On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese archaeology, the "Gentleman Knows" Fudan University EMBA Humanities and Business Lecture Hall specially invited Gao Menghe, professor of the Department of Culture and Culture of Fudan University and a famous archaeology curator, to sort out the major events and representative figures of the development of Chinese archaeology in the past hundred years, as well as the reproduction of the real archaeological environment and scenes by the contemporary archaeological and cultural circles, innovate and design colorful cultural and creative products, make cultural relics and national treasures come alive, comprehensively disseminate and utilize archaeological resources, and enrich the historical and cultural nourishment of the whole society. Help people yearn for a better life.
Archaeology, in the past, has always been considered an unpopular in the ivory tower. However, in the past hundred years, Chinese archaeology has gone through the road of change from archaeology to archaeology, from archaeology to archaeology. On the one hand, it is to continue to practice the original intention of scientific research, be pragmatic and truth-seeking, restore history, and reveal the law of historical development of human society; On the other hand, it is to continue to forge ahead and expand new areas of protection, utilization and inheritance. Today's archaeology not only comprehensively and truly shows ancient China and modern China to the world, but also enters a new era of activating and utilizing archaeological achievements and archaeological resources to help modern economic and social development.
Gao Menghe is a professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of Literature and Science of Fudan University
He once served as a director of the Chinese Archaeological Society, vice chairman of the Shanghai Society of Culture and Museum, deputy director of the Public Archaeology Committee of the Chinese Archaeological Society, and president of the China Baiyue Ethnic Research Association.
The team leader excavated a number of archaeological sites across the country, published "Archaeological Geography of the Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River", "Bronze and Chinese Culture", "Archaeology Fun", "Archaeology is Not Digging Treasure" and other treatises, in recent years, advocated the practice of archaeological industrialization, built China's original archaeological paradise, curated Liangzhu Museum, The National Pavilion of the Expo Beautiful China and other well-known museums and exhibitions, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and CCTV expert database experts, planned CCTV "China Archaeological Conference", "Ten Thousand Miles Walking Single Ride - Heritage China" and other variety shows, recently appeared on camera as CCTV " Guest reviewer of The China National Treasure Conference.
Archaeology extends the axis of history
It is often asked: With the history of historical restoration, what else should be done in archaeological research? In fact, the early history of mankind, based on the world's earliest ape-man fossils found in Africa, is about 3 million years old; China also has about two million years of archaeological discoveries of human origin and activity. And the written history of China, even if it is counted from the documents of the pre-Qin period and then to the twenty-four histories represented by Sima Qian's "Records of History", the length of the history they record is only two or three thousand years. The scope of study of historiography according to paper documents is mainly the history of mankind after the documentation is recorded, which is called the history of the historical period in the academic circles; Archaeology, on the other hand, has undertaken a prehistoric period of history without written records, which is 2 million to 3 million years long, so it has filled a large number of gaps in the historical documents.
In 1921, archaeological survey excavations in Yangshao Village, Shichi County, Henan Province, and Zhoukoudian in Beijing marked the beginning of field archaeology in China. In the past hundred years, what role has archaeology played in reconstructing and restoring history? In the words of Child, the "father of archaeology", archaeology expands the scope and content of historical research, just as telescopes expand the horizons of astronomers and microscopes expand the horizons of biologists.
As we all know, although Sima Qian's "History" also mentions some eras before the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, he himself feels that these eras have been very confused, so in the past in the academic community, it was usually called the age of myths or legends. Over the past one hundred years, archaeologists have "fallen from the yellow spring to find things with their hands and feet", and through a large number of discoveries and research results, they have empirically verified these confused histories little by little, and made outstanding contributions to the restoration of ancient history. For example, more than 100 Paleolithic relics such as Lantian in Shaanxi, Yuanmou in Yunnan, Zhoukoudian in Beijing and ShanshanDong in Beijing have been discovered, proving that China is the cradle of human evolution, especially the origin of human life in East Asia, tracing the history of human activities in China to 2 million years ago, and reconstructing the ancient history that historians such as Sima Qian have rarely recorded. In other words, all these archaeological achievements have extended the axis of history and laid a very solid academic foundation for us to write ancient Chinese history.
Archaeology enhances the credibility of history
After the birth of mankind, after two or three million years of development, there have been three landmark "revolutionary events" that have promoted historical development. The first was the "Agricultural Revolution" ten thousand years ago, when human beings began to settle down, learned to grow crops and raise animals, began to burn pottery, and innovated the grinding stone tools of "sharpening knives without mistakenly cutting wood", and the development of human society has since entered the "fast lane". The second is the "urban revolution" after a gap of five thousand years, which gave birth to the world's four major ancient civilization centers, namely the Two Rivers Valley, the Nile River Basin, the Indus River Basin and the Yellow River Basin of the Yangtze River, and these four major civilization centers are distributed on the 30th parallel north latitude. Why did human society develop to five thousand years ago, and cities appeared in different spaces at the same time? Civilization emerged? Emergence of countries? This is a worldwide subject that is still being studied. The third time is after another five thousand years, to the nearest "industrial revolution" two or three hundred years ago, and its progressive significance and historical value we need not repeat today.
