Emperor Shun, the only monarch of the Five Emperors of Ancient China known for his benevolence and filial piety, is revered as the originator of Chinese moral culture.
Confucius said, "Shun's few are also evil, evil and laborious, and twenty filial pieties are known to the world", and Sima Qian praised Emperor Shun in the "Records of History" as "the mingde of the world, all from the beginning of Emperor Shun." The Chinese even refers to Emperor Shun's reign as the "Yu Dynasty", alongside the Xia-Shang Dynasty.
But it is such a "benevolent" tribal leader, whose ending is full of mysteries.
Shun was born in the ancient Yu tribe, surnamed Yao, also known as Yu Shun. Regarding Shun's birthplace, there are still many controversies, mainly in Shandong, Shanxi, Hebei and so on.
However, Yu Shun's prosperity was relatively clear, in southern Jin.
There is a saying in the "Spring and Autumn of the Lü Dynasty": "Shun one migration into Yi, then migration to Chengdu, three migrations into the country, and Yao granted the Zen position". In ancient times, various tribes were greatly affected by the natural environment and migrated frequently in order to find suitable living areas.
It was during the migration that Shun's tribe entered Emperor Yao's field of vision (jurisdiction). Emperor Yao's Tao Tang clan was the leader of the first generation of tribal alliances before the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, and its corresponding archaeological and cultural remains are the ruins of tao temples in Linfen, Shanxi.
Archaeological discoveries at the Tao Temple site show that the Tao Temple culture shows the cultural appearance differences of the early, middle and late stages, of which the difference between the early and middle periods is obviously larger, the early period is the reign of Emperor Yao, the Tao Temple site is dominated by the second phase of the Miaodigou culture, but in the middle period, there is a Sanli Bridge type with obvious cultural characteristics of the Haidai area (Haizhi Bohai, Daizhi Taishan), a typical example is that the cooking utensils of the early and middle periods of the Tao Temple changed from kettle stoves to fat-footed bristles.
The same ethnic group does not create two types of archaeological cultures that differ before and after, and only the addition of new cultural factors will lead to this situation.
More direct evidence is the discovery of tombs M2384 and M3419 at the tao temple.
The tomb owners of the early royal tombs numbered M2384 and M3419 are all women with high status, and the pottery, jade and royal burial sites in the middle of the pottery temple excavated in the tomb are highly consistent, indicating that the early royal women and the middle royal males have an in-law relationship, which to some extent confirms the literature that the Yao Emperor "lowered the second daughter to concubine and concubine yu".
Of course, there is no direct evidence that the tomb owners of M2384 and M3419 are Emperor Shun's Empress Dowager and Empress Dowager Ying, but at least it proves that there was a political marriage between the early ruler Tao Tang and the middle ruler Youyu.
Therefore, the archaeological findings coincide with the passage of the throne to Shun in the literature. It was also in the middle of the Tao Temple that the Tao Temple culture showed an increasingly brilliant scene, and the area of the big city reached 2.8 million square meters in the middle period, far exceeding the 200,000 square meters of the early small city, highlighting the merits of Emperor Shun.
This also shows that Yu Shun entered a prosperous stage after inheriting Emperor Yao's position as co-lord of the world. Of course, as to whether Yao Shun's succession is Zen or some other reason, we will discuss it later.
If we follow the historical context of Yao Shun's Zen Concession given in the Book of Shang, Yao passed the throne to Shun in his old age, and Shun passed the throne to Yu in his old age, the change of power in the ancient period seems to be full of beauty and peace.
However, after Shun passed the throne to Yu, he inexplicably died in the "Wild of Cangwu", and the place of death of Cangwu is basically undisputed, because from the pre-Qin documents "ShanHai Jing", "Shang Shu", and "Bamboo Book Chronicle" to the "History of History" and "Imperial Century" after the Qin and Han Dynasties, it is recorded that "(Emperor Shun) collapsed in the wilderness of Cangwu and was buried in the Nine Ridges Mountain in Jiangnan".
