In the early spring of 2002, when Li Zhipeng, a member of the archaeology team who was in his 20s at the time, was cleaning up a ash pit at the No. 3 base site of the Palace Area of the Erlitou Ruins, a little patina rust suddenly flashed into his eyes, and his heart immediately became excited. In the first few decades of excavations in Erli, the discovery of this color is not the first time, but this discovery can make Li Zhipeng extremely excited, what will it be?
According to the excitement, Li Zhipeng carefully and slowly cleaned up, and with the gradual unfolding of the excavation, a "super national treasure" that was enough to shock people's hearts slowly revealed its true face of Lushan after being buried deep underground for 3800 years.
Since 1959, when Mr. Xu Xusheng, a famous archaeologist in China, discovered the Xia Ruins, that is, the Erlitou site, as a key project of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasty Project, the excavation and research of the Erlitou Site has been carried out for more than 60 years. In the past 60 years of archaeological excavations, archaeologists have found many cultural relics with distinctive Characteristics of the Xia Era from the ruins, which are the first discoveries in Chinese history. These discoveries corroborate with the records of the history books, and the Erlitou cultural site as the ruins of the capital city of the Xia Dynasty, that is, Xia Shuyi, has gradually been recognized.
At this time, the excavation of cultural relics in Erlitou has been carried out for more than 40 years, and important bronze artifacts such as copper lords, copper dings, and copper cymbals have been excavated, but these are not in the core area of the Erlitou site. In the palace area of the core area of Erlitou, bronze artifacts are rarely found. This discovery is obviously somewhat unusual.
In response to this discovery, Li Zhipeng did not make a sound, but quietly covered it with soil, and then went to report his discovery to Xu Hong, the leader of the Erlitou archaeological team.
Li Zhipeng's discovery quickly attracted the attention of Captain Xu Hong, who gently brushed away the dirt above, and part of the bronze covered by the soil was revealed, and the turquoise color characteristic of the bronze shone charmingly under the sunlight.
Excited, I continued to clean up, one of which was larger than the brass bell found in other parts, and there was a jade bell tongue at the opening, and there were some turquoise pieces that were only 1 mm thick around it.
The discovery of bronze artifacts in Erlitou belongs to the aristocratic luxury, and this discovery is likely to indicate that there are other more important unknown things hidden inside, and these turquoise pieces that appear will not be the next shocking discovery?
Judging from these preliminary discoveries, this area containing turquoise pieces should be the tomb of a high-status Erlitou cultural nobility.
As the clean-up progressed, more and more pieces of turquoise were placed under the brass bell at the waist of the tomb owner. These turquoise pieces seem to be inlaid and combined, arranged very regularly, and some of them are engraved with certain patterns, which are different from previous discoveries.
The preliminary analysis should belong to the part of a large artifact, and the real situation needs to be further excavated and cleaned up to be confirmed.
Slowly, the combination of these turquoise pieces became clearer and clearer, forming a strip of bands centered on copper bells and about ten centimeters long.
In addition to the surprise, everyone is thinking, what will it be?
Due to the limited conditions of field operations, on the one hand, worried about the safety of cultural relics, on the other hand, worried that field operations can not effectively ensure the integrity protection of cultural relics in the clean-up process, the archaeological team decided to pack the tomb as a whole and transport it to the Cultural Protection Center of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing to do a complete clean-up work.
However, due to the limitations of the conditions, only two-thirds of the tomb can be taken out, and the hardships in between will not be described here.
In the archaeological laboratory of the Cultural Protection Center, Li Cunxin, a well-known scientific and technological archaeology expert in China, led the follow-up clean-up of this unknown turquoise artifact.
After two months of meticulous cleaning, this mysterious turquoise artifact slowly revealed its original form. Unlike previous discoveries, this strip of turquoise flakes not only has a ridge-like ridge, but also 12 sets of diamonds composed of turquoise fragments, and the end of this strip gradually rises into a circular arc, and finally curls up into a small round hole, looking like a snake's curled tail.
Could it be a snake? You know, at that time, human beings had snake worship, such as the ancestors of human beings, Fuxi and Nuwa, which were the shape of the human head and snake body.
Archaeologists continued to clean it up with question marks and great expectations in their heads, and not far from the tail, they found a strip of turquoise perpendicular to the tail, and there were still remnants of red paint marks in between.
Experts have judged that the two are likely to be fixed to a whole on a wooden base, which has long been corroded.
If this is the shape of a snake, there is a tail, and it will naturally have a head, that is, a head and a tail. According to this line of thinking and the layout of some turquoise pieces that have been excavated, the head of the snake should be on the neck of the tomb owner.
Sure enough, experts also found turquoise pieces here, and they were still standing, unlike other parts that were lying down, and cleaned up, it was a trapezoidal area surrounded by turquoise pieces. It contains rectangles, squares, triangles, and many irregular shapes, arranged and combined according to certain rules, showing a curly arc and different ornamental patterns.
What is even more surprising and puzzling is that the experts have made a new discovery in this trapezoidal area: on top of the turquoise fragments, there are two sections of white jade and a section of turquoise on the top of the cylindrical code, and the top is also carved with fine ornaments, and at the bottom is a large piece of turquoise, shaped like a plump garlic head, on both sides of the cylindrical decoration, two finely processed round small jade pieces.
If you look down from above, the first impression is that this is basically the shape of an animal's head, the two small white jade pieces are two eyeballs, the columnar white jade and turquoise are the bridge of the nose, the jade pillar and the root of the nose are composed of turquoise pieces to form a parallel convex spiral pattern and shallow groove decoration, and the two sides are arced to cut out the symmetrical fusiform eye contour.
If you go to the Xiadu Museum in Erlitou to see it, you will definitely be attracted by its powerful shock, because this is a dragon!
This "First Dragon of China", with an overall length of about 64.5 cm and a maximum width of about 4 cm in the middle, is a turquoise dragon shape composed of more than 2,300 pieces of turquoise of different shapes.
Presumably, the owner of the tomb should be a priest who presides over the sacrifice ceremony, and this turquoise dragon-shaped vessel is a magic instrument used by the priest to guide the soul of the deceased to heaven.
The rudiments of Chinese dragon culture may have begun here.