(Author: Zhao Hui) On April 22, 2018, at the Sanlian Xinzhi Conference, two contemporary experts in the archaeology of Xia culture, Sun Qingwei, professor of the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, and Professor Xu Hong, researcher of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, had a face-to-face discussion on the "Dispute over the History of The History of The Letters of the Xia Dynasty" and the archaeological research of the Xia culture, and the two professors represented the most cutting-edge different positions and views in the current Chinese Xia culture research.
Sun Qingwei "believed that the Xia Dynasty was a history of faith, and tried to discern the Xia culture from archaeological methods." Advocating the research method of "archaeology in the historical context", it not only examines in detail the kings, jinians, capitals, clans and major historical events of the Xia Dynasty from the perspective of the handed down documents, but also uses the "cultural comparison method" to focus on combing and analyzing the relics of the Longshan Era and the Erlitou culture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, and on this basis, the status of the Xia Dynasty is demonstrated.
Xu Hong insisted on the "conditional agnostic theory" of Xia culture, "as long as the archaeological excavations do not have the same written evidence as the Yin Ruins Oracle, there is no conclusive conclusion on whether Erlitou's surname is Xia or Shang or other." "Xia definitely exists!" It first existed in the mouths and pens of people from the Eastern Zhou to the Han and Jin Dynasties, and it is an intangible cultural heritage. ”
In the process of Sun Qingwei's research on Xia culture, because "in the process of statistics and analysis, I also felt some of the methodological flaws that existed in the past, and I tried to understand all the remains through unified standards, at least in one way, to solve the defects of our high subjectivity in the judgment standards of archaeological culture." Similarly, in order to understand the general scope of the xia dynasty's activities, the duyi I examined was to include the area of archaeological remains to be analyzed. ”
Xu Hong, with the principle of archaeology, insisted on scientific archaeology in the study of Xia culture and said a word, "As an archaeologist, I said that erlitou is very likely to be xia, very likely to be xia, but I can't say that it is xia, and I can't produce an oracle bone, I will say xia" "But you let me say that it is definitely xia, which violates my scientific concept and bottom line as a scholar!" ”
Although Sun Qingwei and Xu Hong have different views in the study of Xia culture, they are the same as the goals in the research materials of Xia culture, and have a consistent understanding."
I agree with Professor Sun Qingwei that it is not serious for everyone to argue about Xia culture, because the discussion about Xia is very serious, but scholarship is the public instrument of the world, and everyone has the right to dispute Xia culture
”。
But what is the current state of the serious academic field of Xia culture? Sun Qingwei said in the article, "Archaeological practice in the past few decades shows that the academic community has not only not formed a consensus on the understanding of Xia culture, but has a tendency to drift away, and even some scholars have begun to doubt whether the Xia Dynasty really existed in history." There is no doubt that the root cause of this situation is that the method of exploring Xia culture has deviated. As early as 1979, Mr. Zou Heng pointed out in a serious way:
In the ancient literature records, it is unlikely that any new archaeological cultures will be found in the activities of the Xia and Shang tribes, that is, in the central plains in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River
。 At the same time, because the Xia Dynasty existed objectively like the Shang Dynasty,
The archaeological Xia culture must be contained in the various periods of this space and the types of cultures that have been discovered at this time
。 We say that xia culture is not without discovery, but by what method to identify it."
40 years have passed since Zou Heng's conclusion, and the current research on Xia culture has still not made breakthrough progress, and even some basic understandings of Xia culture have not been clearly studied.
In the author's opinion, the fundamental reason for this situation is not the lack of diligence and effort of the majority of Xia culture researchers, nor is it a problem in research methods, but because the original materials for the study of Xia culture have been wrong, and the fundamental errors in the research direction have occurred; in the wrong direction, no matter what kind of academics, everyone cannot make the slightest progress in the study of Xia culture.
This error of the original material includes the misreading of historical materials, and the resulting misjudgment and search for the central area of Xia culture, resulting in "
That is, the Yellow River Basin Center of xia culture mainstream scholarship said. However, the 60-year research and exploration of Xia culture centered on the Erlitou site has proved the fundamental error of this direction, so that Xu Hong, who has been engaged in front-line archaeology and hard work at the Erlitou site for 20 years, can only helplessly declare, "But you let me say that it is definitely Xia, which violates my scientific concept and bottom line as a scholar!" ”。 When the Erlitou site is still uncertain about the Xia cultural site, the study of the Xia culture in the center of the Yellow River Basin based on the "Xia Ruins" and "Xia Duyi" is a tree without roots, which cannot grow, develop and bear fruit.
If the archaeological school represented by Xu Hong cannot jump out of the strange circle of Xia culture research at the Erlitou site, then the Xia culture research school represented by Sun Qingwei is actually already thinking about the directional change of Xia culture research. "Chicken Yi (taoyi), native to the East, has become the core instrument in the "Xia Li", and the "Xia Culture" contains typical oriental factors. It can even be said that the so-called "Xia culture" is to a considerable extent the product of the integration of Yixia and Xia" "The ethnic groups in the second core area are the most complex, and the more explicit ones are zhurong eight surnames, yu surnames, gao Tao yan surnames, after the Boyiyi surname, and poor Han surnames; and the known tribes in the northern Anhui region in the third core area have the famous Tushan clan, which probably belongs to the Huaiyi system."
Although Professor Sun Qingwei included the Dongyi region, Huaiyi region, northern Anhui region, Tushan clan, etc. into the scope of study of Xia culture, there is no further discussion, but only the Tushan clan in huaiyi area is located in the outermost area of Xia culture; it seems that "Xia Zhixing is also based on Tushan", which has been repeatedly recorded in history, is an indispensable historical document for the study of Xia culture. The historical conclusion of "Xia Zhixing also based on TuShan Mountain" is completely out of the scope of modern historians' research on Xia culture, and it is an incredible phenomenon in the current study of Xia culture to explore the traces of Xia culture in the Yellow River Basin.
The Xia Dynasty or Xia culture rose and flourished in the Tushan Mountains of the Huai River Valley, where the natural environment is superior, so as a Chinese dynasty remembered by later generations, a dynasty based on agricultural civilization, will leave its prosperous place and migrate thousands of miles to the Loess Plateau, where the natural environment is relatively harsh in the north? This is a principled error in the field of current Xia culture research.
Therefore, the reason why Sun Qingwei and Xu Hong's discussion on Xia culture based on the Erlitou site in the Yellow River Basin and the surrounding archaeological cultural sites cannot solve the fundamental problems of Xia culture research is not because of the problem of research methods, nor because it is impossible to find words to prove the status of the Erlitou site, but because the fundamental error in the current study of the Xia culture is the error of the original research materials, resulting in the current dilemma and confusion in the study of xia culture. In this error of the original material and the error of direction, there is no doubt that the result of fishing in the water in the field of Xia culture research. (Author: Zhao Hui)