Source: China News Network
Gai Zhiyong: Why can Yinshan rock paintings shine in the world?
China News Service Hohhot, January 12 Title: Gai Zhiyong: Why can Yinshan rock paintings shine in the world?
China News Service reporter Li Aiping
The petroglyphs distributed throughout China, as a rare cultural heritage in history, were once called "pearls embedded in the earth" by the archaeological community.
In particular, the Yinshan petroglyphs discovered in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in 1976 not only rewrote the status of Chinese petroglyphs, but also had a deeper significance in that the world began to truly understand Chinese petroglyphs.
Why can Yinshan rock paintings shine in the world? Gai Zhiyong, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, recently gave an exclusive interview to the China News Agency's "East and West Questions" and analyzed this.
The interview transcript is summarized below:
China News Service: What is the history and current situation of rock painting research in China?
Gai Zhiyong: Rock paintings, as the name suggests, refer to the pictures engraved or painted on rocks by ancient ancestors, which can be said to be common around the world, and to be precise, should be the largest historical and cultural heritage.
Specific to the Chinese rock paintings, in addition to the distribution in the frontier areas of China, around the Chinese territory, almost all of them have their distribution, it is like a beautiful garland, crowned beautiful China.
China is also the country with the earliest record of petroglyphs, and Li Daoyuan's "Notes on water classics" is the earliest book in the world to record petroglyphs. However, in modern times, due to the weakening of national strength and the enthusiasm for the study of petroglyphs in many countries, the study of Chinese petroglyphs was obviously backward, and it was even considered that there were few petroglyphs, and its research was sporadic and fragmentary.
Visitors visit the rock paintings on display at the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot. Photo by Liu Wenhua, a reporter of China News Service
It was not until the discovery of the Yinshan petroglyphs in 1976 that this situation was completely changed. After the systematic study of Yinshan petroglyphs, the world began to understand Chinese petroglyphs, and came to the forefront of the world in terms of research methods and information collection.
China News Service: What is the distribution range of Yinshan petroglyphs?
Gai Zhiyong: Yinshan petroglyphs are widely distributed, mainly concentrated in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Wulat Zhongqi, Urat Houqi, Dengkou County and other territories, about 300 kilometers long from east to west, about 70 kilometers wide from north to south, the number of more than 50,000 paintings, the era of more than a thousand years, the upper limit is no later than the early Neolithic period, the lower limit until modern times, the theme is also quite rich, including animals, characters, bird patterns and hunting, riding, grazing, dancing, conquest, wizarding, as well as the sun, moon, stars, symbols, symbols, marks, etc. The sheer number of Rock Paintings in Yinshan, the richness of their content, and the length of their time are breathtaking.
The picture shows the rock paintings of Yin Mountain. China News Service issued a photo provided by the interviewee
China News Service: Why can Yinshan rock paintings shine internationally?
Gai Zhiyong: Before the invention of books, our distant ancestors used to record historical events through song dictation, through oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, and pottery carvings, but most of the pieces left for us are fragments of memory, and it is difficult to explore the whole picture of history from them, and petroglyphs just make a good supplement.
With its simple, rugged and condensed painting style and rich and unique cultural connotation, Yinshan rock paintings express the production and life of human beings in ancient times, group activities, religious budding, psychological state, aesthetic orientation, natural concepts, etc., and have become important research objects in anthropology, communication, folklore, aesthetics, primitive religious history, art history, ethnic history and other disciplines, and are vivid and simple image epics with far-reaching artistic concepts.
From the beginning of its discovery, the Yinshan petroglyphs have attracted the attention of the world - the place is so concentrated, the span of the times is so large, and the content is so rich that scholars are excited. The life scenes, beliefs, and level of development of productive forces of the nomadic people in northern China can be found in the Yinshan rock paintings.
China News Service: What is the archaeological significance of yinshan petroglyphs?
Gai Zhiyong: Just as the value assessment made when declaring the Yinshan rock paintings as a national key cultural relics protection unit: the discovery of the Yinshan rock paintings has an important position in Chinese archaeology and history. In the form of illustrations of fine art, it truly and graphically shows the worldview of the ancient inhabitants. It vividly presents to the public the historical situation of the nomadic peoples of northern China, which is not documented in documents.
It can be said that the discovery of Yinshan petroglyphs has enriched the content of Chinese archaeology and opened up new fields of Chinese archaeology to a large extent.
China News Service: At present, what is the archaeological excavation of the Yinshan petroglyphs?
Gai Zhiyong: The life of ancient ancestors reflected in the Yinshan petroglyphs can be said to be all-encompassing, and the study of it has never stopped since its discovery. Scholars interpret Yinshan rock paintings from different perspectives such as history, archaeology, art, and aesthetics. Nearly 100 books have been studied, and thousands of papers have been studied, which are of great significance to the study of petroglyphs.
