As we all know, Qujing is a prefecture-level city in Yunnan Province, located in the east of Yunnan Province, at the source of the Pearl River, at the junction of Yunnan, Guangxi and Guizhou provinces, known as the "throat of Yunnan". Qujing ancient humans existed earlier, about 100,000 years ago has entered the Paleolithic Age, and three or four thousand years ago, Qujing ancestors planted rice on this ancient land to create civilization. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the Chu general Zhuang Huan led an army into Dian and established the Ancient Dian State, with Qujing as the hinterland of the Ancient Dian State. During the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang built the "Five Foot Road" to Jianning (Qujing), and initially placed officials to connect Qujing with the interior. By the time of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of Han sent troops to conquer Yunnan, and the King of Dian surrendered to the Han Dynasty. During the Three Kingdoms period, Zhuge Liang personally led a large army to march south, and after the seven captures of Meng, the commander Meng Yu led the army to surrender. Today I want to tell you that the Eight Towers Ancient Tomb Group in Qujing, Yunnan Province, has unearthed hundreds of tombs of various types and unearthed more than a thousand cultural relics, unveiling the mysterious "Dian" culture.
Eight Towers Ancient Tomb Group, located in Qujing City, Yunnan Province, Qilin District, Zhujie Street, Dongjia Village 200 meters east of the foothills of Dongshan Mountain, the tomb group consists of 8 oval mounds of varying sizes, with a total area of about 5,000 square meters, known locally as "Eight Towers". In the 1970s, villagers in Dongjia Village accidentally dug up dozens of bronze artifacts while collecting soil from a mound in The Eight Tower Terrace, and villagers who felt that the situation was serious immediately reported to the local cultural relics department. Soon, the local museum sent personnel to the scene, and after exploration, it was determined that there were ancient tombs under the eight mounds, and immediately blocked the site and reported it to the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau. After receiving the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Yunnan Institute of Archaeology and the Qujing Museum jointly carried out rescue excavations of the Eight Towers Ancient Tomb Group. The archaeological team first excavated Tomb No. 1 and cleared out 5 Bronze Age vertical pit tombs. Since then, the archaeological team has excavated Tomb No. 2 six times, cleaned up 348 Bronze Age vertical pit tombs, and unearthed more than 1,500 burial artifacts.
Thirty-eight years later, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Yunnan Institute of Archaeology and the Qujing Museum jointly excavated The Eighth Terrace No. 2 for the seventh time, excavating 343 Bronze Age tombs and 485 burial items. Judging from the excavations, the tombs are diverse in types, cross-stacked and interpenetrating, forming a cultural accumulation layer that lasted for more than 2,000 years from the pre-Qin to the Song and Yuanming dynasties. In more than 30 sealed earth tombs and pit vertical cave tombs in the Spring and Autumn Warring States, a large number of Bronze Age artifacts have been excavated, which is the first discovery in Yunnan bronze archaeology. The excavated cultural relics include bronze, iron, pottery, jade, etc., and the number of burials and the high level of craftsmanship have amazed archaeologists. The tomb shape system can be divided into two kinds of sealed tombs and non-sealed tombs, due to the age, the bones of the tomb owner have decayed, only a small number of tombs have found residual bone marks, and the burial style judged from the traces is mostly upright limbs.
Two bronze artifacts unearthed from the Badatai Tombs group have attracted the attention of archaeologists, namely a bronze sword and a bronze sword. It is this bronze that reveals the identity of the ancestors in the tomb, and the bronze sword and the sword scabbard are crossed together, and the surface is covered with mud due to the long-term squeezing of the sealing soil, but it is still well preserved. After careful cleaning, this bronze sword is 32 centimeters long and 7 centimeters wide, and there are double grooves on both sides of the blade, commonly known as "blood grooves". The most interesting thing for experts is the hilt of the sword, which has a pattern that resembles both a frog and a person, later known as the "frog figure", and a frogman pattern on each side of the hilt. In the 1970s, in the lijiashan ancient Dianguo tomb group in Yuxi, Yunnan, the "frogman pattern" also appeared many times in the excavated bronzes. The lijiashan ancient Dianguo tomb group is more than 100 kilometers away from the Eight Towers Ancient Tomb Group, and the same frogman pattern has been excavated, indicating that the tomb owner is likely to be the ancestor of the ancient Dian kingdom.
The scabbard is decorated with 6 snakes on each side, and both sides are symmetrical, and this sword scabbard decorated with snake motifs is likely to be a kind of totem worship. The exquisite shape of the sword scabbard and the cumbersome hollow carving process all indicate that the tomb owner wearing the sword scabbard has an extraordinary status, and is likely to be an aristocrat of the ancient Dian state. The excavation of the Eight Towers Ancient Tomb Group proves that Qujing is one of the cradles of ancient civilization in Yunnan, and the ancestors here created a splendid culture as early as 2,000 years ago. The Badatai Ancient Tomb Group is a cemetery with a large distribution range, relatively complete preservation, special burial style and large scale in the Warring States to Han Dynasty period in eastern Yunnan. The burial customs and burial styles of the Eight Towers Ancient Tomb Group have very distinct regional characteristics, and it is of great significance for us to further understand the burial system and burial customs of the local ancient residents and the bronze culture of eastern Yunnan through the excavation of Tomb No. 2.