Tip: In the experts located the origin of bronze in Turkey and set the transmission route of bronze from west to east, we found such a fracture phenomenon, that is, if bronze spreads from west to east, then the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang is a necessary place, but in these years, in the archaeological excavations in this area, bronze is a blank. That is to say, it may not have spread through this region, and it can be inferred that Chinese bronze or Turkey has little to do with it.
In any case, we cannot deny the existence of this road.
In 1819, the National Museum of Denmark Thomson proposed the "Three Phase Theory", which divided the development of human society into the Stone Age, bronze age and Iron Age. This statement was later widely accepted.
Bronze is an alloy of red copper (pure copper) and tin or lead, because the color is blue and gray due to oxidation after being buried in the soil, so it is called bronze. After the emergence of bronze, it played an epoch-making role in improving social productivity. The Bronze Age is a stage of human material culture development marked by the use of bronze ware, with bronze ware, the productivity level of human agriculture and handicraft industry has increased, and the material living conditions have gradually enriched.
However, where did bronzes originate? For a long time, the academic community has had a different saying. The most representative one is that most Western scholars believe that bronzes originated from West Asia and gradually spread outward, believing that such a major and complex invention as metallurgy could not have had a pluralistic origin in the history of human development. This statement is accompanied by another historical term: the Bronze Road.
At present, the general definition of the Bronze Road in the academic community is as follows: the Bronze Road and the Silk Road are a pair of complementary concepts. The Bronze Route was active in the Xia and Shang Dynasties, with little written record, mainly spreading bronze and nomadic culture from west to east. The Silk Road was busy with the Han, Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties, and the history was endless, mainly from east to west to spread silk and settled agricultural culture. The two have successively and reversed directions, and it can be said that the Bronze Road induced the Silk Road, and the Silk Road replaced the Bronze Road.
That is to say, one can understand the bronze road as the route of bronze transmission, and at the same time, research shows that the spread of bronze technology is not an isolated phenomenon, but is closely related to the spread of sheep, wool, cattle, milk, horses, carriages and other technologies. The Bronze Route incorporated Europe and East Asia into the ancient world system centered on West Asia, and the Silk Road strengthened East Asia's ties with West Asia and Europe. Only by combining the Silk Road with the Bronze Route can we fully and systematically understand the formation of Eurasian culture and the process of mutual exchange and interaction.
However, as far as the mere spread of bronze is concerned, is this really the case? In recent years, with more archaeological discoveries, it seems that people can give bronze from west to east, giving the following 3 words: not necessarily.
In the previous concept of "certainty", there were three theories: 1. There is no evidence that east Asian bronzes predate West Asia; 2. there is no evidence that there is any difference between the bronze smelting technology in East Asia and West Asia; 3. There is no evidence that there are insurmountable natural or cultural barriers between East Asia and West Asia (Yi Hua, "Bronze Road: An Introduction to Cultural Exchanges between The Ancient West and the East", Silk Road Magazine, Issue 02, 2019). The corresponding detailed statement is:
1. Although some people push china's Bronze Age to the "Yellow Emperor Era" five thousand years ago, some people regard Longshan culture and Hongshan culture as copper and stone and use the era culture. Even if the Longshan culture and Hongshan culture five thousand years ago have entered the Bronze Age, they are nearly a thousand years later than West Asia, and they are not counted as the Copper Age of thousands of years before the Bronze Age. It is universally recognized that there is no copper age in China, nor does the Encyclopedia of China and Archaeology Volume have such an entry; the Longshan culture and Hongshan culture are typical of the late Neolithic cultures of East Asia. 2. Some people once thought that bronze casting in West Asia used the lost wax method, while the Fan casting method used in China was fundamentally different in technology. In fact, the Fan casting method and the lost wax method were invented almost simultaneously in West Asia, and the Fan casting method and the lost wax method were also used in East Asia at the same time. Archaeologists popularize the hypothesis that since ancient times there was a Central Plains or Chinese bronze tradition featuring ceremonial vessels or containers, and it was only later influenced by northern or foreign bronze cultures. In fact, none of the early East Asian bronzes are distinctive, but merely reproductions of West Asian or Central Asian bronzes. Only in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties was the Central Plains bronze ware unique. This is a phenomenon of differentiation that arises in the process of technology dissemination. 3. People often have the illusion that the distance between East Asia and West Asia will hinder the migration and exchange of ancients. In fact, East Asia and West Asia are closely linked through Central Asia. Ancient grasslands are like modern oceans, and thousands of mountains and rivers not only do not hinder human migration, but also facilitate cultural exchanges. Modern China borders West Asia, which can be said to be zero distance. Eurasia was integrated with the Silk Roads through bronze, and there was no obvious natural or cultural dividing line.
