Abstract: This paper traces the early history of the development and utilization of Yuncheng Salt Pond in flashbacks, as well as the relationship with the process of civilization in the Central Plains. Tracing back from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the indirect evidence of the development and export of salt from Yunchengchi in the Xia Shang and Longshan periods is discussed, and the possible close relationship between the rise and fall of settlements in the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Yu in the Yangshao period, the development of social complexity, and the utilization of salt resources in southern Jin.
One
Salt is known as the "King of Taste". Salt is not only the most basic condiment, but also necessary for the human body to maintain its survival. This indispensable daily consumer goods, which are not as widely available as other foods, have always been the most basic strategic resource that a country and society must attach importance to.
Ruins related to salt production at the Zhongba site
The salt industry resources developed and utilized in ancient China mainly include sea salt, well salt and pond salt (in addition, there are a small amount of rock salt in the northwest region). Of course, sea salt is distributed in the eastern and southern coastal areas, well salt is mainly distributed in the southwest region from the Xia River to Chongqing, Sichuan and other southwest regions, while pond salt is scattered in the central plains, north and northwest of the vast area. Sea salt and well salt in ancient times mainly rely on decoction brine to make salt, and after the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the seawater salt method was invented; and the saltwater lake produced inland by pond salt was mostly natural crystallization, but later added to the artificial help of reclamation salt. The largest saltwater lake in the Central Plains is the salt lake (also known as Hedong Salt Pond and Xiechi) located in the southern part of the Yuncheng Basin of Southern Jin, which has always been the most important salt-producing area in the Central Plains in ancient times. (Figure 1)
We know that from the Xia and Shang Dynasties to the Northern Song Dynasty, China's political and cultural centers mainly wandered in the Great Central Plains, where the Yu-Shaanxi-Jin River Valley Plain is located. From the end of prehistory to the Bronze Age and the subsequent unification of the Qin and Han Empires on a large scale, in the process of Chinese civilization moving from pluralism to unity, the Central Plains civilization played a role in the integration of subjectivity, laying the foundation and core of Chinese civilization. The formation and growth of the Civilization of the Central Plains, in addition to the vast fertile land of the river valley plains conducive to the development of agriculture, the mountains, forests and rivers are convenient for fishing, hunting and gathering, and the benefits of the salt industry mainly provided by the Yuncheng Salt Lake are probably also an important support.
The development and utilization of salt on the mainland can be traced back to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties from ancient documents. There are some records about "halogen and repulsion (salt)" in the oracle bone and gold texts. In the Yin Ruins Oracle, there is also such a phrase as "Halo Xiaochen Qiyouyi" (Oracle Bone Collection, 5596), indicating that at the latest in the Yin Shang period, there were special officials in charge of the salt industry. The earliest records related to hedong pond salt are found in the Western Zhou bronze inscriptions. Recently, some scholars have examined that the Western Zhou Babor Bronze Inscription unearthed from the Dahekou Cemetery in Yicheng, Shanxi Province, reads, "Only in the tenth and eleventh month, Uncle Qiu came to salt, scorned the Babo Calendar", which is recorded as Uncle Ba's coming to baguo to handle salt affairs, and Babo participated in it. Content related to salt affairs (Uncle Qi came to salt) or interpreted as Uncle Qi presided over the prayer for salt brine production, or interpreted as Uncle Qi's relatives going to the hegemony to identify the type and grade of salt brine. In any case, it shows that the Western Zhou royal family attaches great importance to the Xiechi salt industry, and also shows that the production and distribution of the Xiechi salt industry should have official intervention.
