Speaking of Wu Zetian, it is well known that she was the only orthodox female emperor in China's feudal history, and was praised by later generations as a great female politician who "opened the yuan of politics and ruled The Grandeur of Zhenguan".
Empress Wu Zetian, who died in the first year of the Divine Dragon, died at the age of eighty-two, and was buried in Qianling with Emperor Gaozong of Tang after his death.
Regarding Empress Wu Zetian, who made great achievements in the early period of her reign, in addition to her meritorious deeds and the way of governing the country praised by all generations, two more interesting things that are talked about by the people are related to "Qianling": one is the Qianling Wordless Monument, and the other is the 61 headless stone people in front of the tomb, which have been suspicious for thousands of years, and the mystery has been solved by two peasants.
Qianling wordless monument
Qianling is located in QianXian County, Xianyang City, Shaanxi Province, is the joint burial tomb of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Wu Zetian, the female emperor of Wuzhou, in front of the mausoleum stand two huge stone stele, the west side of the "Shusheng Monument" is to praise the merits of Tang Gaozong Li Zhi.
On the east side, it is for Empress Wu Zetian, because the original stele was not engraved with a word and got the name wordless stele, erecting a stele without a word, meaning that the life before death has been determined, and the merits after death are left to be commented on by future generations.
The wordless stele has left many characters after the precipitation of the Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, forming a cross-era inscription with all-encompassing fonts.
61 headless stone men in front of the tomb
In addition to the wordless stele in Qianling, which has attracted a lot of public discussion, the reasons for the headlessness of the 61 stone people standing in front of Wu Zetian's tomb are even more controversial, and there have been controversies from ancient times to the present.
These headless stone statues are located on the east and west sides of the Shinto outside the Suzaku Gate of Qianling, and their appearance is no different from that of life-size, although they do not have heads, but from the overall posture, they are respectfully arranged on both sides of the mausoleum; of which 32 are arranged in the west and 29 on the east side, a total of 61 statues.
It is not difficult to observe these stone people carefully: the back of the stone statue is engraved with the owner's surname and origin, such as "Mujuhan King Stoller" and "Tocharian Prince Holding Karma", etc., according to the history books, these titles are from the Western Regions.
61 Stone Men stood towards the mausoleum, although the shapes were different, but the overall body slightly leaned forward, bowed to the posture of worship, from the neat queue and solemn standing posture showed the reverence for the Tang, but from the exquisite clothing, it excluded the Foreign prisoners of war obtained by the Tang Dynasty in foreign conquests.
After meticulous investigation and research, and combined with the historical background of the submission of the four seas and the coming of all nations during the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, the relevant historians are more inclined to think that the 61 stone statues were built with reference to the envoys who came to pay tribute and worship in various States.
Therefore, these stone people were later named after this, and they were called "Sixty-one Statues of The Lords".
Although the identity represented by the 61 stone people is clear, at the same time people are caught up in a greater doubt: why do the stone people stand headless? Did they have no heads at all when they were built, or did they lose their heads in an accident after the initial construction was complete?
In short, there are many opinions about the cause of headlessness, and the speculation has become more mysterious with these speculations.
In this regard, academic experts speculate that perhaps a huge earthquake occurred in a certain dynasty, which caused the separation of the head of the stone man.
But why are the 61 stone statues neatly cut off only the head and the rest of the parts intact, and where did the fallen head go, it is obvious that this conjecture lacks scientific knowledge and historical support.
In the ancient feudal period, due to the lack of scientific knowledge and the backwardness of medical conditions, most people pinned their lives, old age, illness and death, happiness and happiness on some nihilistic superstitions.
According to this theory, the local plague broke out, the villagers suffered heavy casualties, and everyone thought that the stone people on the mountain were ghostly, so they cut off the heads of the stone people to drive away evil spirits.
In addition, there is also a rumor that because the drought and no rain caused the harvest of the villagers near Qianling to not reach the expected yield, the superstitious villagers believe that the stone people affected the luck of the village, so they worked together to decapitate the stone statue, in order to pray for the next year's wind and rain, grain abundance.
Although these statements are in line with the superstitious psychology of the people in the feudal period and the climatic conditions in the northwest region, due to the lack of support from historical evidence, they cannot become official scientific statements, so all kinds of statements only stay in the talk of the people after tea and dinner.
In addition, there are rumors that the 61 stone people were destroyed by foreign invaders during the period of the Eight-Power Alliance's invasion of China, but looking at the map of China shows that Shaanxi Province has penetrated deep into the hinterland of northwest China, combined with the historical facts that the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded China mainly in Beijing and coastal areas, the situation is obviously inconsistent.
What is more, it is also said that the headlessness of the stone man is caused by the divine power of heaven, which is actually explained by metaphysics and non-general science, which is really a strange force and chaos of the gods. In short, the real reason for the disappearance of the stone man's head has not been officially explained by experts, so various conjectures have put a more mysterious and mysterious robe on the already inexplicable headless stone man.
Xianyang farmers accidentally solve the mystery of the millennium
In 1974, two Xianyang farmers were reclaiming wasteland at the foot of Liangshan Mountain as usual, digging and digging with a hoe and suddenly encountering something very hard, as a native of the ruins of the ancient capital of the Tang Dynasty, the farmer immediately understood that there was something underneath, so he hurriedly called for help from his companions.
The two dug deep together, and after a while they dug out a large stone covered with dirt, and after simply cleaning the mud on the surface, the two people fixed their eyes on it and couldn't help but exclaim, this does not matter to look at it, it is frightened, the thing dug out is nothing else, it is a lifelike stone human head.
The peasants were horrified, did not dare to delay for a moment to send to the local cultural relics management department, archaeologists heard the news and rushed to the scene, the cultural relics team cooperated with the operation, in the vicinity of the discovery of stone human head within a few kilometers to increase the excavation efforts, searched for more similar stone human heads, roughly identified as cultural relics from the Tang Dynasty.
After further professional research, archaeologists found that the excavated stone heads just matched the 61 headless stone people in front of the Qianling Tomb, and this news shocked the entire archaeological community as soon as it was released, and the mystery of the headless stone people who had puzzled the people for thousands of years was finally solved.
The most scientific inference of the 61 stone men without heads is derived from this: it is very likely that they were destroyed by natural disasters, and the center of the earthquake was located in Qianling when an earthquake of magnitude 8 occurred.
Scientific studies have shown that the upper and lower bodies of stone people belong to two completely different structures, so the head falls in a violent vibration, and is buried deep underground by the change of time and the movement of the earth's crust.
During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian, she established friendly diplomatic relations with neighboring countries, and the people's lives were saved from war and chaos, and they basically lived and worked in peace and contentment, prosperity and openness.
Local wars, mostly the victory of Wuzhou, maintained the peaceful reunification of the Tang Dynasty, made the national strength increasingly strong, and once became a powerful empire that was famous far and wide and aspired to by all countries in the world.
The 61 stone statues of The Emperors sculpted in front of the Qianling Tomb not only embody the grand situation of the Tang Dynasty when Wu Zetian was alive, when he was a vassal from all over the world and all the countries came to the dynasty, but also commemorated the friendly relations between the Tang and the nations.
The mystery of the headlessness of stone people that has not been solved for many years has also been solved with the cultural relics dug up by farmers, natural factors are irresistible, and more non-meritorious deeds and investigation and research are left for future generations to comment.