Because of the existence of these theories, scholars have designated the intermediate group of bronzes introduced to China from West Asia as the Tocharians, that is to say, the bronzes of West Asia were introduced to China through the Tocharians. The Tocharians are the Yueshi people, who are commonly found in ancient Chinese historical texts. We do not disagree with this statement, but there is an obvious problem that the Moon people belong to the ancient concept of broad Chinese or indo-Europeans. Modern scientists, through the analysis of ethnographic genomics, tend to characterize them as Indo-Europeans, but in the ancient history books of our country, they cannot find the answer to confirm this analysis and characterization. Yu Taishan believes that the Yun surnames of Zhirong, Bactria and Yu can be traced back to the Shaohao, Tao Tang and Youyu clans, respectively, and are closely related to the Yue people, but it cannot be ruled out that they belong to the Indo-Europeans. Obviously, there is a modern thinking that characterizes tribal groups and even the concept of the state based on human race, and the reason is very simple, people cannot push the "Chinese" within the geographical scope of ancient China beyond the country because of the genetic problems of modern race. This is not only unscientific, it is also unreasonable.
In the route of the spread of bronze, experts have located its origin in Turkey: around 6,000 years ago, copper smelting technology in eastern Turkey has matured and spread to the surrounding areas, where low levels of arsenic copper are common. As early as 5500 years ago, it generally began to consciously produce copper alloys such as arsenic copper. Around 5,000 years ago, tin bronze appeared in Southwest Asia, and hundreds of years later, bronze casting also appeared in central Europe and central Asia, marking a major leap in metallurgical technology ("Western Factors and Local Creations: The Formation of China's Early Metallurgical Technology Tradition", China Cultural Relics Daily, January 9, 2015).
The core meaning of this passage can be summed up in one sentence: bronze appeared about 5,000 years ago. In this time period, one can compare at least 3 bronze sites or cultural relics in China:
1. Ruins of Jiangzhai. The Neolithic ruins in the middle reaches of the Yellow River in China are mainly remnants of Yangshao culture. It is located on the north bank of the Linhe River in Lintong District, Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province. Excavations 1972-1979. Here is the oldest copper products found in China, the land of brass fragments, which has been tested as smelting, with a history of 6500-6700 years.
2. Lin Family Ruins. It is located in Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, 12 kilometers west of Chengsuo Nanba, north of Linjia Village, Dongyuan Township, on the south bank of the Daxia River. Discovered in 1976 and excavated in 1977-1978. The single-edged bronze knife unearthed here is the oldest known bronze ware in China and the oldest bronze knife in the world. The knife is 12.5 cm long and is cast in a single form. There are no grooves and ring heads and other mature parts of later tools, which have typical representative significance in the history of tool formation. Carbon-14 identification dates back about 5,000 years.
3. Tsuten-dong ruins. Located in Jimunai County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, it was discovered in 2014 when it was initially judged to be a Bronze Age site. After two excavations in 2016 and 2017, it was found that the cultural layer in a cave at the site ranged from the early Iron Age to the Bronze Age to the Paleolithic Age, which could be pushed back to 40,000 to 50,000 years ago. Excavations in the area will continue. When archaeologists cleaned up the 7th cultural layer of the site, they found 3 pits and a copper pipe fragment inside the pit. Preliminary testing showed that the composition of this fragment was a copper-tin alloy, i.e. bronze. More than 5,000 years ago ("Bronze artifacts found at the Tongtiandong site in Xinjiang", Xinhua News Agency, Urumqi, December 11, reporters Zhang Xiaolong and Zhou Ye).