Taking the "urban revolution" in these three milestone events as an example, we Chinese often say "the history of Chinese civilization, up and down five thousand years", but is there a history of Chinese civilization for five thousand years? In the past, the foreign Sinology circles were uncertain. They believe that the history of Chinese civilization, represented by the Anyang Yin Ruins Oracle and the Jin Wen, is only 3500 years at most, much later than in the West. However, in the past hundred years, through a series of archaeological discoveries and studies represented by the Liangzhu site in Zhejiang, we have completely overthrown the traditional misunderstanding of the West.
Liangzhu ruins were found in 1936 in Liangzhu Town, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, after more than 80 years of archaeological excavations, it has been proved that it is an archaeological culture dating back 5,000 years - the center of Liangzhu culture, is a huge ancient city with a range of more than 100 square kilometers, more than 300 ruins, is currently known to be a thousand years earlier than the Xia Dynasty, the capital of China's earliest Liangzhu Kingdom, in 2019 was included in the World Cultural Heritage List, the history of China's five-thousand-year civilization has finally been recognized by the world.
Liangzhu Ancient City is the earliest planned capital city in China as it is known, and it is planned by the Three Cities. The core palace area has 300,000 square meters, the inner city has more than 3 million square meters, and the outer city has 6 million square meters, all of which add up to a total of about 9 million square meters, almost the size of 12 Forbidden Cities, so we call Liangzhu Ancient City the "First City of China" five thousand years ago. Among them, the palace area once had a very high carved beam painting of a large palace, although it has now become a large mound, but the altitude is still 15 meters high, which shows that it was very tall and magnificent. If we link it to the forbidden city of Beijing, the last of China's feudal dynasty five thousand years later, there are three famous halls of The Temple of Taihe, the Hall of Bohol, and the Hall of Zhonghe, the source of these three halls should be related to the large-scale palace buildings of Liangzhu Ancient City. If we take the planning and design of the three-fold city of Liangzhu Ancient City, and then go back to chang'an city in the Tang Dynasty and Kaifeng Province in the Song Dynasty, we will continue and inherit this pattern. They are all super-national projects of China in the past 5,000 years, presenting the planning ideas of the construction of ancient Chinese capitals and embodying the endless inheritance characteristics of Chinese civilization.
Archaeology has revitalized the scene of history
I remember that around the 1980s, when I entered the university to study archaeology, the Encyclopedia of China And Archaeology Volume defined archaeology as "a science that uses physical materials to study human history." During the period of study, I mainly learn to use the scientific method to excavate, and then write the excavated remains into an archaeological report, and then you can graduate. In other words, the archaeology of that time I later summarized as four words: "discovery" and "research", the same as the research goal of history, without distraction, that is, to learn how to restore history.
At that time, archaeology was still a second-level discipline under the first-level discipline of history, and the second-level discipline was mainly engaged in research. However, around 2010, archaeology was upgraded to a first-class discipline, which means that archaeology must not only continue to do a good job in scientific research, but also integrate with the real society and participate in the cultural construction of the economy and society. After the 1980s, the great development of reform and opening up, the capital construction in various places has moved a lot, and it is inevitable that historical sites and cultural relics will be exposed, so it is necessary to protect; the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics" promulgated in the early 1980s of the last century put "protection" in a very important and prominent position, and the famous cultural relics rescue such as the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project and the South-to-North Water Diversion Project were rescued. In the new century, the original archaeology with the goal of studying history has added a lot of new disciplines, such as cultural heritage protection, museum display and dissemination, etc., and I have also begun to advocate public archaeology in China, with the intention of allowing more non-professionals and the public to understand archaeology and participate in the protection, utilization and inheritance of cultural heritage. After 2010, on the basis of cultural relics protection, the use of archaeological results has also been put on the agenda. Archaeological results cannot all be stacked in warehouses without being shown to the people and taxpayers, so there have been many protection, display, utilization and inheritance work related to archaeological results. In the past decade, party and state leaders have attached more and more importance to the revitalization and utilization of cultural relics, for example, General Secretary Xi Jinping has visited the Liangzhu Museum in Zhejiang more than once, pointing out that Liangzhu is a sacred place that empirically proves the history of Chinese civilization for 5,000 years. He also personally guided the application for the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City and put forward the policy of showing the world the comprehensive and authentic ancient China and modern China. Archaeological achievements in recent years have also been more and more involved in the display and dissemination of China's national image, in the 2019 Shanghai Second Expo, our team in the China Pavilion made a beautiful China Liangzhu Ancient City exhibition area, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited the exhibition area with other national leaders after the opening ceremony, the ancient five thousand years of Chinese civilization through the modern exhibition, has been fully promoted and spread to the world.