In recent years, in the Jinnan area of Linfen and Yuncheng, a number of cemeteries similar to the mouth of the Yicheng River have been found. About 100 kilometers southwest of dahekou from Yuncheng Salt Lake, more than 30 kilometers south of the site, there are also Found Daixian Hengshui Cemetery and Jucun Cemetery, the last two cemeteries are only 15 kilometers east and west. These cemeteries are similar in age, similar in size, and concentrated in distribution, and if they all belong to the Western Zhou Dynasty, then each fiefdom is only a county today, and some may be smaller; another view is that these cemeteries represent the "Nine Sects of Huai Surname" belonging to the Jin State. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, the ruins of Tianma-Qucun at the junction of Yicheng and Quwo, where the capital of the Jin Dynasty and the JinHou Cemetery were located, were also not far from the above cemeteries. Among these cemeteries, Hengshui and Jucun in Daixian County are in the south of Daishan And the northeast of the Yuncheng Basin, which is closer to the salt lake than the large estuary in the north of the mountain. Therefore, if Babo was involved in running the salt affairs, then other bangs such as the Hengshui Cemetery, especially the Jin Marquis himself, would not have stayed out of the matter. As for how the Marquis of Jin and the related Bang Bo (or Jiuzong of Huai) in the Western Zhou Dynasty participated in the management of various affairs such as the production and distribution of xiechi salt industry, whether the Zhou royal family directly controlled or through the jin marquis or other bang bo to control the xie salt, it is difficult to understand the details based on only a few bronze inscriptions and other brief records of later generations.
After the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the literature on the production and distribution of salt industry in various regions was relatively rich. In addition to advances in production technology, another notable change is that the official management of the salt industry has become more and more stringent. Because salt is the daily needs of the people, monopoly management can get rich profits, so successive rulers have attached great importance to salt administration, since the Spring and Autumn Period of the State of Qi Guan Zhong to implement the "salt official camp", later dynasties have followed suit, making it one of the important sources of wealth for the government.
Judging from the archaeological discoveries, the archaeology of the salt industry carried out by the mainland in recent years has made breakthroughs in three directions. First, a large number of relics of sea salt production in the Shang zhou period were found along the coast of Shandong, and there seem to be some signs in the Longshan culture period, and there are more Longshan cultural sites found in the coastal area on the south bank of Laizhou Bay, which some scholars believe may be related to salt production; second, many early salt industry remains have been found in the eastern part of Chongqing to the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, from the Shang Zhou to the late Neolithic period (about 2500 BC - 1800 BC), there are relics and relics of taking salt wells and brine from salt springs to fry salt. Among them, the Zhongba ruins in Zhongxian County are the most abundant; the third is that the prehistoric site of Daxie Island in Ningbo on the southeast coast reveals the ruins of sea salt production during the Qianshan Yang culture period, and it is speculated that the salt production in the southeast coast can be at least pushed forward to the Liangzhu culture period.
In the early development and utilization of inland pond salt, the above-mentioned literature records that only the salt events in the Central Plains can be pushed back to the Shang Zhou, but no substantial progress has been made in terms of archaeological discovery of direct evidence. This has to do with the way salt is produced in salt lakes. We know that the production of sea salt and well salt needs to go through the processes of brine production and storage brine, making salt stoves, and decocting brine with special pottery or other utensils, so as to leave a wealth of relics and relics related to salt making. This is not the case with the production of pond salts. Yuncheng Salt Lake is the largest and most important pond salt production area in the Central Plains, in ancient times, Hedong pond salt is all generated by natural crystallization, manual collection can be; every summer with the "south wind" from the Zhongtiao Mountain blowing, the sun exposure, so that the salt water along the Xiechi rapidly evaporated, condensed into salt, "harvest twilight, twilight to recover", inexhaustible, thus passing down the "South Wind Song" written for Shun: "The south wind of the lavender, can relieve the sorrow of my people; when the south wind is xi, it can fu the wealth of my people." After the Spring and Autumn Period, there may have been the invention of "salt pans" and began to artificially help dry salt; probably in the Qin and Han Dynasties or Han Wei periods, the "salt pans" were officially created to introduce brine and salt; by the Sui and Tang Dynasties, they began to "draw water" and created a complex set of "reclamation salt" facilities, technologies and processes. But no matter how it changes, pool salt is always generated by the forces of nature, and artificial facilities and technologies only help to improve production efficiency. No matter how the "salt pan" technology is improved, it is always implemented in the lakeshore beach, and the successive generations have repeatedly "planted salt" here, and the latter has constantly disturbed the former, especially the large-scale destruction of modern industrial activities (since the late 1980s, Xiechi has stopped producing salt, mainly producing chemical raw materials such as nitrate), making it difficult to preserve ancient salt pans, ditches and other facilities; in addition, there are few relevant living relics in the production sites such as salt pans, and it is difficult to accurately determine the generation even if ancient salt pans and other facilities are found. It is difficult to find and confirm production relics such as salt pans after the Qin and Han Dynasties, so it is even more difficult to find relics related to the salt industry in the earlier Shang Zhou and prehistoric periods where there are no salt pans and rely purely on natural products.
