For a long time, we think that the earliest ancient script is the oracle bone, but in fact, it is not, because experts have also found pottery that is older than the oracle bone in the Yangshao cultural site, which is the text engraved on the pottery piece as the name suggests. Experts have studied and said that some pottery texts can be interpreted, what exactly does tao wen mean? The following Xiaobian will reveal the secret to you.
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Yangshao culture is a Neolithic faience pottery culture, dating back about 7000-5000 years, named after the earliest discovery in Yangshao Village, Sanmenxia County, Henan. In the 1920s, archaeologists conducted research and investigation, and although the Shao cultural sites were widely distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River in China, the cultural relics and relics found at the Yangshao cultural sites in Sanmenxia were the most abundant. At that time, the villagers of Yangshao Village would always dig out some pieces of colored pottery when ploughing the farmland, and over time this matter was learned by the local cultural department, and later they arranged experts to go to Yangshao Village to investigate, and the results found that there was a Neolithic cultural site here, covering an area of about 350,000 square meters, which surprised the experts for a while. After a period of preparation, the experts immediately launched archaeological excavations of this Neolithic site after receiving the approval of the higher authorities.
In the process of excavation and cleaning, experts found a large number of tombs, unearthed stone tools such as stone slabs, stone rods and stone grinding discs, as well as many exquisite bone tools, such as bone needles and bone cones, and there was also a wealth of colorful pottery, such as clay pots, clay pots and clay pots. The patterns of these faience pottery are also very distinctive, with geometric patterns, petal patterns and dazzling patterns, etc., which fully reflect the preference of the ancestors of Yangshao for color and the pursuit of aesthetics, so faience pottery has also become a unique symbol of Yangshao culture.
Experts also found that on some pottery pieces and faience, there are also strange symbols engraved, if only a few certainly do not explain anything, but experts say that these faience symbols are not only numerous, but also many are repeated. Therefore, experts can judge that these are all pottery deliberately portrayed by the ancestors of Yangshao, and they all represent a certain meaning, but what it means needs to be further studied, but it can be determined that these pottery texts are earlier than the ancient oracle bones.
These pottery texts do not look complicated, such as some like the English letter "T", some like "X", some like "K", some like the Chinese character "Feng", but two more horizontal than "Feng", and even some look exactly the same as the "meter" character. Experts said that these pottery texts are simply more difficult to analyze than the "Book of Heaven", or even impossible to interpret, but some experts said that some of them can speculate on the general meaning, such as the multi-horizontal "Feng", "Rice" and "One".
For the "abundance" of many peaks, it represents a kind of jade, because the "jade" in the oracle bone is similar. Experts said that the oracle bone is a mature script, it also has a long process of development and evolution, and the Yangshao culture pottery is earlier than the oracle bone, so it is possible that the "jade" of the oracle bone is derived from the "abundance" of the Yangshao pottery.
There is also "rice", although it is written in the same way as "rice" now, but there was no concept of rice at that time, so it certainly does not mean rice. Experts speculate that its meaning is closer to "grass", which means that the crops have been grown and matured, and may also mean that the growth is ripe and harvested, so it also has the meaning of engaging in agricultural activities.
"個" is also similar to the current Chinese character "個", but certainly does not represent the meaning of the quantifier. Experts say that the left side of the Tao text "one" depicts a horizontal and the right side is a skim, so strictly speaking, it is not a way of writing "one". If analyzed from the perspective of hieroglyphs, the Tao script "one" is more like a shovel, or a stone hammer.
The most complicated are the pottery of one vertical three, and some are one vertical and four, and some are on the left and some are on the right. Experts say that this type of pottery appears the most often, so it is very common in daily life, so it is most likely to represent grain, and different numbers of grain indicate the amount of grain, and left and right indicate the location of grain.
There is one category of the simplest, that is, one vertical, and some two verticals, although it looks simple, but the meaning of one vertical and two vertical is completely different. Experts say one vertical is used to count, indicating the quantity "1", but two verticals do not mean the quantity "2", but rather "road", or the discovery of a new road that can lead to other places.
Words are the carrier of information, if the study understands the words, many historical mysteries can also be solved, so it is also of great significance to find the origin of words. As the excavation of the Yangshao cultural site continues to deepen, experts have also unearthed more faience pottery and pottery texts, hoping that in the near future experts will be able to solve the little-known mysteries.
Resources:
"Yangshao Cultural Research" by Yan Wenming, Publisher: Cultural Relics Publishing House
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's