On January 4, the Department of Culture and Tourism of Zhejiang Province announced the first batch of 100 "Zhejiang Cultural Identity" cultivation projects, of which Shangshan Culture in our county became one of them. After the list was announced, the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism asked all units to fulfill their commitments in accordance with the requirements and promote the implementation of the project with high standards.
Ten thousand years up the mountain
10,000 years ago, the footprints of the "shangshan people" fell on the Pujiang River in Zhejiang. Since then, the "mountain people" have bid farewell to the survival mode of mountain forest caves and gone to the wilderness, outlining an amazing stroke in the long volume of east Asian history.
In 2000, in Shangshan Village, Huangzhai Town, Pujiang County, charred rice buried deep in the soil and mixed with pottery pieces of broken shells of arsenic bran, unveiled the mystery of the ruins of Shangshan in Pujiang, Zhejiang Province, which had been sleeping for 10,000 years. From time and space 10,000 years ago, shangshan culture "jumped" to the eyes of the world, breaking through the world's previous understanding of the age and appearance of the early Neolithic archaeological culture in southern China, so that archaeologists have the direction of exploration of the prehistory before the Hemudu culture.
Hundred valleys are self-generating, and the piano is sown in winter and summer. The origin of agriculture, the origin of mankind and the origin of the state together constitute the three major topics of archaeology in the world. Rice has so far fed more than half of the world's population, and the development of rice farming has completely changed the production and lifestyle of human civilization.
Carbonized rice exhibited in "Daoyuan Qiming - Special Exhibition of Shangshan Culture and Archaeology in Zhejiang". People's Daily Photo by Ye Binde
In November 2006, at the "Fourth China Environmental Archaeology Conference and Shangshan Site Academic Seminar" held in Pujiang, the "Shangshan Culture" was officially named, which is the earliest Neolithic culture in Zhejiang and even in southeast China. Since then, in the archaeological work of "Shangshan Culture" named after the shangshan site, cultivated rice with clear attributes 10,000 years ago, the remains of the earliest settled villages and a large number of faience pottery remains have been discovered successively, and the archaeological findings of the Shangshan culture have attracted worldwide attention, which fully proves that this is the origin of the world's rice civilization and an important starting point for the formation process of Chinese civilization based on the southern rice civilization and the northern millet civilization.
In the past 21 years, Zhejiang has found 20 "Shangshan Culture" sites in Pujiang, Shengzhou, Longyou, Jinhua, Yongkang, Yiwu, Lanxi and other places. This is the earliest, largest and most connotative early Neolithic site group in the Qiantang River Basin, the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and even the whole of China, which is 3,000 years and 2,000 years earlier than the Hemudu culture and the cross-lake bridge culture, respectively, advancing the history of Zhejiang civilization to 10,000 years ago and rewriting the history of Zhejiang.
Uphill ruins. Photo courtesy of the Propaganda Department of the Pujiang County CPC Committee
The Shangshan cultural sites are located on the low hilly terraces of the river valley basin, at an altitude of about 40 to 100 meters, with an area of between 20,000 and 50,000 square meters. There are many relics here, including tombs, ash pits, ash ditches, artifact pits, utensil piles, red-burned earth mounds, etc., and also found the sites of ring trenches with a sedentary nature and column and trench structures. Excavated pottery, stone and bone ware, typical utensils are large open clay pots with charcoal red coats, amphora flat-bottomed clay pots, round-bottom clay pots, flat-bottomed pottery plates, clay pots, as well as stone grinding discs, stone grinding rods, stone balls and stone shards. According to stratigraphy and typological analysis, combined with carbon 14 dating, the Shangshan culture can be initially divided into early, middle and late stages, with the early age about 10,000 years ago, the middle age around 9000 years ago, and the late age around 8500 years ago.
Shangshan culture is the origin of the world's rice farming, the source of China's farming village culture, and an important place of world agricultural culture, which has important archaeological value. Yuan Longping's inscription "Ten Thousand Years on the Mountain, The Source of The World's Rice" and the inscription of Yan Civilization's "First Village in Ancient China" are highly summarized the connotation of the cultural value of Shangshan.
Faience pieces painted with sun patterns. People's Daily Photo by Ye Binde
Shangshan culture faience pottery is one of the earliest faience pottery found in the world so far, which was conceived in the unique red pottery system of Shangshan culture, which is the essence of Shangshan culture pottery and one of the important sources of Chinese faience culture. From the early stages, the remains of rice husks were widely preserved in pottery tire material, proving that rice had been eaten; the residue of the stone millstone analyzed rice starch grains to prove the functional properties of rice dehulling; some stone chip stone tools found the "sickle luster" of harvesting grass plants; the soil of the site was generally floated to select spike shafts and carbonized rice particles, and the cultivation and its evolutionary characteristics from early to late were clear. These findings amply demonstrate that agriculture and settlement, the two core elements of the Neolithic Revolution, were the first to appear in the Shangshan culture.
Compared with the early Neolithic cave sites in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, which also revealed some rice information, the Shangshan culture has three significantly different characteristics: first, the Shangshan rice cultivation includes a series of contents including cultivation, harvesting, threshing and processing and consumption, and a new farming behavior system has been initially formed; second, going out of the cave and occupying and settling in the wilderness area of the Neolithic activity center, which marks the real beginning of an era; third, Shangshan rice cultivation is a cultural phenomenon that has not been interrupted and has shown stable progress. Spread with the development of shangshan culture. A kind of economic behavior of production has a real relationship with the survival and reproduction of a group. This legacy message and the cultural significance it conveys transcend the epochal and historical attributes of early cave dwelling sites.
Editor| Liu Guangyun
Audit | Li Shaojun