In the past several archaeological surveys of the ancient salt industry in Xiechi, except for the beaches within the shore of the lake, there are few early sites within 5 kilometers of the salt pond. In our systematic survey of the eastern region of the Yuncheng Basin, Anyi is the closest site to the Salt Lake, located about 3 kilometers north of the lake, dating from the Erligang period; only a few pottery pieces were collected on the surface, covering an area of no more than tens of thousands of square meters, and most of them have been occupied by modern villages and towns many years ago. The site may be related to the salt production of Xiechi in the early Shang Dynasty, but it is not easy to find related remains. Sites from earlier periods and other Shang and Zhou dynasties are basically 5 kilometers away from the salt lake.
The above situation means that it is very difficult to find direct evidence of ancient salt production at the edge of the pond, and to find other evidence related to pool salt in the vicinity of prehistory and pre-Qin periods, we can only go to the farther away from the lake to do work.
Two
In Hedong Salt Pond, direct evidence of early salt production is difficult to find, and indirect evidence can be traced. Such signs appear at the site of Dongxia Feng in Xia County. (Figure 1) In addition to some remnants of Longshan and earlier periods, the cultural accumulation of the Dongxiafeng site is mainly in the Erlitou and Erligang periods. During the Erligang period, rammed earth walls appeared in the Feng settlement in the east, and a circular site was revealed in the southwest corner of the city, which was arranged relatively neatly, and it was estimated that there were 40 to 50 according to the results of excavation and drilling. The structure of these sites is very special, the room surface is 30 to 50 cm higher than the ground at that time, there is a rammed foundation underneath, there are dense small column holes around the room, and there are cross-shaped buried column grooves in the room, which divide the room space into four, and no doorway is found. Regarding the functional use of these houses, it has long attracted the attention of the academic community, and in the early days, it was mostly considered to be a granary. Later, Liu Li and Mr. Chen Xingcan went to Dongxia Feng to do a field investigation, the original excavation of individual housing sites were partially cleaned, and a series of soil samples were taken up and down the house, and then after laboratory analysis, the results showed that the concentration of sodium ions, calcium ions, chloride ions and sulfate ions in the soil close to the ground was significantly higher than that of other soil samples far from the ground, higher than the ion concentration in the raw soil layer, which was basically consistent with the analysis results of the modern salt pond surface soil samples, thus proving that these circular buildings in DongxiaFeng were likely to have stored salts. After calculation, it is estimated that the total amount of salt stored in Dongxiafeng is about 12,000 tons, which should be no less than one year's output of the salt pond, according to which it is believed that Dongxiafeng as a regional center should be closely related to the early state control of hedong salt production and distribution.
Further ahead, in the Erlitou period, there was a "Hui" shaped double-channel ring trench in the East Lower Feng Settlement, and there was a large area of excavation in the southwest part of the ring trench, and it was found that there were some small houses of 9 to 13 square meters and smaller storage rooms on both sides of the inner trench, both of which were dug into the cave type from the ditch wall. There have also been few discoveries on the walls of the outer trenches. A total of more than 20 such houses and more than 10 storage rooms have been found in the exposed part, and there are actually more. In addition, in some large pits outside the trenches, small cave-type houses dug in from the pit walls were also found. Although no soil sample analysis has been done for these houses and storage rooms, from the analysis results of the circular housing site in the Erligang period, it is not excluded that these cave-type small houses in the Erlitou period, especially the storage rooms with very special shapes, do not rule out that there was also a function of storing salt at that time. The early Shang Dynasty's control and use of the Xiechi salt industry was inherited from the previous Xia Dynasty, which is a logical inference. Of course, to verify such inferences requires the excavation of such cave sites and storage rooms again in the future, and the detection and analysis of soil samples like the circular buildings of the Erligang period.