The discovery of these sites, especially the site of Tongtiandong, can clearly draw a question mark for the long-standing academic community: Turkey is the first region in the world to master metal smelting technology, and China is relatively late but close behind. That is to say, Chinese bronzes are not necessarily "slightly later" than in Turkey. In addition, due to the fact that there were few early archaeological discoveries related to bronze in China in the past, some people said that the bronze knives excavated from the Linjia site "did not see the ancients before and did not see the comers", leaving a rich imagination space for the origin and development of China's bronze technology. But in the face of the Tongtiandong site, this so-called imagination space has been greatly reduced, and even drew its own road map for the spread and origin of Chinese bronzes, so that the bronze knives of the Lin family site are no longer lonely and no longer accidental.
At the same time, we are aware of the fact that at present, the early prehistoric bronze smelting sites found in the Hexi Corridor include the ruins of Xichengyi in Zhangye City, the ruins of Antique Beach in Jiuquan City, and the ruins of cylinders, flint beams, and Erdaoliang in Jinta County. In particular, the copper smelting activities of the Xichengyi site from the late Machang culture to the early Siba culture, the materials of the excavated bronzes are red copper, arsenic bronze, tin bronze, antimony bronze, "there is a corresponding alloy refining technology in the smelting technology process, which has entered the early stage of the Bronze Age from red copper-arsenic copper alloy to tin bronze, which should be a metallurgical center in the Hexi Corridor."
These archaeological findings were published in the China Social Sciences Newspaper on 2017-03-03 by Zhang Lianyin of the School of History and Culture of Northwest Normal University, and the article was titled "From Red Copper to Bronze: Metallurgy in Northern China Originated in the Hexi Corridor". Zhang Lianyin also deduced from this that the early bronze casting in northern China began in the Hexi Corridor, and there was a close connection between the bronze culture of Gansu and the bronze civilization of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties. At the same time, it is believed that Chinese bronze technology originated from China itself rather than the Eurasian steppe, and bronze technology was transmitted from the Hexi Corridor to the Central Plains.
In this way, the spread route map of Chinese bronzes has been very clear, but when Mr. Zhang published this academic research result, the discovery of copper pipe fragments at the Tongtiandong site in Xinjiang had not yet been announced, and the Tongtiandong site is likely to push the origin or source of Chinese bronze to the area of Jimunai County in Xinjiang.
Jimunai County is located in the northern part of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the northern edge of the Junggar Basin, the northern foothills of the Sauer Mountains, and the south bank of the Irtysh River. The geographical coordinates are 47°00′-47°59′ N and 85°33′-87°09′ E. In a large geographical area, it belongs to the Altay region on the southern side of the Altai Mountains. The Altai Mountains are a famous golden mountain in history, and under the fame of producing gold, copper is also a mineral and treasure here. In the experts located the origin of bronze in Turkey and set the transmission route of bronze from west to east, we found such a fracture phenomenon, that is, if bronze spreads from west to east, then the Tarim Basin in southern Xinjiang is a necessary place, but in these years, in the archaeological excavations in this area, bronze is a blank. That is to say, it may not have spread through this region, and it can be inferred that Chinese bronze or Turkey has little to do with it.
The main factors supporting our inference are both practical and historical factors. The real factor is: people often say that real gold is not afraid of fire, in fact, the melting point of gold is lower than that of copper, gold is 1064.43 degrees Celsius, pure copper (copper) of 1083.4 ° C. This shows to some extent that the smelting of gold is relatively easy than that of copper. According to the analysis of historical records and legends, in ancient times, people living in the Altay region worshipped fire and gold, and they learned to use fire and smelt gold very early, refining gold into the form of horses, deer and other animals, praying that their souls and bodies could shine like fire after death, and never decay like gold. If you master the technology of smelting gold, of course, you will master the technology of copper smelting. Therefore, like the bronze knives at the Lin family site, the copper pipes at the Tongtiandong site are not an isolated existence, they are all shining with the glory of civilization in the history of Chinese bronze.
