Since ancient times, our country has attached great importance to the preservation of cultural relics, because if you are not careful, these precious cultural relics may be annihilated. Therefore, all the cultural relics unearthed are carefully protected.
However, there is such a precious cultural relic, weighing 70 tons of iron cattle, after the excavation, it was actually put in the open air, without any protective measures, we think that the experts deliberately did not protect, but the experts actually said that they did not dare, what is going on?
Collect the world's strange stories, and look at the world. Search for the odd people around you, explore the strange country gods, this issue of the Ziya Children's Funny Anecdotes Strange Man Record will lead everyone to see where this iron bull is sacred.
This precious cultural relic is currently on the east bank of the Yellow River outside the west gate of Gupuzhou City in Yongji City, Shanxi Province. In the 1940s, the river here had not yet completely dried up, and the river occasionally flowed outside the western city wall of Puzhou.
According to the local old man's recollection, during the dry season, the water level is very shallow, so a villager plans to come to the river to catch fish and shrimp. But just as he was about to get up, his foot stepped on something hard to the touch. Originally, he thought it was a dangerous thing, so he touched it with his hand.
However, this thing was too hard to pull out by human power alone, so he gave up. However, when the river is full, the sediment at the bottom of the river will flow with the current, and the villagers' boats will always be scratched at the bottom of the boat in the same position.
The locals also thought of many ways to pull out the culprit, but each time it was a fruitless end, and later people forgot about it. Over time, the riverbed silted up due to flooding. Later, this hard object had been buried deep in the river beach more than 2 meters below the surface of the Yellow River.
In this way, people forgot about this matter, originally thought that it would never see the light of day, but did not expect that a project construction has made new discoveries. In 1988, due to the construction of water conservancy projects, many experts were invited to survey the topography of the area. Originally, the road was unimpeded, but in the west of this Puzhou City, there was a terrifying secret hidden.
Experts have detected that there should be some kind of object under this position, and the year of existence should not be short. For a while, I did not dare to dig here easily. After the local villagers heard about it, an old man suddenly thought of the long-hidden thing. He told everyone that there was a very hard thing here, and many people had been pricked a long time ago.
What was even stranger was that the villagers wanted to pull it out at that time, so they brought a rope that could bear the weight of several houses, tied it to a hard object, and then the whole village could not pull it out at the same time. After hearing the old man's words, the experts were very curious about what this thing was, so they planned to find out, and then everyone knew that its identity was so not simple.
The relevant candidates immediately excavated here, but when they dug to a depth of 2 meters, they vaguely saw its figure, but there were several places. At this time, everyone feels that things are not simple, thinking that this will not be a cultural relic, after all, there are many such things. So they immediately reported it. Soon the relevant departments sent archaeologists.
It took a lot of effort for everyone to clean up all the dirt, but at this time, what appeared in front of them was a few large iron cows. But why are these iron cows made, and what are their uses? In order to find out the truth of the matter, the experts are on their way to visiting the local elderly every day. In addition, they also consulted all the materials of the Tang Dynasty, and the emperor did not pay off, and finally they unveiled this mysterious veil.
After careful study by experts, it was found that this was the site of pujindu of the Yellow River. Not only that, they also measured these Tang Dynasty iron bulls.
Each of these iron bulls is about 1.9 meters high, about 3 meters long and about 1.3 meters wide, and has a horizontal shaft behind the tail of the ox, with a diameter of about 0.4 meters and a length of about 2.3 meters. The shaft head has ornaments, and each shaft is different, with beaded ornaments, diamond flowers, curly grass, lotus flowers and so on. Each weighs about 30 tons, plus the chassis, it can reach 70 tons!
Everyone was shocked to see these iron bulls, because they had never seen an iron bull so delicate. The shape of the cow is also very special, the front legs are pedaling, the back legs are crouched, the horns are sharp, and the head is held high. What is even more surprising is that there are 6 iron pillars connected under the cow's belly. In addition, casting marks can be seen.
At that time, the discovery of the iron bull caused a huge sensation, many people were wondering why the iron bull appeared here, and some people were linked to the myth and legend "Pagoda Town River Demon", so everyone was talking about these iron cows may be the river gods incarnated, used to guard the Yellow River water monsters.
Others say that these iron cows may have accidentally fallen into the river while grazing, and then the water flowed too much, and they drowned. So it sank to the bottom of the river and was gradually buried by the sediment. After a long period of change, the skeletons of these cows gradually merged with the sediment, and then formed the iron bull in front of us.
This statement sounds like it makes some sense, like the formation of fossils. But the cow is born a swimmer, so how can it be easily drowned by the water, even if the water is too large, it will only be washed away, let alone sink to the bottom.
Therefore, these statements are obviously just nonsense, there is no scientific basis, and everything still has to pay attention to evidence. Although the origin of these iron bulls is unknown to everyone, it is a very happy thing for archaeologists. Experts have also studied the use of this iron bull.
It turned out that during the Tang Dynasty, this was a big river, and it was difficult to travel. In order to facilitate the travel of ordinary people, this Pujin Bridge was built here. At that time, the Yellow River was frequently affected, so that the pontoon bridges on the river were often washed away. In order to stabilize the two ends of the bridge, four iron bulls weighing several hundred tons were placed on both sides of the Yellow River. So the original role of the iron bull was to fix the bridge.
From these iron cattle, we can see that the Tang Dynasty was very mature in water conservancy engineering, and the casting process at that time was also very exquisite, and the superb forging technology of craftsmen was reflected everywhere. It has another effect. The cow is an animal that corresponds to kun, which in turn symbolizes earth. Therefore, the ancients built the levee to use soil to block the water, so the Yellow River iron bull represents the people's good wish to eliminate flooding and peace.
We know that general iron products will definitely oxidize and rust after a long period of soaking. However, the unearthed Tang Dynasty iron cattle did not have a trace of rust, what was going on. Later, experts speculated that the reason why there was no rust when it came out of the water was because it fell into the silt of the Yellow River, resulting in isolation from the air, so there was no oxidation reaction.
There is also the fact that these four iron bulls have been cast for more than 1,200 years, and have sunk under the water for at least a few hundred years, but they are still vivid after being fished up, and even the patterns on the body are clearly visible. They guessed that the ancients must have considered the problem of rusting when casting, and should have been specially treated on it.
In order to protect this iron bull, experts also formed a special protection team to study how to protect the iron bull. But these iron bulls are so heavy that it is almost impossible to remove them all. Later, experts tried to take some protective measures, but not only did not achieve the protective effect, but also caused a little loss.
So experts no longer dare to think of ways to protect it, and the best way for now is to let it be placed in the open air without any manual intervention. Of course, these are just speculations, as to why the iron bull did not rust, the truth behind this can only wait for posterity to reveal. Listening to this story, what do you think? Everyone is welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss.
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