"Twenty-four histories are not history, twenty-four surnames are only genealogies." ——Liang Qichao, "New Historiography"
The Twenty-Four Histories are the main histories of ancient Chinese dynasties, detailing the history from the ancient period to the seventeenth year of the Ming Dynasty Chongzhen, and later generations included the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", which is collectively known as the Twenty-five Histories together with the original Twenty-Four Histories. But why does Liang Qichao say that the Twenty-Four Histories are just "the genealogy of the Twenty-Four Surnames"?
Because these history books spend a lot of time to record the main deeds of the twenty-four imperial families, and detail the rise and fall of the dynasties created by the imperial families, and about the development of science and technology and the living standards of the people, most of these history books have been brushed over, to put it bluntly, they only focus on the princes and generals, but ignore the social development.
This makes us now want to consider the ancients' forging, smelting, textile and other technologies, most of the time can only be through the excavation of tombs to carry out related research, and many of the ancient people's technological achievements we have no way of knowing how they did it.
For example, the 19 mysterious bronze swords from the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum that I want to introduce to you today, especially the 19th of them, originally thought to be "discarded products" that had been damaged, but played an unexpected and wonderful ability. Let's move on.
The location of the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum is actually known to everyone, but after seeing the founding of the Country, whether to excavate the Imperial Tomb for archaeology, in fact, the relevant experts have quarreled countless times, and the group led by Guo Moruo has made up their minds to open the Imperial Tomb, in their view, these emperors of the feudal society who have passed away should make contributions to today's archaeological scientific research.
But there are also many scientists who believe that our archaeological work should be based on rescue excavation as the standard, what is salvage excavation? That is, those intact mausoleums we do not want to move it, only responsible for those that have been damaged for special reasons, such as earthquakes and other natural disasters caused by the damage of the tomb, or the tomb robbers have moved the soil so that the cultural relics department must take over.
But the arm could not twist the thigh, at that time, Guo Moruo and others had a particularly high status in the historical and archaeological circles, so they despite the persuasion of everyone and intended to open the imperial tomb. Which imperial tomb did he aim for? Ming Tombs. Guo Moruo's original intention was to take the lead in "opening the knife" with the imperial tomb of the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, but the tomb of the Yongle Emperor was built too strong to be opened in any case.
Just at this time, the Ming Ding Mausoleum of the Wanli Emperor suddenly collapsed and a small piece was discovered by Guo Moruo, so it was destroyed. The excavation of the Ming Ding Mausoleum is still a major pain in the archaeological community, because there is no protective measures, coupled with the equipment at that time can not meet the preservation standards, when the tomb door is opened, there are many precious treasures inside instantly turned into ashes.
The preserved cultural relics were not flattered, the experts at that time did not know how to cherish the cultural relics, not only damaged a lot of cultural relics, even the remains and coffins of the Wanli Emperor himself were discarded aside, and later due to the reasons of the times, the archaeological work was shelved, and the poor Wanli Emperor was burned by a fire by nearby villagers, and the coffin board was also used as firewood.
After tossing and turning the Dingling Tombs, Guo Moruo set his sights on Wu Zetian's Qianling tombs and the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum, and everyone said that they did not agree with anything, and specially formulated the rule that no more imperial tombs should be opened at will within 100 years, which preserved these famous imperial tombs.
Some people are estimated to have to ask, doesn't it mean that it is not allowed to dig the imperial tomb, then how did the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang come from? It was a real accident. In 1974, when villagers in Xiyang Village were digging wells against drought, they inadvertently dug up some "Waye heads". What is Waye? Those statues enshrined in ancient temples. At first, everyone was still quite afraid, but a farmer named Yang Zhifa read a little book and found that something was wrong, so he took a wa ye head to find the cultural relics department, only to find that this was the famous terracotta pit.
After excavating the world-famous terracotta warriors, scientists also found a number of very mysterious bronze swords. These swords were carried by the pottery figurines on their bodies, so there were a total of 19 "back sword figurines", but the 19th was bent into a corner by the fallen pottery figurines, and the rest of the swords were very well preserved.
Many people may not know the status of bronze in the cultural relics industry, after all, we usually watch some treasure hunting programs, including watching the antique market, basically not ceramics or gold and silver jade, and we can't see any bronzes at all. In fact, it is not that bronzes are not worth much, but because they are too valuable.
The Cultural Relics Law clearly stipulates that bronzes are not allowed to be sold, especially those from the pre-Qin period, so this batch of bronze swords immediately captured the attention of the experts present as soon as they appeared. As the experts further studied these Qin swords, they found that the secrets hidden in these swords were beyond everyone's imagination.
Experts measured the shape of this batch of Qin swords, found that the sword body of these swords has eight facets, the error between the edges is less than a millimeter, and the shape of each sword is completely unified, comparable to the standard equipment produced by modern industrial assembly lines, such skills are amazing enough, but more magical things are still to come.
The Qin Dynasty has been more than two thousand years old, but these Qin swords with copper as the main raw material actually have no traces of rust or corrosion on their bodies. How did the Qin people achieve such a small error between each sword? It may not be possible to verify it until further documents are unearthed. So the experts put the focus of their research on the anti-rust process of the Qin sword, and wanted to solve the mystery of the bronze sword that had not rusted for more than 2,000 years.
After research, it was found that there was a layer of chromium metal compounds with a thickness of less than 0.6 microns on the surface of the Qin sword, and it was under the action of these chromium that this batch of Qin swords was immortalized for thousands of years. In modern history, the metal of chromium was officially discovered by humans in 1797, and although the Qin people did not know that this metal was called chromium, it was used more than two thousand years earlier than modern people.
What is even more bizarre is that the melting point of chromium is at 1970 degrees Celsius, and various data show that the smelting technology of our ancients can only get a high temperature of 1300 degrees Celsius at most, so how did the ancients use chromium for forging swords when the temperature was not enough? Or is it that the Qin people have some mysterious technology that can achieve high temperatures above 2000 degrees Celsius? However, the historical data basically says nothing about all this.
But scientists have figured out how the Qin people chromed their swords. They used a technique now known as chromium salt oxidation, which soaked the body of the sword in a compound containing chromium salts and heated it, giving the sword corrosion resistance. This technology was not applied by Germany until World War II, and then it was preemptively patented by the United States, but looking at these bronze swords, China's chromium salt oxidation oxidation technology has been more than 2,000 years ahead of them.
The biggest surprise of these bronze swords came from the mysterious 19th sword, the one that was bent. Where is the magic of this 19th sword? When the scientists removed the sword from the bottom of the terracotta army, the original bent sword body slowly rebounded to a straight state! This situation directly calmed the people present.
Modern science has a technology called memory metal, which can actually achieve this similar function, but how could the Qin people two thousand years ago master this technology? It's unbelievable. Science and technology far beyond modern may not be, but it is certainly far beyond a hundred years ago, as for how the Qin Dynasty had such a magical technology, perhaps all the mysteries can be solved in the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum Underground Palace.
The Qin Dynasty was the first feudal unified dynasty in ancient China, and the excavation of the Qin sword strongly confirmed the qin dynasty's strong national strength and advanced technology. As more cultural relics about the Qin Dynasty are unearthed, we will learn more interesting stories and allusions about the Qin Dynasty in the future. In fact, some people still can't understand that the Qin State of the Seven Heroes of the Warring States is obviously the worst position of the country, why in the end it swept through the Six Kingdoms?
After truly understanding the history of the Qin Dynasty, we will find that none of the successive monarchs of the Qin Dynasty have been brought down, and only by making great efforts to govern from generation to generation has it the feat of winning the government and unifying the world.