Tip: In addition to the flute, the common practice in the archaeological community today is that if an artifact is found in a certain place, it will immediately be associated with what was found in another place, and then the conclusion will be that the two must be a cultural type. This may be an omission of human aesthetic similarities or even the sameness.
The flute is the oldest Han Chinese instrument discovered so far, and it is also the most representative and ethnic wind instrument among the Han instruments. In the prehistoric society of the flood, due to the lack of living materials, people made flutes, and made them exquisite and lasting, and the most convenient materials should be animal bones. After hunting animals for meat, people made their bones into flutes, which is what we make today.
Jiahu Ruins, located in Jiahu Village, 1.5 kilometers southwest of Beiwudu Town, Wuyang County, Henan Province, is an important site in the early Neolithic period of China, C14, emission dating results show that it is about 9000-7500 years old, the area of the reserve is 55,000 square meters, first discovered in the early 1960s. Between 1986 and 1987, 26 exquisite bone flutes were excavated from the Jiahu site, including 5-hole bone flute, 6-hole bone flute, 7-hole bone flute and 8-hole bone flute. After expert research, these bone flutes have four, five, six and seven sound scales, advancing the history of China's seven-tone scale to eight thousand years ago. After the earliest bone flutes were restored, experts were surprised to find that they could be used to play the folk song "Little Cabbage" that was circulating in Hebei and other places in China.
This made the so-called scholars who thought that the flute was not a Central Plains instrument in the past very upset, and the discovery of the JiaHu bone flute rewrote the history of Chinese music, and it was also the most complete and rich musical object with the best musical performance in the world's contemporary remains. The Jiahu bone flute dates back about 8,000 years, and in terms of time, it is not only much earlier than the flute excavated from the ur ancient tomb in Mesopotamia, but also earlier than the pottery vessel-shaped flute in ancient Egypt and the flute image similar to the Later Arabian bamboo flute depicted on the makeup plate. It is 2,000 years before the flute that appeared in ancient Egypt and is known as the originator of the flute.
The site of JiaHu lake belongs to the Pei Ligang culture that predates the Yangshao culture, and the ancestors of Jiahu Lake lived here for thousands of years in ancient times. Through the research of Jiahu bone flute experts, it was found that at that time, Jiahu people already had the basic concept of the distance difference between sounds and sounds, and these interval relationships have gone through seven or eight thousand years, or even tens of thousands of years of musical art practice. And those so-called scholars who once thought that the flute was not a Musical Instrument of the Central Plains, their research basis was not only the flute excavated from the ur ancient tomb and the flute that appeared in ancient Egypt, etc., but also based on a few Tang poems - why should the Qiang flute complain about Yang Liu? The spring breeze does not close the jade door. And Cen Shan's "White Snow Song Sends the Military Judge Back to Beijing" in "The Chinese army put wine and returned to the guests, Huqin pipa and Qiang flute." They believe that because of the existence of the Qiang flute and the habit of many ethnic minorities in the western region of China to blow the bone flute, the bone flute and even the flute should be the invention of the Qiang people.
In fact, since the use of bamboo flutes in the Zhou Dynasty, the ancients have often used bamboo to make flutes, but occasionally other materials such as copper, iron, silver, porcelain, jade, etc., bone flutes are also one of them, has been very rare. About 4,000 years ago, during the Yellow Emperor period, because of the large amount of bamboo growing in the Yellow River Basin, people began to choose bamboo as a material to make flutes. In this regard, the "Records of History" recorded: "The Yellow Emperor made Linglun cut bamboo in kun, chop and make a flute, and blow it as a phoenix. "Why did you choose to make a flute out of bamboo?" One is that bamboo is found to be more vibrating than bones and has a crisp pronunciation; the other is that bamboo is easy to process.
The diversity of materials provides people with a space where they can choose, and it is also an illustration of the material richness of society. During this period, the Qiangdi did not appear. Also known as qiang pipe, the qiang flute is played vertically, and the two pipes emit the same pitch, and the timbre is crisp and high-pitched, with a sense of sadness. Today's research has found that the original Qiang flute and the flute are completely different concepts, the original Qiang flute is made of bird leg bone or lamb leg bone, has two uses, both a blowing instrument, but also a horse whip, so also known as "horse whip" or "blowing whip". Before the Western Han Dynasty, the Qiang flute had only four sound holes, and by the 1st century BC, after Jingfang (77 BC - 37 BC), a highest-pitched sound hole was added to the back, and there were five sound holes. That is to say, the Qiang flute was originally transformed from the "horse whip", which is only more than 2,000 years old.