In short, Dongxiafeng is the earliest site known to date in the area around Xiechi that is most likely to be directly related to the salt industry. As a relatively large regional central settlement in the Erlitou and Erligang periods, Dongxiafeng was likely to be responsible for collecting and storing salt for the Xia Shang Dynasty and transporting salt to the center of the dynasty. In addition, Dongxia Feng should include copper in obtaining and transporting important strategic resources for the center of the dynasty. Some copper slag and stone tool models and tweezers from the Erlitou and Erligang periods have been excavated from the Dongxiafeng site, indicating that copper can be smelted here and some small tools and weapons can be cast. In addition, our investigation on the east and west sides of the northern part of Zhongtiao Mountain also found more mining and metallurgical sites, especially in recent years, the excavation of Xiwubi in Daixian County has revealed a wealth of copper smelting remains from the Erlitou and Erligang periods, indicating that the Zhongtiao Mountain Copper Mine was an important source of copper for the Xia and early Shang Dynasties. As a stronghold of the Xia Shang Dynasty to control, develop and transport important strategic resources such as copper and salt in southern Jin, there should also be the ring moat settlement of the first period of nanguan erli in the ancient city of Yuanqu and the site of the erligang period. The evolution of the ancient city of Nanguan and DongxiaFeng from the ring trench settlement to the city site is surprisingly synchronized. However, no traces of salt may have been found at the site of the ancient city of Nanguan, but there are a small amount of copper slag and tools from the Erligang period. On the one hand, the site served as a distribution center for nearby copper raw materials, and on the other hand, it relied on its dangerous location (located on a high platform at the corner of the Yellow River into the Boqing River) to control the southbound Yellow River ferry and the eastbound traffic artery, and served as a strategic stronghold and military castle for the transfer of copper, salt and other materials from the Jin Dynasty to the Central Plains Dynasty. From here, through the Dongtan Ferry, cross the Yellow River and then cross the valley to reach Shichi, and turn east to Reach Luoyang; or from here, continue east through the southern foothills of Wangwu Mountain to Reach Jiyuan, and then go south across the Yellow River to Luoyang and Zhengzhou areas, which is the ancient "Taihang Eight", the "Xuanguan". (Figure 1)
The xia people's occupation and operation of the southern Jin is very early, and the formation of the Erlitou culture in the east and the Feng type is directly related to the xia people's northward advance, and the emergence of this type can be as early as the late period of the first period of the Erlitou culture, which is one of the earliest areas occupied by the Erlitou culture after the formation of the Luoyang Basin, probably because the southern Jin has such an important strategic resource as salt. According to known information, the expansion of the scale of the Erlitou settlement, the appearance of large courtyard-style palace buildings and the burial of noble tombs with bronze ceremonial vessels are all after the second phase (the second phase only saw turquoise dragon-shaped vessels, inlaid turquoise bronze plaques and other ceremonial utensils, and copper containers began to appear after the third phase), and only a few small copper tools and weapons were found in the first phase. It can be inferred from this that in the process of the rise of the Xia people, they conquered, occupied and developed Jinnan, first of all, to run for the salt that they urgently needed every day. Bronze ware is a little later after the second phase, especially after the third phase began to highlight the importance, with the formation of a complex national society, with the needs of the "clear identity, order hierarchy" ceremonial construction and the invention of bronze ceremonial vessels, bronze smelting and casting technology was applied to high-end items, the importance of Jinnan copper mine began to stand out and get large-scale development. The recent excavation of the Site of West Wubi in Daixian County, the preliminary determination that the appearance of large-scale copper smelting remains is after the third phase of Erlitou, corresponding to the time of the appearance of copper ceremonial containers at the Erlitou site, which can prove this inference.
From the perspective of historical geography and resource control, the relationship between salt and copper in southern Jin and the center of the Xia and Shang dynasties has long been studied by scholars. Jinnan is known as "Xia Xuan", and historians have different interpretations of this. We understand that this does not refer to the location of the Xia capital, but to say that southern Jin was an important direct territory of the Xia Dynasty. In addition to the geographical proximity to the Yiluo Basin where the capital of the king was located, the more important thing in the Xia Dynasty should be related to the interests of property, especially copper and salt, which at that time could be called important strategic resources of the country. According to the systematic survey of the eastern region of the Yuncheng Basin that we completed, from longshan to erlitou, the number and scale of ruins in the Yuncheng Basin were greatly reduced, and the reason for this is likely to be related to the military conquest of southern Jin by the Xia Dynasty. By the Erligang period, the number of sites had plummeted again, and it should be related to Shang Kexia. The conquest and occupation of Southern Jin by the Two Central Plains Dynasties should be closely related to the extraction of copper and salt resources.