Three Gorges Cultural Relics Rescue: Excavation of Zhongbao Island
In recent years, archaeology, which was once unpopular, has begun to take a new step in the development of the era of cultural and tourism integration, and the display and dissemination of archaeological achievements has gradually moved from museums to various archaeological site parks with larger space, and the state has newly proposed the establishment of national cultural parks and national parks in the past two years, which provides a greater stage for the protection and utilization of archaeological achievements and cultural heritage. At present, the tourism activities and research products around archaeology are basically "on-line and second-kill". A vertical, chain-based archaeological industry is emerging. The results of archaeology, discovery, research, protection and utilization have been continuously written into textbooks, and more young people have obtained a good historical and cultural inheritance in their bodies and minds.
In recent years, our public archaeological activities have also begun to diversify, in addition to books, newspapers and media, in film and television, but also from the early filming and dissemination of documentaries to the production and broadcast of more popular variety shows. As we all know, after all, documentaries are niche cultural products, while variety shows have a broad public rating base. Therefore, like the "National Treasure" launched by CCTV a few years ago and the "China National Treasure Conference" launched this year, the "China Archaeological Conference", and the "Ten Thousand Miles Of Walking Alone - China in the Heritage" launched by Zhejiang Satellite TV, we have also participated in the planning, and I have also listed the guests who appeared in some programs, etc., all in order to let more people, especially young people, understand the cultural heritage, like the cultural heritage, and share the cultural heritage. Shan Jixiang, general counsel of "Ten Thousand Miles of Single Riding - China in heritage" and former director of the Palace Museum, once said that before he became the president, only 30% of young people were interested in the Forbidden City; Later, they worked hard to promote the historical and cultural connotation and World Heritage value of the Forbidden City and the cultural creation of the Forbidden City, launched the documentary "I Repair Cultural Relics in the Forbidden City", the innovative variety film "Shangxin, the Forbidden City", etc., and now the young people who like the Forbidden City have reached 60-70%.
How to make young people fall in love with ancient cultural heritage? How to show the world the full truth of ancient and modern China? In the past, we emphasized that "content is king", but now we are also paying more attention to formal innovation and creativity, the display, utilization, inheritance of archaeological achievements, the planning and creativity of cultural and creative products, must be combined with modern society, with everyone's life, with the needs of consumers, such as archaeological blind boxes, archaeological ice cream, archaeological coffee, etc. have been widely promoted and popularized in archaeological museums, archaeological parks and archaeological heritage sites, and play an increasingly important role in the integration of culture and tourism. At present, many large-scale outdoor cultural and creative and immersive programs such as large-scale performing arts shows have also begun to appear. Related to the development of archaeological and cultural real estate, that is, to do a good job in archaeological cultural real estate around the core protection area of the archaeological site, and then expand commercial cultural real estate around, has also become a new form, creating China's original archaeological "Disney" theme park, which is no longer just a beautiful vision in concept and drawings.
Looking back on the past one hundred years of Chinese archaeology, two parallel development paths have been developed today: one is how to restore ancient China through scientific and pragmatic and truth-seeking research, and the other is to transform archaeological achievements into cultural resources, and even into archaeological resources with commercial value. Let more people like archaeology, so that archaeological results can also help us run to a better and happier life. Now, once the unpopular archaeology in the ivory tower ushered in a new era of opportunities, archaeology will certainly develop from a pure academic research field, and then develop a new cultural format, I believe that in my lifetime I can see a new archaeological industry, with the joint efforts of all of us.
Finally, we conclude today's exchange with General Secretary Xi's speech: let the cultural relics collected in museums, the heritage displayed on the vast land, and the words written in the monuments all come alive.
As a supplement to the management professional curriculum, the "Gentleman Knows" Fudan University EMBA Humanities and Business Ethics Lecture Hall adheres to the goal of "Business Ethics, Integration and Integration", so that students can draw strength from the humanities and have great wisdom, big vision and big feelings. Relying on the powerful teacher resources of Fudan University, the "Gentleman Knows" Humanistic Business Road Lecture Hall has invited Ge Jianxiong, Chen Sihe, Shen Zhihua, Xu Jilin, Wu Xiaoming, Ha Jiming and other famous artists inside and outside the university to share hot topics such as business, humanities and politics and economics for EMBA students and alumni.