In the public news photos of Baling Archaeology, there is a photo of copper dripping unearthed, which is the "clock" of ancient China. It seems that even if the emperor is buried underground, he has not forgotten the passage of time.
Two pieces of copper drip, one high and one low, are from two outer pits
Recently, a reporter from Huashang Daily saw in the restoration room of the Bailuyuan Archaeological Base that the copper drip had been placed on the table of the restoration room, and there were two pieces, one high and one low. The copper drip on the published photo is the one that is low, and it is more than ten centimeters high according to the scale of the photo. The other piece of copper drips is about three times the height of this short copper drip. Although the two pieces of copper drip are of different heights, the structure is roughly the same, and there are drip nozzles underneath, and there are corresponding flat holes in the middle of the upper lid and the middle of the lifting beam.
It is understood that the dwarf copper drip was excavated from the Outer Hidden Pit No. 38 in the southwest corner of the Jiangcun Tomb (Baling), and the high one was excavated from the Outer Hidden Pit No. 19 in the northeast corner.
The Zhou Dynasty, 3,000 years ago, was officially used and managed by the ancients
There were no clocks in ancient times, how did the ancients time it? According to Cao Long, a researcher at the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute and deputy leader of the Hanling Archaeological Team, there are many timekeeping methods for the ancients. For example, the gui watch and sundial are timed by capturing the position of the sun, but cannot be used at night or on rainy days. Hourglasses, water clocks, and incense can independently provide time rulers, which can be mapped with astronomical time and continuously present the current moment. The missing engraving is the most important timekeeping tool in ancient China.
The key to leaking a kettle is "leaking". When the ancients used pottery to draw water and store water, water leakage was inevitable due to the loose texture of the pottery. Through long-term observation, people noticed the correspondence between the level of water level and time, and thus made a leaky kettle specially used for timing.
The age of the invention of the leaky kettle timer is not yet accurately answered. In China's historical documents, it has been said: "The omitted engraving was built on the day of Xuanyuan and proclaimed the generation of Xia Shang." "If it is said according to this, it was produced in the era of the Yellow Emperor, that is to say, this timekeeping method was already in the prehistoric period, and it was commonly used by the Xia Shang, but there is still a lack of physical evidence. According to the "Zhou Li" record, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, there was already an official in charge of the timing of leaky pots- the Qinghu clan, which shows that at the latest in 3000 years ago, the ancients in China had officially used and managed the leaky pots.
Leaky pots have been unearthed in many places in China Xingping unearthed copper leaky pot cylinder walls and mica pieces
It is understood that leaky pots have been unearthed in many places in China before. For example, in 1958, in the hollow brick tomb of Xu Yixi Han, about 1 km outside the east gate of Xingping County, Shaanxi Province, in the Mancheng Han Tomb (that is, the tomb of Liu Sheng, the son of Liu Qi, the son of The Han Jing Emperor liu Qi, the son of the Han Jing Emperor, and his wife Dou Qi), in 1976 on a sand dune in Amenqizhige Commune, Hangjinqi, Yikezhao League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, and in 2011 in the tomb of Zhang Anshi family in Chang'an District, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, copper leaking pots have been excavated.
According to the staff of the Hanjing Emperor Yang Mausoleum Museum, a ceramic leaky pot has been excavated in the Hanyang Mausoleum, which is cylindrical and flat-bottomed, and has a long barrel-shaped hole at the bottom, which is extremely similar to the shape of the copper leaky pot unearthed in Xingping.
According to the data, the copper leaky pot excavated from Xingping is now in the Maoling Museum, dating from the middle of the Western Han Dynasty. The copper leaky pot has a complete shape, cylindrical shape, plain surface, there is a lifting beam lid on the top, a three-legged bottom end of the pot protrudes from the water nozzle, the height is 32.3 cm, the diameter of the lid is 11.1 cm, the height of the lid is 1.7 cm; the height of the lift beam beam is 6 cm; the center of the lid and the beam has a rectangular jack hole corresponding to each, 1.75 cm long and 0.5 cm wide, which is used to intersperse the ruler of the hours. The diameter of the pot is 10.6 cm, and the height is 23.8 cm. The length of the nozzle is 3.8, the caliber is 0.25 cassette meters, its inner diameter is cylindrical, the outer is cylindrical, and it is connected to the wall of the pot, in the shape of a funnel, and the water flows out horizontally from this nozzle. In addition, at the outlet of the cylinder, there is a mica piece close to the wall of the cylinder, with a diameter of about 4 cm, which is irregularly round, whether this is a fragment of the device to control the leakage remains to be studied.