By the late Shang Dynasty, the number of ruins in southern Jin and western Henan had declined off a cliff and was very rare, and the reasons for this were elusive, and scholars had different speculations that they were related to war or plague. Another theory is that the surface copper oxide mine of Zhongtiao Mountain in the late Shang Dynasty had been exhausted, and the merchants turned to the south to seek the source of copper, while also expanding to the coastal areas of Shandong to obtain new and more stable salt resources, and the transfer of these two major resource orientations was accompanied by a large-scale migration of the population in the southern Jinnan region, resulting in the "hollowing out" of the local area. This theory is consistent with the current relevant archaeological discoveries, that is, with the decline of the Jinnan ruins in the late Shang Dynasty, the existence of copper smelting remains in the adjacent copper mining areas in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River has increased, and the number of Cultural Sites of YinXu in Shandong has also increased significantly and continued to expand to the coastal area.
On the other hand, we should also note that in recent years, the number of late Shang sites found in southern Jinnan has increased slightly, and the Yuncheng area is concentrated on the front ground of the northwest foothills of Zhongtiao Mountain in Daixian County and Wenxi, which is similar to the previous central settlements such as DongxiaFeng and Xiwubi, all of which are in the highlands near the mountains in the northeast of the basin, guarding the key points of traffic. This may indicate that the late Shang Dynasty did not completely abandon its occupation and administration of the region, although its location was much less important than before. The recently discovered Wenxi Liquor Head Shang Mo Cemetery contains several large tombs with burial passages and many bronze ceremonial vessels, as well as carriage and horse pits next to them. If the cemetery did belong to Yin Shang and not to other Fang Guo or Rong Di, it means that the merchants had a settlement managed by high-ranking nobles in this area, perhaps reflecting the return of the Yin Shang Dynasty to set up an important stronghold in southern Jin in a relatively late period, the purpose of which was not only to consolidate the defense of the border blockade, but also to re-strengthen the capture and even control of copper in the region (at this time when the technology to develop deep copper sulfide) and salt resources was available.
Three
The Longshan era from xia shang to the front was the most prosperous era in southern Jin, and a number of extra-large ruins appeared. From the Miaodigou II period to the narrowly defined Longshan period, the Tao Temple in the Linfen Basin underwent a process of continuous development and growth, at least in the "middle stage of the Tao Temple", as a "super settlement" showed the shape of the early state society. Another mega-settlement, which we excavated, is Zhoujiazhuang, Daixian County, located at the northern end of the Yuncheng Basin, and the settlement was only expanded to the largest scale in the late Tao Temple. However, neither the Tao Temple nor the Zhoujiazhuang, nor other Longshan period sites excavated in southern Jinnan, have found no salt-related remains (including relics or relics used to store salt), although even if there are, it is not easy to distinguish. But this does not mean that such a large regional center settlement is really irrelevant to the xiechi salt industry.
There is also a large site of the Longshan era in Jinnan, namely the temple in Ruicheng - Potou, where the Qingliang Temple cemetery has a number of high-standard tombs with buried jade and martyrs. Located at the southern foot of Mount Nakajō, the site is remote and complex, not like a regional center that has been developed solely on agriculture. Because it happens to be on the convenient transportation line from Yuncheng Salt Lake south through the Zhongtiao Mountains to the Yellow River ferry, excavators of the Qingliang temple cemetery believe that there is likely to be a management agency or group that mainly exports salt; or it can be said that the settlement has profited heavily by controlling the traffic rush of the pond salt export, and has exploded into a high-grade rich group. This is a reasonable inference. If this inference is true, it means that in the Longshan era (including the Miaodigou Phase II and the narrow Longshan period), the Xiechi salt industry has been developed on a large scale, and salt has been transported outside the region, which will benefit the social development of Jinnan and surrounding areas by virtue of its resource advantages, and form an external attraction and influence. When the Xiechi salt industry profits from the Temple- Potou, the regional groups represented by the "super settlements" such as Zhoujiazhuang and Tao Temple in the north will also benefit from it more or less, or directly or indirectly, at least they can easily obtain the Salt of The Xiechi Because of the relatively convenient geographical advantages, thus playing a strong supporting role in the rapid development momentum of the Longshan era in the region.