Cangwu No ye, which is now the Jiuling Mountain in Ningyuan County, Yongzhou City, Hunan Province. It was more than 2,000 miles away from Jinnan, the core area ruled by the Yu clan, and as the co-lord of the Huaxia tribe, why did Emperor Shun die here?
The reason given in the history books is that Emperor Shun "practiced the throne for thirty-nine years, patrolled the south, and collapsed in the wilderness of Cangwu", that is, Shun died on the way out of the tour, and The Confucians even praised Shun for "diligent civil and wild death". But the credibility of this reason is extremely low.
First of all, the word "patrol hunting" itself has two meanings, one is that the emperor inspects his own country, and the second layer is the obscure statement of "prisoner", after the Second Emperor Hui Qin of the Northern Song Dynasty and the Ming Yingzong of the Ming Dynasty were captured, the history books used the term "Northern Hunting" as an example.
Secondly, from the perspective of archaeological discoveries, the archaeological culture to which Emperor Shun belonged was the Longshan culture, and in the area of the Jianghan Plain to the south was the Qujialing-Shijiahe culture created by the Sanmiao ethnic group, and the ningyuan to the south belonged to the Baiyue Group. Baiyue's complete integration into China was already after Qin Shi Huang unified China, and the influence of Longshan culture, where Shun was located, did not reach the land of Cangwu around 2300 BC, saying that Shun's initiative to patrol this area because of his diligence was not in line with archaeological findings.
So what is the truth?
This has to start from the archaeological discoveries of the tao temple in the early, middle and late phases.
As mentioned above, there was a cultural "mutation" in the early to mid-pottery temple, which meant that a new ethnic group entered the ruling class. But this entry was not done peacefully.
During the transition from the early to the middle period and in the late period, the temple suffered two large-scale vandalisms. The early royal city was destroyed in the middle of the period, and the rulers of the middle period rebuilt the new royal city. In the middle period, the tombs of the nobility changed the burial customs of the early burial wood, pottery, and stone ritual vessels, and a large number of buried jade and painted pottery were buried.
In the late stages, the violence far outweighed the first change. The royal tombs were stolen many times in the late period, human bones were scattered on the ground, the palace and astronomical viewing buildings were deliberately destroyed, and massacres were found in the south wall of Miyagi Castle, and a 35-year-old female had horns inserted in her bones and a broken cervical spine.
It is worth mentioning that the two large-scale riots in Tao Temple were aimed at royal tombs and palace buildings, and the tombs of the early small tombs and the middle middle class nobles were deliberately avoided, indicating that the destruction belonged to infighting, not foreign invaders.
Obviously, the subversive discoveries of the archaeology of Tao Temple overturned the beautiful scene of Yao Shun Yu Zen Rang depicted in the history books, and Yao Passed the throne to Shun and Shun passed the throne to Yu, in fact, accompanied by violent seizure of power.
Since there is no so-called "Zen concession" in Shun's succession, there is naturally no reason for Yu's succession to follow this tradition, which coincides with the two coup storms in the middle and late Tao Temple.
In the face of violent seizure of power, it is reasonable for Shun's "southern tour" to flee until "wild death".
In fact, there are two diametrically opposed records of Shun's ending in the historical records, the traditional history books are influenced by Confucianism and strive to maintain the beautiful vision of "Zen Rang", while the Han Feizi and the Bamboo Book Chronicles bluntly write: "Shun forced Yao, Yu forced Shun".
In fact, until the Tang Dynasty, there is still a saying that "Yao Yu prisoner, Shun Ye died" (that is, Shun died on the way to exile or escape) was said to be said.
As for why Shun's place of escape was chosen in Hunan, more than a thousand kilometers away, perhaps to seek the alliance between Sanmiao and Baiyue, or perhaps to avoid the bingfeng of "Yu Zheng Sanmiao" and flee to the border areas where Dayu's power was not reached, we will discuss it later in future articles.