Stone horse
Length 130 cm, width 38 cm, height 70 cm, weight 355 kg
In 1977, M177 was excavated in the Xixialing District of Yinchuan, Ningxia
Collection of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Museum
The stone horse is a sandstone round carving, the limbs are bent on the knees, the horse's head is slightly hanging, the neck is curved, the eyes are standing, the horse's mane is neatly and smoothly scattered on the neck, the body is fat and round, the proportions are even, the lines are concise and condensed, the posture is majestic, the carving technique is very delicate, vividly reproducing the image of the Western Xia horse, which is a fine work of Western Xia stone carving art. Western Xia stone carvings generally have mausoleum stone carvings, inscriptions, stone carved pagodas and cliff statues, etc., and their artistic characteristics are thick and simple, full and plump, majestic and unrestrained, solid and rugged.
"Interaction and the Origin of Chinese and Western Slave Civilization"
He Yuping, Journal of Social Sciences of Hunan Normal University, No. 5, 1995, pp. 58-63
This article first starts from the role of communication in the origin of Chinese and Western slave civilizations, showing that the irrigation of large rivers is not the main reason why we have long believed to be the origin of Chinese and Western slave civilizations. It is believed that after the formation of mankind, through material exchanges, war exchanges, immigration exchanges, and marriage exchanges, the production experience of various regions has been exchanged, the development of productive forces has been promoted, and at the same time, fresh blood has been injected into the local population and the quality of human beings has been improved. At the same time, it also destroyed the clan tribes and tribal alliances that had been established according to blood relations, accelerated the disintegration of primitive society, and promoted the emergence of slavery. Through the role of communication in the civilizations of Egypt, the Two Rivers Valley, the Indus Valley, and the Yellow River Basin, as well as the fact that the three major civilizations in the Mediterranean Basin, the ancient Greco-Roman civilization, the American Inca culture, and the Mayan culture did not flood with large rivers, etc., the author further confirms that human civilization originated not so much from the irrigation of large rivers as from the view of exchanges. Secondly, starting from the degree and scope of communication, the author discusses the common points and differences in the development of ancient civilizations in China and the West. It is believed that Chinese civilization is the product of regional exchanges, Western European civilization is the product of intercontinental exchanges, Chinese slave civilization is a primary original civilization, and Western European civilization is an inherited secondary civilization.
Comparison of the Formation of Ancient States
Xu Qiuyun, Northern Cultural Relics, No. 3, 1998, pp. 1-7
Ancient states have appeared in various parts of the world, and the process of their formation has both commonalities and certain particularities, which are discussed in this article. The formation process of the ancient state is divided into four forms: the first form is far from the emergence of the state, which can be called "complex society"; The second form is the "early state", which is not closely organized; The third is the formal form of the state; The fourth is the expansion of the state into an empire.
Comparing the development stages of China with Egypt, the Mediterranean coast and the islands, the Two Rivers Valley and the Indus Valley, it is found that its initial form is very similar to that of "complex societies", but with the process of development, the differences have become more and more different. The characteristics of different regions are closely related to their geographical environment and neighbors. Egypt is characterized by being enclosed on all sides, and it disappears as soon as it goes out. Greece was a peninsula, so it had no roots as the center of a great empire. It was not until the roman era that the Mediterranean became the center and formed a vast empire. The Two Rivers Basin has historically been a battleground, and although it can expand south to Egypt and east to Afghanistan, it cannot form a country with very clear borders. India has clear borders, and that's the subcontinent. But to its north is the Himalayas, cutting off traffic with China. Influenced by the interaction of various civilizations, its culture is complex and cannot constitute a large empire with complete integration of cultures and peoples. Only China is a relatively complete region, with grasslands to the north, the sea to the east and south, and the mountains known as the roof of the world to the southwest. In this vast region, small local cultures expanded into regional cultures, which then collided with each other at the end of the Neolithic period and the early Bronze Age to form the core of Chinese culture. Then gradually encompass the local culture around it. This process of fusion has had wars and conflicts, conquests, but is by and large much more peaceful than Central Asia and the Northwest.
In a region as large as China, the ethnicity, culture, and country are roughly the same. Due to China's huge geographical scope and internal complexity, all the things that other countries have experienced here may have been experienced here, and it should not be required that the development of all places follow the same model, nor do they have to define the development outside the Central Plains by the name of the Central Plains Dynasty, for example, using "Xia" to call xia's contemporaries, in fact, the Xia Hou clan could not manage there at all. Archaeologists must look for the evolution of each place from the type of fauna in each place in order to find out the historical truth.
The source of the text is "Research Outline of the Origin of Chinese Civilization", published by Cultural Relics Publishing House in December 2003
Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Research Center for Ancient Civilizations, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, ed
Images and captions are excerpted from The Hunt for the Great Xia: A Collection of Cultural Relics of western Xia. National Museum of China et al., ed., 2004