In ancient times, there was a saying of "Qin Emperor Han Wu, Tang Emperor Song Zu", which roughly refers to several prosperous dynasties in history, and naturally it is also the most prosperous era; it is really necessary to pay attention to it, the "Han Wu" period should be the richest era, because the "gold" of this period is the most.
According to historical records, Emperor Wudi of Han rewarded meritorious ministers with "gold" at every turn, such as Wei Qing defeating the Xiongnu Right Sage King, and Emperor Wudi of Han rewarded him with "two hundred thousand gold" at one time; of course, the "two hundred thousand gold" here is more controversial, how to say that today's gold is also calculated in "grams", no matter how rich Emperor Wudi is, he cannot talk about the reward of "ten thousand gold (jin)", right?
But in any case, the Han Dynasty", "more gold" is beyond doubt, such as the 43 gold cakes unearthed from the Mancheng Han Tomb, the 187 gold cakes unearthed from the Haixia Hou Han Tomb, and the many "gold" excavated from the tombs of the Han Dynasty princes found everywhere; these seem to indicate that the Han Dynasty was a "golden age", and with historical records, the Western Han Dynasty mostly rewarded and punished gold, bought and sold.
Today, someone won the lottery, which is already a windfall, what if you pick up more than 100 pounds of "gold"? Xi'an has had such "good things".
Back in 1999, when construction was in full swing, the demand for "burning bricks" increased sharply, driven by interests, and all kinds of small brick factories also mushroomed; Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, was no exception, and there was a small brick factory in Weiyang District at that time, in order to increase production, even used excavators to take soil, the location was in a nearby "mass burial post".
To explain here, this "mass burial post" is old and was basically abandoned at that time. When the operator dug up a bucket of soil, he stumbled upon something in the soil; after all, it had been a "cemetery", and the operator thought that he had dug up some funerary goods, so he suspended his work and got out of the car to check in the soil.
This investigation did not matter, and it actually came up with a piece of yellow chengcheng "golden cake", which made the workers scream in joy. Realistically speaking, this worker was also "stupid", and when he touched the gold, his shout attracted many people; in this way, everyone worked together and dug out a lot of "gold cakes" in the soil, which could be counted down to hundreds of pieces.
How can such a big thing be hidden, the news spread to the local cultural relics bureau in an instant, the archaeological team immediately came to the scene of the incident, and then requisitioned the "golden cake", a total of 112 pieces were recovered; after identification, this batch of "gold cakes" was roughly round, each piece was about 2, 300 grams.
Of course, the age of this batch of "golden cakes" is also basically determined, it should be a product of the Han Dynasty, and the place of discovery belongs to the eastern suburbs of the capital "Chang'an" in the Western Han Dynasty; according to historical records, "the tombs of many kings in the eastern suburbs of Chang'an", so experts speculate that there are likely to be tombs of ancient princes and nobles underground here.
This side has not finished the analysis, a few days later someone dug a pit not far away, this time a total of 107 pieces of "gold cake" were unearthed; the shape of the "gold cake" dug this time is relatively regular, experts said, each piece of gold cake weighs about 1 pound.
It needs to be explained that the "1 kilogram" of the Western Han Dynasty can not be compared with today; the "1 kilogram" of the Western Han Dynasty is equivalent to today's 258.24 grams, and the 219 pieces of "golden cake" found twice are also weighed more than 100 kilograms according to today.
That is more than 100 pounds of "gold", this number can be called "huge money" today, which once again proves the experts' inference: there may be tombs of ancient nobles underground here; strangely, the archaeological team repeatedly investigated, there is no tomb here, is it someone who deliberately hid the "gold cake" here?
To answer this question, we must also look for clues from the "golden cake". Experts once again carefully identified the 219 gold cakes and finally found clues; it turned out that the back of these gold cakes had vague stamps such as "Wang, Zhang, Ma, Ji, and Bei", which also roughly showed that the 219 gold cakes were once "tributes".
According to historical records, during the Western Han Dynasty, "gold" was mostly used for bulk trading, and the kings and vassal states of various regions also used "gold" as a tribute to the Central Dynasty; here is a detail, the Western Han Dynasty had a period of time very special, can "replace the crime with gold", even if the offender also has to pay tribute to the imperial court "gold" to atone for their sins.
From this, it is inferred that the 219 gold cakes with the stamps of "Wang, Zhang, Ma, Ji, and Bei" are likely to be ransoms for "exchanging gold for sins"; at the same time, experts also found the "V" symbol on the gold cakes.
Experts began to search for clues to "Wang, Zhang, Ma, Ji, and Bei" from historical sources. According to records, in 111 BC, Emperor Wu of han deposed 106 officials above the rank of marquis, including "Wang, Zhang, Ma, Ji, Bei" and other major families; the specific reasons are not very clear, the historical records say that the "gold" of these people's tribute is insufficient, and these gold is just used for important sacrifice activities.
In ancient times, there was a saying that "the major affairs of the country are in the worship and the rong", which shows that the ancient sacrifice activities were very important; the gold used for sacrifice was "insufficient in color", which was obviously a major crime of deception, and Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty naturally rushed to anger.
According to records, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty not only severely punished these people, punishing them with "gold to compensate for their crimes", but also used special symbols on the gold of tribute; experts speculated that the "V" character number on the 219 gold cakes found today is likely to represent the meaning of "(these) gold cakes are in accordance with the requirements and can be put into storage".
Of course, this is only the speculation of experts, after all, it is more than 2,000 years ago, what is the true meaning of the "V" character number, and now look at it, it is actually not important; then, why does this 219 pieces and more than 10 pounds of "gold cake" appear in the mass burial site?
According to experts, it is likely that in the turmoil at the end of the Western Han Dynasty, someone stole these "golden cakes" from the palace, and because it was inconvenient to carry, they temporarily buried them in the "cemetery" that would not attract attention; of course, it may also be the "masterpiece" of Tufuzi, who thought, this burial is more than 2,000 years.