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The life of the Cangzhou people in the Neolithic Era
Cangzhou got its name from the second year of the Northern Wei Dynasty (517 AD), but archaeological findings prove that as early as the Neolithic Age, there was human activity on the land of Cangzhou, and these people can be called the earliest "Cangzhou people".
So far, three Neolithic sites have been found in Cangzhou, namely: the ruins of Renqiu Sangezhuang, the ruins of Renqiu Dumb Village, and the ruins of Chen Wei in Cangxian County. All three sites belong to the Neolithic period, but the cultural types are different. Among them, the ruins of Renqiu Sangezhuang belong to the Yangshao culture about 6,000 years ago, while the ruins of Dumb Village and Chen Wei belong to the Longshan culture of about 4,000 years ago.
So how do archaeologists determine the chronology and cultural type of the three sites? It is mainly by excavating excavated cultural relics.
First, the Old and New Lithic eras can be distinguished through artifacts. Compared with the Paleolithic, the typical characteristics of the Neolithic age are four: one is the main use of grinding stone tools; the second is the emergence of pottery; the third is the emergence of agricultural production; and the fourth is the emergence of livestock rearing. In the historical exhibition hall on the second floor of the Cangzhou Museum, a large number of cultural relics excavated from the three sites are exhibited, including various types of pottery and grinding stone tools, agricultural tools, etc., which fully proves that the era of the three sites is the Neolithic era.
Second, distinguish the cultural types of the three sites. A large number of faience pieces and red pottery fragments have been excavated from the site of Sangezhuang, among which the faience pottery pieces are polished and decorated with ink color, and the pattern is composed of dots and leaf patterns, which has the typical characteristics of the Yangshao culture temple bottom ditch stage, reflecting the expansion of the cultural factors of the temple bottom ditch in the Central Plains to the Jizhong region. The pottery excavated at the site of Dumb Village and Chen Wei is mainly gray pottery, and some gray-brown pottery and polished black pottery, and the decoration is mainly rope pattern, with the most broken rope patterns, followed by basket patterns and checkered patterns. It has strong similarities with Shandong Longshan culture, Henan Longshan culture and Hougang Phase II culture, which roughly represents the cultural outlook of the late Longshan era.
By observing the cultural relics excavated from the three Neolithic sites exhibited at the Cangzhou Museum, we can infer the life of the ancestors of Cangzhou in the Neolithic Era. The appearance of axes, sickles, chisels, knives and other stone tools and bone tools shows that the ancestors have been widely engaged in agricultural production; the appearance of pottery net drops, fish maws, and fish hooks indicates that the ancestors generally carried out fishing and hunting activities at that time; the emergence of bone needles, mussel ornaments and a large number of exquisite pottery, indicating that the ancestors had a relatively advanced handicraft industry at that time. Cangzhou in the Neolithic era, warm and humid, dense with rivers, has superior living conditions. An early Cangzhou ancestor, who got up in the morning with the morning dew of the morning sun, went to the deserted field two days ago to sow seeds; in the afternoon he went to the river to sow fishing nets, and while waiting for the fish to catch, he began to collect wild vegetables and wild fruits in the forest by the water; in the evening, two fresh fish were caught in the nets, and he rushed home with the harvest of the day; in the evening, with the campfire, he and his children told the legendary stories of the distant places, and his wife listened while sewing his clothes with bone needles.
Of course, life in primitive society will be ten thousand times more difficult than imagined, these warm and happy moments are often short-lived, and the ancestors of Cangzhou will soon be thrown into the arduous struggle with nature. Today, when we walk into the museum and admire the relics left by the ancestors thousands of years ago, it seems that we are also in that barbaric ancient era...
Author Lu Qingyuan