Qiangdi
Because the Jiahu bone flute is a crane bone, it is also called a crane bone flute. Ming Li Shizhen said in the "Compendium of Materia Medica, Birds and Cranes": "The crane bone is a flute, and it is very clear. "Ming "Yuzhitang Tanhui" volume VIII has Feng Haisu's poem "Crane Bone Flute" also said: Birth immortal bone word flying Qiong, change feathers and move the palace to learn Fengming. The spray moon has not woken up for a thousand years of dreams, and the clouds are still with the sound of nine gao. The "fetal immortal" and "jiugao" here are other names for cranes. And this also makes the Jiahu bone flute different from the Qiang flute in terms of raw materials, as we all know, cranes are mainly places with water, to have reeds, generally in ponds, shoals and other places, relatively speaking, the frequency of occurrence in the western region of China is relatively less, especially in the Qinghai-Tibet region, in addition to the black-necked crane, people can hardly see the existence of other cranes. This turned the local bone flute into an eagle flute.
From the data point of view, there are two kinds of eagle flutes, one is the Tibetan eagle flute, and the other is the Tajik eagle flute, both of which are made of the wing bone of the eagle. Tibetan calls the bone flute "Dangya", and the Tibetan eagle flute is mainly popular in the Tibetan areas of Tibet, Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu Provinces. The Tajik eagle flute is an ancient edge-edged air instrument of the Tajik and Kirgiz ethnic groups, which is mainly popular in the Tashkurgan Tajik Autonomous County of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, the Kyzyl-Su Kirgiz Autonomous Prefecture and the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture.
The flute changes from a crane bone flute to an eagle flute, and if people understand it as the material used to make the flute in the process of flute propagation, it will definitely change with different regions. That is to say, as a flute, in the process of spreading to the west, the part as a material should be the discovery and invention of tibetans and Tajiks, and then push forward, then there is a possibility that at some time an object may have multiple origins, and this also leads to a completely different origin of this object in the time of origin. This will at least give people the revelation that sometimes, when we find two similar objects in archaeology, we can't say very casually that this comes from that, or that comes from this.
We cannot say that the change of the crane bone flute into the eagle flute is not the spread of the Jiahu bone flute; we cannot say that the crane bone flute becoming the eagle flute is the spread of the Jiahu bone flute. It cannot be said that it is not, because the Jiahu bone flute is the earliest flute found in the world at present; it cannot be said that it is because in the western region, the bone flute is still blowing and waiting to see that among these ethnic groups, there are clearly their own ethnic origins about the bone flute. For example, the legend of the origin of the Tajik eagle flute is like this:
Long ago, the Tajiks, who lived on the Pamir Plateau, lived a hunting life, with falcons in their homes. There is a hunter named Wafa, whose ancestors are famous hunters, and there is an ancestral vulture in the family, and people call it "Eagle King".
Wafa hunts with the "Eagle King" every day, but almost all the birds and beasts hunted are taken by slave owners. One day, he couldn't help but confide in the "Eagle King": "Tajik slaves are like stars falling from the sky, the living are sucked by vampires, and the dead can't close their eyes..." The falcon was infected by the master and began to hover over the slave owner's house, and the slave owner was so frightened that he asked Wafa to hand over the "Eagle King" and guard the house for his family. Wafa refused to hand over the "Eagle King" and was quickly knocked unconscious by the slave owner.
The "Eagle King" couldn't bear to see the appearance of his master's baby hair, and flew in the sky and said to the master, "Kill me quickly, use my bones, make a flute, you have a flute, if you want something, you won't suffer!" Seeing that the master refused, he said, "Baby, you kill me, after I die, I will become a fairy family, if you don't kill me, the slave master will come and snatch me away, and you will not be able to live." Wafa came from the heart, still reluctant to kill the "Eagle King", but the "Eagle King" fell to the ground and fell to his death.
Eagle Flute
Wafa thought of what the "Eagle King" had said before he died, in order to make the "Eagle King" become the "Immortal Family" after his death, he pulled out the largest hollow bone on the wing of the "Eagle King", drilled two holes, made a piccolo, named "Nayi", and blew out a beautiful tune. Unexpectedly, in this tune, falcons came in droves and punished the slave owner fiercely, so that he would no longer dare to oppress the slave. Since then, the eagle flute has become popular among the Tajiks. And it has been handed down to this day, which shows its long history.
History may be like this, at some point it can only have one answer, but at some point it has many answers. We can't say that legend is the answer, but we can't verify the substantial connection between the crane bone flute and the eagle flute. Therefore, it can only be believed that in many times, human beings' pursuit of beauty is very similar, and human aesthetics are also very similar. In addition to the flute, the common practice in the current archaeological community is that when an artifact is found in a certain place, it will immediately be associated with what was found in another place, and then it will form a conclusion that the two must be a cultural type. This may be an omission of human aesthetic similarities or even the sameness.
The pictures in this article are from the network, thanks to the original author!