In 2004, China unveiled a stunning archaeological discovery– the turquoise dragon-shaped vessel.
The archaeological community at home and abroad is boiling over, and such a huge and visually striking "Chinese dragon" is indeed eye-catching.
Subsequently, this turquoise dragon-shaped instrument was named "Super National Treasure" and "China's First Dragon" by the people. It can be seen that people are shocked when they see it.
First, more than 2,000 pieces of turquoise composed of dragon-shaped instruments, the wrong piece will be "fallacious for thousands of miles"
In the spring of 2002, experts on archaeological excavations at the "Erlitou" site in Luoyang discovered one of the highest-ranking tombs at the site. Along with this, a large number of precious cultural relics such as jade, lacquerware, and sea shell necklaces were unearthed, and experts were delighted. Unexpectedly, this is only the prelude, and more shocking surprises are still to come.
Experts found that there was a copper bell on the remains of the owner of the burial chamber, and many different shapes of turquoise pieces were distributed underneath, which was roughly estimated to be about 70 centimeters long, which was remarkable.
It should be known that the Erlitou site is called the "earliest China", and the cultural relics found here can be counted as "the best in China".
So far, among the bronze ornaments found in Erlitou, the largest is only 20 centimeters, and this turquoise artifact with more than 70 centimeters is really a behemoth.
However, the burial chamber has undergone nearly 4,000 years of baptism, and the "organic matter" originally used to glue and connect these turquoises has disappeared, and although this pile of turquoise is still the position placed when it was buried, it is actually a pile of scattered stones.
Moreover, these turquoises are not large in volume, most of the length and width are only a few millimeters, and the thickness is about 1 millimeter, and if you do not pay attention to it, the pile of stone will scatter and collapse, causing displacement and difficult to recover. Therefore, an artifact that seems to be less than one meter is as difficult to excavate as it is to recreate an object of the same type.
It was difficult to spend so much manpower and time on the site to clean up, and archaeologists decided to take the artifact as a whole and transport it back to the interior of Beijing for cleaning.
Experts hollowed out the raw soil under the owner of the tomb, supported the wooden board, put a prefabricated wooden frame around it, filled the wooden frame with gypsum paste, covered it with film, and finally tied it with steel wire, and a "package" that encapsulated a history of 3800 years ago was "couriered" to Beijing.
Even indoors, cleaning up this pile of stone is as meticulous as embroidery. As this object with a brilliant green light and smooth lines gradually appeared in people's field of vision, the emotions of the experts became more and more intense.
All the original speculations about this object were broken one by one, and the original imagination seemed eclipsed compared to this physical object, which turned out to be a "Chinese dragon"!
This turquoise shard of the dragon is not only huge, but also very beautifully made, the shape is also very beautiful, its smooth lines make people feel that this is a dragon flying in the sky, which is very rare in early Chinese dragon-shaped cultural relics.
What exactly did this turquoise dragon shaped instrument do more than 3800 years ago?
Experts speculate that this should be a kind of ceremonial staff used during sacrifice, and Japanese scholars simply call it "dragon staff", which also reflects the noble status of the owner of his tomb.
Second, the discovery of precious cultural relics is purely accidental? Or is it inevitable?
The "best of China" found at the Erlitou site is far more than just a turquoise dragon-shaped artifact, and many archaeological discoveries can be said to be accidental or coincidental.
One day, when the leader of the Erlitou archaeological team was chatting with a local villager, he overheard this villager say that compared with other villagers, the wheat in his family's field did not grow well, and he did not know what was going on.
When the captain heard this, his eyes lit up suddenly, because he knew that the crops were not growing well, and there was a situation because there was a layer of artificially compacted soil underneath this crop, which meant that under this crop was most likely the remains of an ancient building.
The captain immediately led the archaeological team to explore and excavate, and sure enough, a large road from ancient times was found here, and it was crossed with a road found earlier. This is another surprising discovery, as it has so far been the earliest great crossroads in China!
Another time, a local fellow wrapped an object in broken newspaper and ran to the captain.
The fellow told the captain that when he was helping people build a house, he dug up such a thing, threw it aside at the time, and then took it to the waste station to ask, which was worth five or six dollars. The fellow simply did not sell it, so he took it and gave it to the archaeological team.
The archeological captain opened the old newspaper and looked at it, his hands were shaking, because he saw a cymbal-shaped bronze, which was the earliest "bronze cymbal" in China, and if it were not for coincidence, it might have been left at the scrap station, or even merged into the furnace and other modern bronzes.
There are many more such stories, and I have to say that the reappearance of these national-level cultural relics is a coincidence. However, without the golden eyes of archaeologists and solid and reliable expertise, these record-breaking treasures of the country would not have the opportunity to meet with today's people.