The historical process of the mainland has stumbled from the era of obscurantism to the present, and the role of ethnic minorities in it cannot be ignored. The Xiongnu, who once dominated the northern steppes, were tall, good at horsemanship, and able to fight good battles, which can be said to have brought a lot of trouble to the Central Plains Dynasty at that time. Even during the reign of the Western Han Dynasty, the Xiongnu once occupied more territory than it, and the problems caused by it also caused the emperor a lot of headaches. It was not until Emperor Wu of Han ascended to the throne that there were more warriors who could recruit good warriors such as Wei Qing and Huo Fuyi, and this phenomenon was alleviated.
Later, in 33 BC, the Xiongnu asked the Han Dynasty for relatives to quell the war, and indeed the development of peace brought peace to the peoples of the two countries for more than half a century, and also promoted the integration of the civilizations of the two ethnic groups. But soon after, the Xiongnu tribes were divided into two due to various contradictions, and the war was provoked again, when the Southern Xiongnu chose to submit to the Han Dynasty, while the Northern Xiongnu chose to continue fighting, and soon after, in the joint attack of the Southern Xiongnu and the Han Dynasty, it disappeared into history. Compared with the Han Chinese, the civilization of the Xiongnu was somewhat barbaric, and there were still many barbaric customs in the areas ruled by the Xiongnu at that time, and the Han people called them Hu people not unrelated to these barbaric customs. From the Hun tombs we have excavated today, we can see that behind the barbarism there are still many horrors that we cannot imagine.
In the excavated Xiongnu tombs, the funerary items not only include our common ornaments, jade, and a large number of corpses, but also a large number of corpses, and what is even more frightening is that in the tombs of those Xiongnu leaders, hundreds of bones often appear, and these corpses are the wives and concubines of the chiefs, servants, and other than the captives captured in the war. It was not terrible to die in war in that era, it was terrible to be a prisoner of the Huns, because that meant that you had lost all your rights as human beings.
However, what makes people very confused is that in many excavated Xiongnu tombs, rarely found vessels for holding wine, but from the records of the history books, we can understand that the Huns have a bold personality, like to drink wine and eat meat in large pieces, but the fact is that in their tombs, some things related to wine vessels have not been found, why is this? Is there something hidden in the middle that we don't know? As experts excavated the tombs, the answer to this question gradually surfaced.
It turned out that in the society at that time, the Huns were very fond of rewarding merits according to the number of heads of the enemy cut off in the war, the more they cut down, the rewards were naturally richer, and the prevalence of this reward system made the Xiongnu soldiers at that time proud of winning the head of the enemy, and what was shocking was that these heads had other "wonderful uses", that is, the utensils used to make drinking. The identity status of the enemy before death determines whether the wine vessel made of his head is high or not, and the higher the grade of the enemy's head, the more exquisite the wine vessel made by the enemy's head, and people will also inlay precious jewelry and jade on it for everyone to play with. In the "Chronicle of History" as we know it, there is a related event, when the Xiongnu tribe at that time, after destroying the Great Moon Clan, cut off the head of its king to make a wine vessel and drink happily.
The impression of the cruelty of the Huns has thus remained in the hearts of the world, and I wonder if the fine wine contained in such a wine glass in their hearts is still sweet, but I think we will find it difficult to accept. Perhaps, it is precisely because of generations of warriors who have guarded the land of China with their lives that such a barbaric civilization cannot prevail, so that the people can be protected from the Xiongnu, and the Chinese civilization can be safely passed down.