Judging from these descriptions, they are very similar to the copper droplets excavated from the outer pit of the Han Dynasty Emperor's Tomb. But from the chronological point of view, the two copper drips unearthed in Baling may be earlier.
From sinking arrow leaky pots to floating arrow leaky pots, the timing is becoming more and more accurate
How does copper drip timing? It is understood that there are two kinds of leaky pots: sinking arrow type and floating arrow type. The time recorded by lowering the water level is the drainage type, and the time indicated by the height of the upper floating arrow is the water type. Originally, a sinking arrow type was used, that is, a copper pot was used to hold water, there was a small hole near the bottom of the pot, and a wooden ruler with a carved scale was inserted vertically in the pot, and the lower end of the wooden ruler was fixed to a ship-shaped wooden block to make it float on the water surface, and when the water dripped from the small hole, people judged the time according to the scale on the benchmark after the water level was lowered.
Due to the difference in the dripping rate of water in the leaky pot and the dripping rate when the water is small, in order to improve the accuracy of the timing, the leaky pot has gradually developed from a single pot to a set of leaky pots, and at the same time, the sinking arrow leak pot has been changed to a floating arrow leak pot. The more progressions of the leaky pot, the more accurate the timing. In the floating arrow type leaky pot series, the largest number of pots is a set of 4 pots, and only two sets of this 4 pot set of leaky pots have survived: one set was made in the Qing Dynasty and is now displayed in the Bohol Hall of the Palace Museum; the other set was made on December 10, 1316, the third year of Yuan Yanyou (1316), and is now in the National Museum.
The ancients divided a day into 100 engravings, and only after the late Ming and early Qing dynasties did they change to the ninety-six engraving system
In the Palace Museum, there is also a collection of "animal ear Bagua copper pot dripping". This artifact is 51 cm high, 32 cm in upper diameter, 48 cm long and 2.3 cm wide, shaped like a waist drum, and the outside of the pot is decorated with Bagua Tu, Luo Shu Tu, SeaWater River Cliff, Seal Inscription and other ornaments. Under the shoulder of the pot is a two-eared handle. The main body of the pot is the sowing kettle, the receiving kettle, the arrow ruler, in addition to the floating boat, drip pipe, aura tube, siphon tube, long-handled piston, pump, cold and summer box and other components connected to the arrow ruler. It adopts the principle of the pumping cylinder imported from the West, and uses the piston pumping function to re-pump the water in the kettle into the sowing kettle, so that the water in the kettle is recycled and used repeatedly, and then the traditional multi-stage leaky pot is changed to only two pots and integrated. Engraved on the arrow ruler is the 96-hour method, replacing the traditional Chinese one hundred minutes a day.
It is understood that about before the Western Zhou Dynasty, the ancients divided a day and night into one hundred moments. In addition to the use of the hundred engraving system, the Han Dynasty also applied the method of timing the sun's azimuth. The Sui and Tang dynasties were used together with the twelve-hour chronograph method, and a unique timing method was also used at night, which was "more". Until the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, after the introduction of Western mechanical clocks, China changed to the timekeeping method of twenty-four hours a day, but the twelve hours were still used, two hours per hour. In order to be consistent with the twenty-four-hour chronograph method, China's ancient hundred engraving system evolved into a ninety-six engraving system, which is divided into four engravings in one hour and 15 minutes at a moment, so that one day and night is ninety-six moments, which is consistent with the universal chronography method in the world. Huashang Daily reporter Ma Huzhen
Source: China Business Daily