is called "fire-burning ditch culture" by the archaeological community. In 1981, the Huoyaogou Cultural Site was named "Gansu Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Unit" by the Gansu Provincial People's Government. On May 25, 2006, it was announced by the State Council as a national key cultural relics protection unit.
We have written a lot about this place, but we have not written about which ethnic group it belongs to in ancient Chinese history. On this issue, some people have given a "conclusive conclusion": at the end of the Xia Dynasty in the Central Plains, those who lived in the burning ditch in the northwest region must have been a branch of the ancient Qiangrong tribe. However, there have been different voices over the years.
Let's start with the discovery of the Burning Grooves. In 1976, Qingquan Commune in Yumen City planned to build a commune middle school, and chose the location for the establishment of the school on an ancient tomb group east of the commune, which was only a few hundred meters away from the commune's site. After the construction plan was put into effect, when the order to break ground and level the foundation was issued, the construction team quickly dug up some stone utensils, clay pots and copper products not deep from the surface. The construction team and commune leaders at that time did not know that it was an ancient cultural site, so the project proceeded as usual.
In order to buy time and complete the construction task as soon as possible, the construction team also drove a bulldozer to bulldoze some of the raised tombs. In the process of bulldozer operations and manual excavation of the foundation, most of the excavated cultural relics were destroyed, and a small number of intact cultural relics were taken by people out of curiosity to be seen.
Fortunately, at that time, several young people from Lanzhou who went to the countryside were settling in Qingquan Township, and one of them was a male zhiqing who accidentally arrived at the construction site. When he saw the broken clay pots, he immediately thought that one of his relatives was engaged in archaeology, had told himself a lot of archaeological knowledge, and had seen many cultural relics excavated from other places. These fragmented pottery pieces in front of you should be some precious cultural relics, but they have been destroyed so much, which is a pity. So I picked up some and took them back to Zhiqingdian.
Soon, when the intellectual youth whose family was in Lanzhou returned home, he brought the clay pots back to Lanzhou and sent them to relatives working in the archaeological team for identification. When the comrade of the archaeological team saw it, he concluded that this was some very old cultural relics, and immediately reported the matter to the provincial cultural relics and archaeology team. After a few days, the provincial cultural relics and archaeology team sent people down to investigate the site. After receiving the report that the situation was true, the provincial cultural relics and archaeology team reported to the Provincial Department of Culture for approval and officially organized manpower to come to Yumen for excavation. As a result, the site of Huoyaogou, one of the 6 ancient cultural sites in Gansu, was discovered, which was a major event in the cultural history of Gansu after the founding of the People's Republic of China.
The young man who brought the cultural relics to Lanzhou is said to be surnamed Yang, and later he also had some research on the culture of Huoyangou. We always wanted to find this man and heard him talk about some of the situation at that time, but because of the age, unfortunately, we never found it. Through these texts, it is not difficult to see that the archaeological work of that year was carried out in the area of Baituliang, Luomacheng and Huihui fort around the school middle school, and the school did not stop because of the cultural relics, so some people say that the center of the site may be under the Qingquan Middle School that has been built.
Whether this inference can be established or not, no one has said, it can only be a possibility that the school has covered up the secret of the burning ditch culture. What we want to say is that the above reality can at least show that in that era, people did not pay enough attention to cultural relics and archaeological work, and with it, on August 31, 2017, Xinhua Net, Guangming Network and others published a report "Why the Huoyaogou Site Could Not Wait for 41 Years to Wait for excavation Report", the main reason is that Zhang Xuezheng, the elder archaeologist of Gansu who presided over the excavation at that time, and another important participant, Zhou Guangji, died many years ago, and the continuous report collation work had to be stopped. "Coupled with the several personnel changes of the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the progress of the project will be affected to some extent." Of course, the shortage of researchers in archaeological research institutes is also an indisputable fact."
