History is the past, it is difficult for us to seize time, always the traces left by the pursuit of time, and archaeology is in the pursuit of the traces of time, the burial items and coffins unearthed in the ancient mausoleum can prove the true existence of that period of history, it can be said that the mausoleum is the most important physical evidence to verify history, many historical evidence is confirmed by the mausoleum, but there is a mausoleum excavation is called the shame of the entire Chinese archaeological community, which mausoleum is this?
This mausoleum is the Ming Ding Mausoleum, that is, the tomb of the Ming Dynasty Wanli Emperor, in 1956, historian Wu Han Guo Moruo and others conducted scientific research and excavations on the Dingling Tomb, at first they originally intended to excavate the Changling Tomb, that is, the mausoleum of the Yongle Emperor, but they were opposed by the director of the Cultural Relics Bureau of the Ministry of Culture, and later felt that it was decided to excavate the Ming Ding Mausoleum, after nearly a year of excavation, the entrance to the Dingling Tomb was finally opened, and these historians were very happy, because of the opening of the mausoleum, It indicates that many Cultural Relics of the Ming Dynasty will be unearthed, and many historical puzzles will be solved, but at that time, our preservation and restoration technology for antiquities was not passed, and for the excavation of such large mausoleums, even developed countries felt headaches, which was a big problem in our country.
After the opening of the Ming Ding Mausoleum, it did unearth thousands of cultural relics, the historians present were amazed, these cultural relics for the study of the history of the Ming Dynasty during the Wanli Period is very important, but due to the backward technical conditions in China at that time, and the impact of the social environment at that time, the excavated cultural relics through contact with the air, a lot of calligraphy and paintings and silk have been turned into powder, a large number of cultural relics have not been preserved, this is because of the archaeological conditions and archaeological experience at that time, if it is a mature archaeological team, With good facilities, most of these artifacts can be well preserved.
What is even more heinous is that because of the special historical background at that time, many originally well-preserved cultural relics were artificially damaged in the subsequent stages, many cultural relics were arbitrarily discarded in the courtyard, no one managed, and even wanli's coffin board was chopped by the villagers as firewood. Later, the state no longer took the initiative to excavate ancient mausoleums, all of which were protective excavations, which were also due to the experience gained from the archaeological failure of the Ming Ding Mausoleum.