The Shang Dynasty is the second dynasty in China's history, dating back more than 3,000 years. Due to its age, people have many blind spots in their understanding of the Shang Dynasty, among which the academic circles have been constantly debated about the place where the Shang Dynasty was founded. It is mentioned in the previous Han Dynasty texts that the earliest capital of the Shang Dynasty was built in Bo, but these documents do not record the specific location of Bo.
It was not until 1983 that the ruins of an ancient city were discovered in Yanshi City, Luoyang, Henan Province, and there seemed to be a clearer eyebrow about the founding capital of the Shang Dynasty, which was Yanshi Shangcheng.
In the spring of 1983, a power plant in Luoyang, Henan Province, accidentally discovered the ruins of an ancient city during a site selection inspection, and after excavations by archaeologists, an ancient city buried in loess for more than 3,500 years finally reappeared.
According to experts, this ancient city is a large urban ruins built in the Shang Dynasty, and the entire ancient city is rectangular, with a length of about 1700 meters from north to south. The width varies from east to west, with the northernmost 1215 meters and the southernmost 740 meters, and the walls are rammed with mud.
At present, a total of 7 city gates have been found, two in the east and west walls, and one on the north wall, and several crisscrossing main roads have been found in the city that are connected to the city gates.
There are many palace areas in the city, and the palace complex in Yanshi Mall includes many functional buildings such as the back garden, high-specification sacrifice places and bronze workshops. The scale and form of such buildings was already quite grand at the time, and generally only the king could enjoy it.
The discovery of Yanshi Shangcheng shocked the archaeological community at that time, and for a long time there was no consensus among scholars about the location of the capital of the early Shang Dynasty.
Archaeologists found some bronze artifacts during the excavation of Yanshi Shangcheng, but the scale of these bronzes was very limited, only some bronze swords and bronze golems, and archaeologists did not find large bronze ceremonial objects.
This was unimaginable for a dynasty known for its bronze civilization, and people began to doubt the speculation that Yanshi Mall was the capital of the early Shang Dynasty. And near Yanshi, people have not found large tombs of the Shang Dynasty royal families. At this point, people's judgment about the location of the capital city in the early Shang Dynasty was once again confused.
The capital of the early Shang Dynasty can be roughly divided into three views. The first is the xiadu continuation. In 1959, the village of Erlitou near Yanshi discovered the ruins of an early Chinese city, which archaeologists named the Erlitou site and initially identified it as the ruins of the capital city of the middle and late Xia Dynasty. Excavations at the Erlitou site have unearthed the remains of a large palace complex, which has been found to be built for 100 years after the birth of the Shang Dynasty. Therefore, many archaeologists have deduced that the early Shang Dynasty is likely to have followed the capital of the Xia Dynasty.
However, almost at the same time as the Erlitou site was discovered, archaeologists in Zhengzhou, 100 kilometers east of Yanshi, discovered the ruins of a large Shang Dynasty city and called it Zhengzhou Shangcheng. A large number of Shang Dynasty bronzes have been excavated from the ruins of Zhengzhou Shangcheng, which show the majesty of the king in both exquisite and volume. Therefore, many scholars have put forward another view of the location of the capital city in the early Shang Dynasty- the Zhengzhou Shangcheng Capital City Theory.
After the Yanshi Mall was discovered, a third view was formed - the Yanshi Shangcheng Capital City Said. After archaeological research, it was confirmed that yanshi shangcheng was formed earlier than Zhengzhou shangcheng, which overturned the view that Zhengzhou shangcheng was the capital. Experts believe that Zhengzhou Shangcheng should be the new capital built in the middle and late Shang Dynasty, not the founding capital of the Shang Dynasty.
In the last year of the Xia Dynasty, the Xia King was addicted to wine and was absurd, and the xia dynasty was in decline. During this period, the Shang tribe gradually became stronger under the leadership of the leader Cheng Tang. Around 1766 BC, Cheng Tang formally raised an army to conquer Xia, and eventually overthrew Xia Jie's faint tyranny and established the second independent dynasty in Chinese history, the Shang Dynasty.
According to Sima Qian's records in the historical records, after Shang Tang defeated Xia Jie, he did not clean up the remnants of the Xia Dynasty, but adopted a series of inclusive policies, but these inclusive policies could not hide the history of the Xia and Shang dynasties achieving change by force. Therefore, Shang Tang has always been very wary of xia dynasty immigrants.
Archaeologists have found in the ruins of Yanshi Shangcheng that the moats that bear the defensive function of this city are very wide, nearly twenty meters, and the outer walls have similar heights.
At the same time, the gate of the city is very narrow, only less than 2 meters wide, and there are two small castles built in the city to store soldiers. These settings are obviously military, and it is clear that the purpose of designing the city was to defend against the Xia Dynasty immigrants who lived in the Erlitou site.
Historians speculate that it is highly likely that Cheng Tang built the new capital at Yanshi, just 6 kilometers from the Erlitou site, in order to monitor and suppress the remnants of the Xia Dynasty. In the following more than a hundred years, with the consolidation of its rule, the ruling center of the Shang Dynasty gradually moved to Zhengzhou, and finally established a new capital in Zhengzhou Shangcheng.
Such inferences have been agreed upon by a large number of scholars. However, what the truth of history is like still needs our further exploration and study.
Nevertheless, the discovery of the Ruins of Yanshi Shangcheng provides important information for the study of Xia Shang culture and the development of Cities in China. Some foreign scholars have even compared the discovery of the Ruins of Yanshi Mall with the famous ancient city of Troy discovered by the German archaeologist Schliemann in Asia Minor in the 19th century. UNESCO also listed the discovery of the Yanshi Mall site as one of the 17th World Discovery in 1983.