Therefore, the history of The Burning Ditch is nothing more than some analysis and judgment made by people based on the excavated cultural relics and the reports at that time, and it lacks authoritative archaeological reports. Among the most prominent cultural relics excavated from the Huoyaogou Cultural Site, dangtui is a large number of pottery, most of which are finely made and have unique shapes, many of which belong to treasures. For example, human-shaped faience pots, human foot faience clay pots, fish-shaped pottery pots, eagle-billed pots, three-dog fangding, etc. have been designated as national first-class cultural relics. However, there are also reports that in addition to knowing how to smelt bronze, the people of The Burning Ditch can smelt other alloys, which shows that the metal manufacturing industry of the Fire Burning Ditch has reached a fairly high level. Mr. Li Boqian, an archaeologist, believes that "the Erlitou culture and the Huohuogou culture have found the most bronzes, and the technology of smelting and casting bronze is the highest. Mr. Zhang Zhongpei, an archaeologist, also said: "According to the data currently available, it can be judged that the development level of the bronze manufacturing industry of the residents of the Siba culture burning ditch cemetery is second only to the Erlitou culture in the Xia Dynasty culture." The stone fan in the fire-burning ditch tomb proves that the inhabitants have mastered the technique of copper making. It is even said that the Yumen Huohuogou site is the smelting center of xia shang that has been obliterated for thousands of years. (Lanzhou Morning Post, 2011-03-03)
Bronzes symbolize the authority of slave owners and represent the degree of civilization of society at that time. A bronze scepter head with four sheep heads has been excavated at the site of Huoyaogou, with a height of 8.5 cm, a top diameter of 2.4 cm, a bottom diameter of 2.2 cm, and a width of 7.2 cm. The headdress of the scepter is oblong in shape and resembles an olive. Its shape is very similar to a small pot with a thin neck, hollow. At the lower end, there are four concave string patterns, and there are still wooden handle residues in the small copper holes at the lower end, so people call it "four sheep head scepter". In the lower middle of the abdomen symmetrically cast four pan horns of the sheep's head, the sheep's head is slightly down, the double horns are curved inward, the image is realistic, and the production is exquisite.
The four sheep heads of the scepter are cast in a composite mold and then inlaid into the body. For example, if the hand touches the inner wall of the tank, in the part corresponding to the 4 sheep heads, 4 bumps can be felt, which is caused by the sheep head being prefabricated and embedded in the body. Its shape and structure are relatively complex, the use of more complex composite fan, casting technology, is a display of siba culture copper casting technology representative work, is China's earliest bronze inlaid casting, which also shows that the technology of making copper containers was available at that time.
But here's the problem, because the scepter was first found in Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Turkey, Anatolia, the Black Sea, and the area around the Caspian Sea, and it was a special instrument that showed status and authority. The scepter head in China is mainly distributed in Gansu, western Shaanxi, Xinjiang and other places, with stone, pottery, bronze and other textures, and the shape is flat, oblong, oblong with decorations around the periphery, etc., and the shape is very similar to similar artifacts found in West Asia and Central Asia. Therefore, today, some experts do not believe that the scepter belongs to the Chinese civilization.
We cannot say that this statement is wrong, we can only say that the four sheep head bronze scepter head is a witness to the cultural exchange between the East and the West, but it needs to be emphasized that the scepter does not belong to the Chinese civilization, but the four sheep head bronze scepter head must be Chinese civilization. Because civilization lies in absorption and inclusion, we cannot think that it is a foreign thing because of the scepter that appears in our culture, deny the absorption and inclusiveness of our culture, or even push it outward, and then extend to the issue of the identity of the creator of civilization. Just as many people today believe in Buddhism, and Buddhism comes from India, it cannot be said that those who believe in Buddhism are all Indians, they are still authentic Chinese. Buddhism came to China from India, and there have been many changes, and people can call it Chinese Buddhism.
Directly culturally related to the bronze scepter head of the four sheep heads is the four sheep fangzun. It belongs to the early bronze ware of the late Shang Dynasty. Ceremonial vessels, sacrificial supplies. It is the largest Fangzun of the Shang Dynasty bronzes in China, 58.3 centimeters high and weighing nearly 34.5 kilograms, excavated in 1938 on the mountainside of Yueshan, Huangcun, Ningxiang County, Hunan Province. It is now in the collection of the National Museum of China.
The four sheep square body is square, square mouth, large rim, neck ornament mouth along the outer luxury, each side length of 52.4 cm, its side length is almost close to the height of the body of 58.3 cm. Long neck, high circle feet. The neck is high and decorated on all four sides with banana leaf patterns, triangular mounds and animal face patterns. The middle of the zun is the center of gravity of the instrument. Each of the four horns is made of a sheep. The four horns of the shoulders are four curled horned sheep's heads, the sheep's head and neck protruding out of the vessel, and the sheep's body and leg of lamb attached to the abdomen and circumferential feet. The abdomen is the forebreast of the sheep, and the leg of lamb is attached to the circle foot, bearing the weight of the body. The front chest and back of the sheep are decorated with scales, and the sides are decorated with beautiful long crown phoenix patterns, and the circle feet are decorated with a hammer pattern. Fang Zun's shoulders are decorated with a dragon pattern with high relief snake body and claws, and the four sides of the zun are in the middle of the two sheep, each with a double horned dragon head protruding from the table, and snaking from the right shoulder of each side of the Fang Zun to the middle of the front residence. The whole is decorated with fine thunder patterns. The four corners and four sides of the centerline are designed with long ridges, and their role is to cover up the possible misalignment of the pattern.