Judging from the literature, the "Song of the Southern Wind" quoted above is said to have been composed by Shun, reflecting the relationship between the south wind blowing down from The Nakajō Mountain during the high summer temperature and the crystalline raw salt of the salt lake. Shunduo is considered by scholars to be a figure of the Longshan era, and his related legends are concentrated in the Yuncheng area of southern Jin. For example, the "History of the Five Emperors" says "Shun, the people of Jizhou", Zhang Shoujie's "Justice" says that this Jizhou is "Puzhou Hedong County"; "Mencius LiLouxia" says that "Shun was born in Zhufeng, moved to Negative Xia, died in Mingtiao", and some people have verified that these places are in the Yuncheng area. Many scholars have identified Linfen Tao Temple as "YaoDu", although it cannot be confirmed, but it is indeed possible. Similarly, the Zhoujiazhuang, a large settlement of the Longshan period that we excavated in the northern Yuncheng Basin, although there is insufficient evidence to associate it with the "Shundu", there are also similarities in its era, geographical outlook and the social background revealed by archaeology. In particular, it is worth pointing out that the peak period of the Tao Temple was in the "middle period of the Tao Temple", and the peak period of Zhoujiazhuang was immediately followed by the "Late Tao Temple" stage, which coincided with the legendary succession of Yao Shun's succession to Zen. However, this in turn also shows the legendary attributes of Yao Shun- the two of them could not live so long and cover the entire Longshan period, and at most they could only be representatives of two large social groups that were adjacent to each other and successively. In short, the "Song of the Southern Wind" reflects a certain scene of the production of the Xiechi salt industry, and the archaeology and literature contrast this scene can indeed be traced back to the Longshan period. No matter when the song was written, the historical scene behind it should be real.
As mentioned earlier, evidence of the production of sea salt and well salt during the Longshan period has been found and even confirmed in the coastal areas of Shandong, the coastal area of southeastErn Ningbo and the inland Chongqing region (both of which can be as early as 2000 BC). Then, according to the above analysis, the development and utilization of Zhongyuan pond salt is also a reasonable deduction that conforms to the characteristics of the times.
As mentioned above, the temples — Potou, Zhoujiazhuang, Tao Temple, as well as the central settlements of Dongxiafeng and Nanguan in the aforementioned Xia and Shang Dynasties, will have various connections with yuncheng salt lakes in different ways and to varying degrees, but their locations are far from the salt lakes. (Figure 1) Even Dongxia Feng, who is the closest and closest to Xiechi Salt Industry, is still in the upper reaches of the Qinglong River, about 30 kilometers from the salt lake, near the northeastern mountains. So why aren't these central settlements closer to the salt lake? Or why haven't large central settlements developed in the area around the Salt Lake?
It is an obvious fact that the area around the salt lake lacks sufficient surface runoff (the Qinglong River is a small stream, which has dried up in recent years), and due to the influence of the salt lake, the local groundwater is bitter and salty, and it is not suitable for drinking by digging wells, so it is difficult to gather a large population and develop large settlements or cities in the case of in ancient times when suitable water sources cannot be effectively solved. Today, the domestic water in Yuncheng District and surrounding villages and towns, located on the north side of Yanhu Lake, is mainly imported from the outside.
According to the "Zuo Chuan Cheng Gong Six Years", during the Jin Jing Gong," "the Jin people plotted to go to their hometown." All the great masters know: They will dwell in the land of the flawed clan, and they will be fertile and near, and the country will be happy and happy, and they must not be lost." The land of the Gao clan is generally believed to be in the linyi area in the north of present-day Yuncheng, where the terrain is open, showing a gentle slope of high in the north and low in the south, sloping from the Emei Ridge in the north to the salt lake. However, this proposal was opposed by the doctor Han Xianzi, who believed that "the soil of the Gao clan is shallow and shallow, and its evil is easy to covet", and Jing Gong finally moved the capital to Xintian from his proposal. This record clearly shows that although the land around the salt lake has the advantage of "near salt", it also has the disadvantage of "thin soil and shallow water" caused by excessive salt content, which is not suitable for the survival and development of the metropolis in ancient times.
