In 1986, during the renovation of a school in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, a heavy coffin was inadvertently excavated, and the construction workers did not dare to slacken off, and immediately called the local cultural relics bureau to explain to them the school's excavation of the ancient tomb.
Immediately after receiving the call, the Anti-Heritage Bureau sent a large number of experts to the scene, and in this way, an intensive archaeological work began, but the scene after the coffin was opened next surprised all the experts present.
After the coffin is opened, it is the corpse of a couple that comes into everyone's eyes, but unlike the body of the tomb owner excavated by archaeology in the past, the body of the couple is very well preserved, even the skin is still elastic, and the blood vessels are still faintly distinguishable.
At the same time as the archaeological work is carried out, many doubts have also emerged in the minds of the experts present, and it is reasonable to say that an ancient tomb of this size should be recorded in history, but even if the experts have consulted the relevant information, they have not found any information that can prove the identity of the couple.
Tea Garden Hill Artifacts
To this day, there are still many archaeologists who want to dig out the true identity of the couple.
The renovation of the campus surprises the ancient tomb
In August 1986, the Tea Garden Mountain Primary School on Yangqiao West Road, Gulou District, Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, was taking advantage of the students' summer vacation to build a new playground, just when excavating the ground, the advance of the excavator was hindered, so the workers went down to check the situation, which did not matter, but a survey found a sensation in the national archaeological community of the Tea Garden Mountain Anonymous Husband and Wife Tomb.
What appeared in front of the workers was a heavy coffin, and immediately some people deduced that there might be an ancient tomb of a certain dynasty hidden below, and the workers present did not dare to excavate themselves, so they immediately notified the Fuzhou Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics and the museum, and the museum immediately sent an archaeological team to the site to investigate after receiving the call.
At that time, Lin Guo, the leader of the Fuzhou Archaeological Task Force, immediately left for the Tea Garden Mountain Primary School after receiving the notice, along the way, Lin Guo was excited and uneasy, excited because he was about to unearth new cultural relics, and worried that he was late and the school's construction team destroyed the ancient tomb.
After arriving at the site, Lin Guo was relieved, although the excavator accidentally destroyed the coffin lid during construction, but fortunately did not destroy the tomb and the tomb owner inside the coffin, and at the same time, Lin Guo's colleagues from the archaeological team also arrived at the scene.
After discussing with colleagues, Lin Guo expressed his views, he judged that this ancient tomb is most likely an ancient tomb where husband and wife were buried together, and after hearing Lin Guo's analysis, the people of the archaeological team did not dare to delay and immediately began to excavate the tomb.
As Lingo said, after several hours of archaeology, the members of the team did excavate two coffins, but at the same time, a whole new question appeared in front of everyone: was it to open the coffin on the spot, or to pull it back into the laboratory to open the coffin?
To know that this season is summer, if the coffin is opened on the construction site, it is very likely to affect the preservation of the body in the coffin, after some consultation, Lin Guo decided to bring the two coffins back to the laboratory for study.
After the coffin was transported away, Lin Guo and his colleagues continued the excavation activities at the site, and at this time, the focus of their excavation was on the items that could prove the identity of the owner of the tomb, and after determining this, all the staff immediately began intensive archaeological work.
Suddenly, an archaeological team member at the scene shouted excitedly: "Found!" The sound attracted the attention of everyone present, so everyone rushed up to see what kind of evidence the member of the archaeological team had found.
It turned out to be a pair of banners in the ancient tomb, and the crowd immediately and carefully cleaned out the pair of banners, only to see that a poem was written on the banner, and the year of the burial of the owner of the tomb was also indicated below: the second year of Duanping in the Southern Song Dynasty, this result can be said to have made everyone present feel very surprised.
The identity of the owner of the tomb is introduced on the veil:
Copper bamboo used to be a phoenix, and the wind and clouds were fun for him.
The military and the people are wise and virtuous, and the rewards and punishments are clear and the people are used well.
Honest and loyal to the surname of Liang Mowan, Kuan Ren bone and three armies.
The military and the people tearfully held the cup to send, no Fu Deng to eliminate the good handsome.
But even so, we can only know that the owner of this tomb is a song dynasty army general, or can not prove the true identity of the tomb owner, with the continuous excavation of archaeological excavations, more than 400 pieces of silk fabrics, silverware, lacquerware and other funerary items have been unearthed.
And the second year of Duanping in the Southern Song Dynasty, just when the Mongol Empire invaded the Southern Song Dynasty, funerary products of such a scale as the owner of the tomb are most likely to be recorded in the history books, even if they are not recorded, then there must be tombstones and epitaphs and other things that can prove his identity in the tomb.