According to archaeologists, the Four Sheep Fangzun was cast by the two-fold casting technique, that is, the horn and the dragon head were cast individually, and then they were arranged in the outer fan separately, and then the overall casting was carried out. The whole artifact is cast in a block manner, in one go, and the craftsmanship shows a superb casting level. Siyang Fangzun set line carving, relief carving, circular carving in one instrument, the flat ornament and three-dimensional sculpture integration, the combination of utensils and animal shapes, just right, with an exceptionally high casting process. In the bronze square statues of the Shang Dynasty, the dignified elegance of this vessel shape is unparalleled. The shape of this figure is simple, beautiful, majestic, and dynamic in stillness. It has been called "the ultimate bronze model".
From this, it is not difficult to see that the influence of sheep culture on Chinese is extremely deep, and it is also powerful to say that the ancient Huohuogou people were indeed influenced by Western culture. We still say that even if there is an impact, it will not affect their identity, people are still that person, but culture needs to be constantly integrated to ensure its advanced nature. The excavation of the bronze scepter head of the four sheep heads illustrates this point.
According to the Lanzhou Evening News, in October 2019, the Yumen City Museum's "Huaxia Chuguang Yulu Hexi - Yumen 4,000 Years of Historical Relics Exhibition" had just ended in Quanzhou and rushed to Jiujiang City, Jiangxi Province. The three-month exhibition, which began in September, featured the Yumen cultural relics represented by The Burning Ditch, was the protagonist, and the exhibition was listed as one of the important exhibitions celebrating the National Day by the Jiangxi Provincial Cultural Relics Department and the Jiujiang Municipal Cultural Department at the beginning of the year. Wang Pu, deputy director of the Yumen City Museum, believes that around 4,000 years ago, the Yumen Huohuogou people and the ancestors of Jiujiang may have the same ancestry, and one of the sources of the Huomengou people may be the Ancestors of Sanmiao. And they brought the cultural relics of the burning ditch into Jiujiang, with the intention of "looking for relatives" and hoping to make new discoveries.
According to historical records, jiujiang is located in the north of Jiangxi Province, on the south bank of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. In ancient times, it was the place where the "Three Miao" ethnic groups lived, and later the Three Miao moved to The Three Dangers (the land of the Three Dangers refers to the Ganqing area, and there is also the Three Dangers Mountain near present-day Dunhuang). The Book of Han and the Biography of Xi Qiang says: "The origin of Xi Qiang comes from Sanmiao". Therefore, the Huohuogou people should be the fusion of the Three Miao who moved to the Three Dangers area in the south of China and the indigenous Xi rong. Over the years, experts have identified the human bones of the fire ditch and found that these bones have the characteristics of East Asian and South Asian types, which is corroborated with the literature.
Wang Pu told reporters that Yumen and Jiujiang are far away from each other, and it seems that the wind and horses are not in reach, but through history, we can see the relationship between the origins of cultures. According to the "Chronicle of History", after the Xia Hou clan dismissed the descendants of the Zhou clan Hou Ji and the peasant officials, the Bu Wu led the clan to flee their hometown to Xi Rong for hundreds of years, during which the Zhou and Qiang people intermarried for a long time and formed a military alliance of Ji Jiang, and the hundreds of years when the Zhou clan never entered Xi Rong were also the period when the Huoyaogou culture existed and developed. Therefore, the Huohuogou people and sanmiao are related. The Huohuogou people inherited the three miao and the lower Qi Zhou people, not only created an advanced culture, but also a tribe with great influence in the history of our country.
Wang Pu believes that the migrating Sanmiao people are influenced by the cultural influence of the ethnic minorities inherent in this area and "change the West Rong". The Huoyaogou culture may be a highly developed local culture that the residents of the Sanmiao culture in the Jianghuai area came to the western part of the Hexi Corridor and developed independently under the influence of the local geographical environment, climatic conditions and the inherent Rongqiang tribes in the northwest. Historical documents have the theory that the three seedlings moved to Sanwei, which provides us with a new source of information on the origin of the fire ditch population from the southeast. The Huohuogou people have a relationship with the Sanmiao people, and even the hometown of the Huohuogou people may be in the Jianghuai area where Sanmiao lived. (Gao Huixia's "The Burning Gou People and the Ancestors of Jiujiang Have the Same Origin?") Yumen Cultural Relics Go to Jiujiang to "Find Relatives"," Lanzhou Evening News, October 21, 2019)
This may be the cultural secret that the Fire Valley site wants to tell people about the nationality and ethnic integration, but it still needs too much archaeological data to confirm it today.
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