What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang swept away the Six Kingdoms, and since the Western Zhou Dynasty, the world has been disturbed for more than a hundred years and has been briefly at peace. For Qin Shi Huang, he was able to unify the world by relying on the "Shang Martingale Transformation Law" left by Shang Martin for the Qin State in that year, and After Qin Shi Huang came into contact with Han Fei, he also realized the importance of "governing the country according to law", so after the unification of the Six Kingdoms, the Qin Law was implemented throughout the country.
Qin Shi Huang's idea was correct, if a country did not have a complete law, then the whole country would be in a state of chaos. However, although Qin Shi Huang was brilliant and strategic, he did not realize that the Qin law left by Shang Martin was really too harsh, and he was more suitable for a wartime state, and after the Qin Dynasty unified the world, there was no war in the world, and it was appropriate to use such a law?
In the end, it can be said that the Qin Dynasty was also the Qin Law, and the defeat was also the Qin Law, after the death of Qin Shi Huang, Hu Hai was unable to control the situation, on the contrary, he was more violent and violent, and finally the Qin Dynasty only experienced the second life and perished.
However, with the excavation of the Sleeping Tiger Land Qin Jian in the Hubei region in 1975, there was a further understanding of the people of the Qin Dynasty, and the previous belief that the harshness of the Qin law also had a subversive effect, and one of the laws is very interesting: six feet tall, no need to go to jail, and two vivid cases are recorded in this:
Cases in the Qin Law
The first case is about a farmer who inadvertently lost a horse, and this horse also trampled on someone else's green shoots, which would have been severely punished according to the criminal law, but because he was less than six feet tall, he was exempt from punishment.
Case two is about a woman, at that time she was married, but unfortunately did not obey the rules, secretly ran behind her back, and even deliberately concealed the fact that others were married, we know that the status of women in ancient times was very low, and such a woman obviously committed the ancient "seven crimes".
We know that the status of women in ancient times was particularly low, and according to the status of the ancient family, this woman may be severely punished, but because this woman was less than six feet tall, she was also exempted from punishment at that time.
So these two cases show that at that time, less than six feet tall could be exempted from punishment.
How tall is six feet, and why is it so prescribed?
According to the conversion of archaeologists and relying on the Qin Dynasty, one foot is equivalent to the current 23.1cm, which means that six feet is not even the current 1 meter 4, which is a proper minor in today's view, and less than six feet tall is not responsible for the protection of minors in ancient times.
After the Qin Dynasty unified the world, in order to promote the law nationwide, it decided to count the population of the original six countries, but Qin Shi Huang's idea was quite beautiful, but unfortunately this difficulty was too great.
Because the national law was not long after the implementation of the law at that time, countries had not yet adapted to each other, and it was impossible to achieve efficient population statistics, which was a troublesome thing for the time.
Because if the population is not counted, then all the work in the country cannot be carried out, because the Qin Dynasty calculated taxes according to the number of people, and the whole country does not know how many adults there are, how do you collect taxes?
Therefore, on this basis, the Qin Dynasty thought of a compromise method, calculated according to the height of less than six feet, the height of more than six feet to bear the tax and once the mistake is made, then must be punished, the height of less than six feet is equivalent to a minor, can be exempted from punishment, but also a disguised protection of the rights and interests of minors.
Although this practice had shortcomings at that time, it was really not easy for an emerging dynasty to take into account this layer, but there is a saying that "the former people planted trees and the people after the people were cool", the implementation of the law of the Qin Dynasty has already had a reference for the later dynasties, so many of the laws of the later dynasties are continued to be improved on the laws of the Qin Dynasty, such as the most typical is the Han Dynasty, we often say that the Qin Dynasty is the Han system, and part of the laws of the Han Dynasty are to learn from the Qin Dynasty.
So it can be said that the greatness of the First Emperor lies in this, he not only unified the six kingdoms and unified the culture, but also gave future generations a standard for formulating laws, and it is precisely because of this layer that we now often say that the Qin Dynasty continued in another way.