The historical factors are: the 67th record of the Book of Jin and liechuan says, "The Kingdom of Dawan went to Luoyang for 13,350 miles, south to the Great Moon Clan, north to Kangju, and more than seventy cities in size... His common wives first used jin tongxin to refer to the plutonium as a louse, and then tried it with three wives... Good city Jia, competing for the profits of baht, get Chinese gold and silver, and use them as utensils, not for coins. "It means that the general idea is that the Dawan country is popular for trial marriage, and it is also popular to use rings as a gift, very good at business thinking, and also made gold and silver obtained from China into utensils, improper use of currency."
The Book of Jin is one of the Twenty-Four Histories of China, co-authored by Fang Xuanling and others in the Tang Dynasty, much later than the ancient era of the Flood Wastes, but it is not difficult to see the far-reaching influence of Chinese gold and silver on the humanistic customs of the Great Wan, and this far-reaching cannot be completed in a day or two days or a year or two years. Where does China's gold and silver come from in China? While associating the gold-rich Altai Mountains, we should also see that from the Altai Mountains to the Fergana Basin, where the Kingdom of Dawan is located, there are mountains and rivers all the way, but no mountain produces a large amount of gold with the Altai Mountains.
As with the routes designed by experts to spread bronze, or before the Silk Road replaced the Bronze Route, there was a "Golden Road" westward from the Altai Mountains. Some of the tombs of the Spring and Autumn Warring States period found in the Turpan area today, the excavation of a large amount of gold is the best proof, and a large amount of gold has been unearthed from the Yuergou cemetery, indicating that the local indigenous people naturally worship gold and take pleasure in collecting gold. The "Golden Road" is roughly the same as the route of the later Silk Road, and like the Bronze Road, there is little written record, but it cannot be denied that gold spread on it.
This historical data does not tell us that Turkey's copper smelting technology comes from the metallurgical technology of the Altai Mountains, nor can it be so imaginary, but from the dating of many bronze sites and cultural relics in China, we have to believe in the possibility of multiple origins of metallurgy. In the face of history, people cannot always believe in Western doctrines and neglect to study themselves. In addition, in the process of the spread of Chinese bronzes from Xinjiang and Hexi Corridor to Chinese mainland, we also see a very meaningful site staying on the road map of the spread of Chinese bronzes.
This site is called Zhaobishan Copper Mine Site, north of Zhenluo Town, Zhongwei City, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, one of the oldest copper mine sites in northwest China, composed of three parts: ancient mining caves, smelting sites and residential sites, and was discovered in 1987. There are 27 bronze mines within a radius of about 1 km from the site. There are three types of mine entrances: shaft type, slope type and parallel tunnel type. For further study of the emergence and development of "bronze civilization" in northwest China, it provides a precious physical basis.
The significance of the Zhaobishan copper mine site is that, from a geographical point of view, its location is exactly between two important areas of bronze in China, one is Baoji and the other is Ordos. Baoji is known as the "land of bronzes", not because bronzes originated here at the earliest, but since the Han Dynasty, there have been bronze artifacts unearthed on this land, and there have been endless generations. No other land in China has ever unearthed bronzes so densely and so persistently. He Zun, who first appeared in the inscription with the word "China" and "Zhaozi China", is the treasure of the Baoji Bronze Museum.
"Ordos bronzes", also known as "northern bronzes" or "northern bronzes", do not specifically refer to bronzes excavated from Ordos, but can be divided into three regions: east, middle and west. The eastern district refers to the northern and southern areas of Yanshan, which include Chifeng, western Liaoning and northern Hebei; the central area mainly refers to the Jin-Shaanxi Plateau, the Ordos region in south-central Inner Mongolia and the Liangcheng Daihai region; the western area mainly includes Ningxia, Gansu and the northeast of Qinghai.
The Zhaobishan copper mine site is like a bridge between Baoji and Ordos, expecting people to study China's bronze civilization in more detail and in depth.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author!