However, until the end, there was still no excavation of the object that could prove the identity of the owner of the tomb, and just when everyone felt helpless, Lin Guo encouraged everyone: "Don't worry, the two coffins in the laboratory have not been opened, and I heard the transport personnel say that the two coffins are very heavy, and it is very likely that there are things we want inside." ”
Hearing Lin Guo's persuasion, the eyes of the archaeological team were rekindled with hope, so after leaving some people to continue the on-site investigation work, Lin Guo returned to the laboratory with some members of the archaeological team to open the coffin.
However, to everyone's surprise, after the opening of the coffin, what enters the eyes of archaeologists is not a wealth of funerary products, but a full coffin liquid filling the entire coffin, and these coffins are generally not artificially poured in during burial, most of the coffin liquid is basically groundwater infiltration and corpse moisture decomposition, but the advantage of the coffin is that it can play a certain protective role for the corpse.
Lifelike corpses
There was no other way, if you wanted to continue the work, you could only remove part of the coffin, and in this way, with the slow removal of the coffin, what entered the eyes of all the archaeologists present was two lifelike corpses, a male corpse and a female corpse.
The male corpse is very tall and strong, with a height of one meter and eight meters, while the female corpse is a little petite, only one meter four or five, but these alone are far from enough to make the experts present stunned, so what is the reason why everyone is shocked?
It turned out that after being magnified by an electron microscope, the experts were surprised to find that not only the skin of the two corpses was still elastic, but even the blood vessels in the arms were well-veined.
This can't help but remind the experts present of the thousand-year-old corpse in the Mawangdui Han Tomb ten years ago, like this kind of wet corpse that can maintain immortality for a thousand years, each of which is a treasure in human history, not to mention that two wet corpses have been unearthed at one time in the tomb of the nameless husband and wife of The Tea Garden Mountain.
MaWangdui thousand-year-old female corpse
In this way, the news that two lifelike ancient corpses were unearthed in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, caused a huge sensation in the domestic archaeological community, and archaeologists from all over the country came to the Fuzhou Museum to see the style of these two corpses.
After arriving at the scene, almost everyone was stunned by the preservation of these two corpses, which was unimaginable before, everyone thought that Mawangdui could unearth one body has already given people a great surprise, and now the two bodies of Tea Garden Mountain are even more amazing to all people.
While everyone else was marveling at the two ancient corpses, the archaeologists were still having a headache in order to determine the identity of the tomb owner, who had been working on the tomb for several days and had not been able to find anything that could prove the identity of the tomb owner.
But at this time, an exciting news came out of the laboratory, and the experts responsible for examining the ancient corpses found a jade belt wrapped in silk around the waist of the male ancient corpse, which finally made a breakthrough in archaeological work, because in the Song Dynasty, the people who could wear jade belts around the waist were generally senior officials of the imperial court with more than three pins.
Just when everyone thought that the identity of the owner of the tomb could be revealed, an expert at the scene poured a basin of cold water on everyone, saying that this jade belt was just an imitation wooden jade belt, which should have been placed for him by the family after his death, and this alone could not infer the true identity of the owner of the tomb, so the speculation about the identity of the owner of the tomb was temporarily deadlocked.
At this time, another question appeared in front of everyone: as we all know, Fuzhou is located in the southern region, still in the subtropical range, and then it can be said to be very wet, so how did these two corpses survive so well?
After X-ray testing, experts found a large amount of mercury in the abdomen of male corpses, to know that mercury is a highly toxic metal, has a very serious corrosive effect on the human body, as long as a little consumption, it will lead to mercury poisoning, and then life-threatening.
mercury
At first, experts thought that this male ancient corpse died of mercury poisoning, but the male ancient corpse's expression was peaceful, completely unlike the appearance of severe poison torture, and the amount of mercury present in the abdomen of the male ancient corpse was very large, if you take poison to commit suicide, you can't use this at all.
The cause of death of the tomb owner is speculated
In this regard, experts deduce that these mercury is likely to be used by the family of the tomb owner to preserve the body, because when the Song Dynasty was just established, the Khitan Dynasty in the north was popular for a special funerary method, that is, to pour a large amount of mercury into the corpse, and there were many Khitan nobles at that time who used this method to prevent the corruption of the corpse, and the Song Dynasty was likely to be influenced by this custom, but there was also this way of preserving the corpse in the Qin Tombs in Xi'an.
And most importantly, the clothes on the male corpse and the corpse are glued together, and this is the role of the corpse wax, but normally, if a person dies of chronic disease, then the fat in the body will slowly be consumed, and not so much corpse wax will be produced, that is to say, the death of the male corpse should be sudden.
After a detailed examination, the expert found that the male ancient corpse's spine was seriously damaged, as if it had been seriously hit in an instant, and the expert then speculated that the male host should have died suddenly, so his body had a very indifferent expression and a healthy body.
