Six tall wooden pillars form a circle, there must be some secret in the middle, just do it! Soon, a distinctive mud platform was revealed. It is said to be different because if this clay platform is a coffin, it has six wooden pillars in one coffin, breaking the convention of one-to-one correspondence between wooden pillars and coffins. In addition, the excavated coffins are all boat-shaped coffins made of poplar wood and covered with cowhide, but it is uniquely covered with expensive mud.
Some people are surprised, dirt is still expensive?! Of course! In the great desert of Taklamakan, there is quicksand everywhere, and the dirt is not so easy to find, let alone transported to the sand mountain. Therefore, today's people say that they are poor enough to eat soil, and they have to put it in Taklamakan four thousand years ago, which is really high consumption!
A coffin covered with dirt
However, the archaeologists are still suspicious, the mud platform is only about one meter and two meters, and it is certainly not enough to bury an adult. So it's not a tomb, what is it? Continue to clean the sand around the mud-shelled coffin, revealing planks of wood below. Gradually, a rectangular wooden box with a mud cover was presented to everyone. The archaeologists' eyes lit up with excitement, isn't this a big chest with buried treasures!
Mud-covered wooden boxes excavated from the Little River Cemetery
There must be a lot of treasures here, and in the north and south areas of the Xiaohe Cemetery, such mud-shelled large boxes have been found in a total of four, making a fortune! The moment to witness the miracle is something that everyone is looking forward to. Maybe by opening the clay coffin, you'll be able to solve all the mysteries of the Little River Cemetery. Remove the mud shell cover piece by piece and untie the grass curtain. How is it empty?
Mud-shelled wooden box after opening
Inside the huge box, there are several utensils on the ground, and they are all things that look ordinary. A small wooden carved figure is only a dozen centimeters long; a broken grass basket, and a small wooden stick. Just such a little thing, spend so much effort to get a mud shell box, next to the 6 poplar wood pillars, the brain circuit of the ancient Xiaohe people is really incomprehensible!
Artifacts placed inside the clay coffin
In addition, the archaeologists found a large number of cattle and sheep skulls near the mud shell wooden box, and some burned charcoal traces. These are all traces of sacrifice, and what does it mean that the little river people are surrounded by an empty mud-shelled wooden box, burning a fire and hanging a cow's head?
Cow's head hanging from a mud-shelled wooden box
Just when everyone was disappointed, they suddenly found that the bottom plate of the mud shell wooden box was somewhat abnormal, and when I opened it, the cowhide was exposed, and the original real ship-type coffin was actually under the mud shell wooden box. The coffin was on the ground floor of the cemetery, and occasional rainwater infiltration, coupled with the corrosion of salt and alkali, the body decayed to the point that only bones remained.
Still, the archaeologists were able to unequivocally identify that it was an older adult woman. He was in his mid-fifties, the oldest of all of little river cemeteries. She wears two gold earrings on her ears, which is very special among the little river people who are equal to everyone, what is the status of this woman before she dies? The four mud-shelled wooden coffins were all opened, and the owners of the tomb were all women!
An elderly woman unearthed in a ship-shaped coffin
These four tombs were the first to be buried in the entire cemetery, with six to eight wooden pillars forming a circle around the tomb. A mud-shelled wooden coffin is the center of a piece of tomb, and the surrounding ship-shaped coffins are buried around it, forming four central areas throughout the cemetery. From this particular burial method, it can be seen that among the small river tribes, women have the highest level of burial specifications, and the small river tribe is a matriarchal clan society. The old woman buried in such a complicated way under the mud-shelled wooden coffin is a manifestation of being respected.
Simulation of the tombs of the Little River Cemetery
As for the effort to make the mud-shelled wooden coffin, why is there nothing decent inside? Maybe it was the low productivity at that time, which was already the whole of the life of the little river people. It is also possible that in the tomb form of the extreme fertility cult of the Xiaohe people, how many things are buried in the wooden box, for them may float a few words, that is not a thing!
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(Stay tuned, "The ancient city appeared next to the Xiaohe Cemetery, and the road to find a home is a mystery again, where is the Xiaohe family?) 》）