However, after in-depth research, it also encountered bottlenecks, first of all, the accurate era of Yinshan Mountain, and secondly, which ethnic group belonged to the authors of tens of thousands of rock paintings? These problems cannot be avoided, and if they are not solved, they will be greatly reduced in value. Scholars have used the method of typology in archaeology to determine the dating of petroglyphs, although the age problem of some petroglyphs has been solved, but the rock paintings with insufficient characteristics of the era cannot be accurately determined. Some scholars have used modern scientific and technological means to test petroglyphs, which are still in the stage of in-depth exploration.
There is still a long way to go to solve the problem of the exact dating of petroglyphs, and the intervention of multiple disciplines such as archaeology is the key to solving this problem. Petroglyphs are not isolated cultural phenomena, and there are many altars, tombs, etc. scattered around them, and archaeological excavations at these sites will have a better grasp of the cultural connotation of rock paintings. In addition, the mountains and stones carved in petroglyphs are definitely the purposeful choices of the ancestors, and the general environment of petroglyph creation must be comprehensively studied in order to finally understand the petroglyphs.
China News Service: Why do Yinshan rock paintings attract widespread attention in the archaeological community?
Gai Zhiyong: We know that the Hetao area where the Yinshan petroglyphs are located is an area with a high degree of integration of agricultural civilization and nomadic civilization. Many ethnic groups in Chinese history, such as porridge, earth, ghost, Linhu, Loufu, Xiongnu, Xianbei, Turkic, Uighur, Dangxiang, Khitan and Mongolian and many other ethnic groups have flourished here, and this has become the cradle of multi-ethnic development to prosperity, and the content of hunting, farming, grazing, sacrifice and so on in the petroglyphs is the witness to the survival and development of these ethnic groups.
However, the historical documents of these well-known peoples are quite scarce, and the archaeological data is relatively insufficient, and the Yinshan rock paintings have become living fossils for studying the living conditions of these ethnic groups, and are living dramas that reflect the living conditions and spiritual worship of these ethnic groups.
What has attracted the attention of the outside world is that the Rock Paintings of Yinshan Mountain reflect and witness the historical trajectory of the inheritance, integration, absorption and development of the cultures of various ethnic groups in this land, and are important materials for studying and casting a solid sense of the Chinese national community.
In January 2015, the audience visited the painting "Ancient Hunter" created by a Mongolian painter at the China-Mongolia-Russia International Petroglyph Exhibition (Carving). The works exhibited in this exhibition are inspired by the Rock Paintings of Yin Mountain. Photo by Liu Wenhua, a reporter of China News Service
China News Service: As a world-renowned Rock Painting of Yin mountain, how to strengthen protection in the future?
Gai Zhiyong: The Yinshan rock paintings are China's key cultural relics protection units, and they have also been included in the preliminary list of world cultural heritage declarations, and their value goes without saying. Now the Yinshan petroglyphs are facing the dual task of conservation and research. Protection is a top priority. It is our mission to let the petroglyphs that have continued for tens of thousands of years and come to today be preserved intact for future generations.
Petroglyphs now face two major dangers: natural damage and man-made destruction. Some petroglyphs are too old, like an old man who has experienced vicissitudes, and cannot be damaged at all, but because the petroglyphs are all distributed in the open air, wind and rain erosion and climate change pose a huge threat to the safety of petroglyphs.
It is gratifying that at present, the Yinshan rock paintings have become the national key cultural relics protection unit, the cultural relics safety work has made great progress, the local government has promulgated protection regulations, according to the law for protection, the key distribution areas have also done enclosure and remote monitoring, the work of petroglyph data is also underway. People have reason to believe that with the enhancement of the public's awareness of cultural relics protection, the Rock Paintings of Yinshan Mountain will certainly be effectively protected and passed on to the future in the best condition. (End)
Respondent Profiles:
Gai Zhiyong, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology. Photo by Chen Feng, China News Service
Gai Zhiyong, researcher, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, vice chairman of the China Liaojin History Society, director of the Chinese Rock Painting Society, vice president of the Inner Mongolia Rock Painting Protection Society, former vice president of the Inner Mongolia Archaeological Society, presided over a number of archaeological excavation projects, including the tomb of Liao Yeluyu, the tomb of Liaoshan Liao mural, and the tomb of Liao shengzong Guifei in 1992, 1994 and 2016, and the representative works include "Knocking on the Door of the Liao Cemetery Palace", "The Tomb of Liao Yelü Yu", "Research on Liao Dynasty Stone Inscriptions" and so on.