At the same time, another piece of good news also came, when the experts of the archaeological team were cleaning the coffin of the male corpse, they accidentally found a silk veil with writing printed on it, and this banner is likely to play a role in revealing the identity of the owner of the tomb, which reads:
The gate of the gate is looking forward to the king day by day, and the people of Ezhu are thinking about it.
Rushing to the Yellow Pavilion early, Putian Linyu was always thoughtless.
The general idea of the text is: the man's wife is at home every day hoping that the man can return home from the gate, and the gate is Zhai Tangguan, located near Sichuan, that is to say, the man is likely to die in the gate, and then in order to prevent the body from decomposing, it is preserved with mercury, and finally sent back to his hometown in Fujian.
Since there was no progress on the identity of the male corpse, the experts of the archaeological team launched an investigation into the female corpse, but to everyone's surprise, the female corpse did not have mercury in her body, so how did she die and preserve it?
Just when the investigation work reached an impasse, an expert keenly found that the female ancient corpse had a gorgeous pair of pants, and there were some blood-red spots on the pants, which made all the experts present feel excited.
At this time, one of the experts present shook his head and said, "Probably not, because these two tomb owners seem to be buried normally, and it is reasonable to say that their families should not let them be buried in clothes with blood stains, and these blood-red spots are likely to appear after burial." ”
After that, the expert did an experiment in front of everyone, that is, the blood-red spots of the woman's ancient corpse were rinsed, and the spots on the clothes slowly faded, and finally dissolved in the water.
"In pathology, if it is a blood stain on the clothes before death, it will be difficult to wash it off with clean water, but if it is the product of the mixture of corpse fluid and hemoglobin in the corpse after death, then even if it is mixed with clothes, it is very easy to wash off."
Hearing the expert's explanation, everyone present was suddenly cheerful, so the blood stains on the clothes of the female ancient corpse also had a rough guess: these blood stains were because the female ancient corpses decayed in the body after death, and then caused the air pressure in the abdomen to become larger, the corpse fluid and hemoglobin were discharged from the body, and finally these red-looking mixtures were stained on the clothes, which made people look like blood stains.
Moreover, the tomb of the anonymous couple of Tea Garden Mountain adopts the classic anti-theft tomb method of the Song Dynasty: the three-in-one earth tomb. The construction method of the three-in-one tomb is to use layers of earth and stones to cover the top of the tomb to confuse the tomb robbers, although the construction of this tomb is very time-consuming and financial, but it can also be inferred that the identity of the owner of the tomb is most likely to be more than three members of the Song Dynasty.
And the reason why the two ancient corpses can really achieve 700 years of immortality, in addition to mercury, a large part of the reason is the triad tomb, due to the special anti-theft means of the triad tomb, which led to the coffin of the two tomb owners in the ground and the air completely isolated, just in this vacuum environment miraculously preserved the two ancient corpses.
However, there are still many doubts about the tomb of the anonymous husband and wife in Tea Garden Mountain, such as: there is no tombstone and epitaph that can prove the identity of the tomb owner in the ancient tomb, which is completely inconsistent with the identity of the Song Dynasty Sanpin, and the cause of death of the female tomb owner has also become a mystery, because according to the analysis, experts have learned that the death time of the female tomb owner should be after the death of the male tomb owner, but unlike the fatal injuries on the body of the male tomb owner, the female tomb owner has no trace of injury at all.
There is no other way, the experts have to consult the relevant information, based on these materials slowly infer a more realistic story, in this way, the experts according to the existing clues as far as possible to restore the couple's story:
In the second year of the Southern Song Dynasty (1236), the Mongol Empire invaded the Southern Song Dynasty on a large scale, and at that time, Hubei and the Chumen generation happened to be the place where the Southern Song army and the Mongol army were most fiercely engaged, and the male tomb owner was a high-ranking general sent from the Beijing Division, in a fight with the Mongols, the male tomb owner was unfortunately hit in the spine by the enemy from behind, so he died in Sichuan and Hubei.
After the end of this defensive war, when the Song Dynasty soldiers cleaned the battlefield, they found the male tomb owner who had stopped breathing, so in order to send the male tomb owner's body back to his hometown in Fujian intact, the comrades preserved his body with mercury, and after a long period of transportation, finally sent him back to Fujian.
After seeing her husband's death, the wife of the male tomb owner washed her face with tears all day, did not think about tea and dinner every day, and may have been weak since childhood, so she died early, and after her death, the family buried the couple who suffered a hard life.
But to this day, these stories are just speculations of experts, and the domestic discussion of the tomb of the unknown couple in Tea Garden Mountain has not ended, perhaps, the reason why the couple died almost at the same time has long been buried in the long river of history.