The Yuncheng Basin is in a northeast-southwest direction, the northeast is high and the southwest is low, and there is a Mingtiao Gang between the Zhongtiao Mountain in the east and the Emei Ridge in the northwest, the north side of the gang is the Shushui River, and the south side is the smaller Qinglong River, which converges at the Wu surname Lake in Yongji and then flows into the Yellow River. (Figure 1) The Qinglong River Old Road originally led directly from the northeast to the southwest into the salt lake. According to historical records, in the second year of the Northern Wei Dynasty (505), The Dushui Colonel Wei Yuanqing presided over the excavation of a Yongfeng Canal to guide the northern waters from the northwest around the salt lake to the southwest. During the Sui Dynasty (605-618), the water supervisor Yao Xian presided over the renovation and dredging of this canal, so the Yongfeng Canal was also known as the "Yao Siam Canal". The main purpose of the construction of water canals in the Northern Wei and Sui Dynasties was to divert the water sources of the Qinglong River and its tributaries in a centralized manner, around the northwest side of the salt lake and into the Shuishui River, to avoid the flow of water directly into the salt lake and dilute and dilute the salt in it, so as to protect the benefits of the salt pond and ensure the production of salt industry; at the same time, the water conservancy project may also provide suitable drinking water for local urban residents. It can also be inferred from this that the northwest side of the salt lake and the area around the current Yuncheng District served as the administrative seat of the previous prefectures and counties, including the establishment of special salt management agencies here, when they were all after the Northern Wei Dynasty.
According to our regional systematic survey in the eastern part of the Yuncheng Basin, previous special surveys and cultural relics census data, the prehistoric and pre-Qin ruins in the Yuncheng area are concentrated in three areas. The first is the southern foothills of Zhongtiao Mountain, that is, the Terrace Terrace on the north bank of the Yellow River from Ruicheng to Pinglu, which echoes the south bank of the Yellow River in the area from Lingbao to Sanmenxia in western Henan, forming a dense distribution area of ruins in the "Yellow River Corridor" area; the second is the Yuanqu Small Basin surrounded by mountains on the south bank of the Zhongtiao Mountain, Wangwu Mountain and the south bank of the Yellow River (including the part along the Yellow River in Henan Shichi); the third is the highlands in the northeast of the Yuncheng Basin, that is, the terraces on both sides of the Shushui River, the middle and upper reaches of the Qinglong River, and the Loess Plateau, which mainly includes the area from Yuncheng to the north to Xia County, Wenxi, and DaiXian County. The larger sites of each period are particularly to the north. The central and southwestern lowlands of the Yuncheng Basin, where the lower reaches of the Shuishui River and the Qinglong River are located, that is, from the salt lake area to the Linyi line to the west to the east of Yongji, belong to the "basin bottom" of the basin, and there are few early sites due to the low terrain and poor water quality, especially large sites.
The special geographical situation, soil and water quality and the transformation of the historical period of Yuncheng are compared with the distribution of the ruins, which can explain the choice of geographical location and location of large central settlements and cities in different periods.
Four
The Longshan era is further preceded by the Yangshao era, and there is no evidence in archaeological discoveries regarding the salt production of Xiechi in this period, and even whether the entire Central Plains have begun to develop and utilize salt in nature. Therefore, the following inferences are all hypotheses raised by the problem.
Worldwide, the earliest known archaeological indications of human salt production have been found in Central Europe, where the remains of salt production seem to date back to the 6,000th Century BC, an earlier stage of the Neolithic Age. So when can the continent first go back to?
The human need for salt is natural. It is generally believed that in the era of fishing, hunting and gathering as the main means of livelihood, human beings mainly rely on the salt in animal blood to supply their own needs, but in the stage of agricultural society based on plant foods, there must be a special intake of external salt to maintain normal survival. Therefore, after entering the agricultural society, it is necessary to solve the problem of the source of salt; conversely, it can be said that the large-scale development and utilization of salt by human beings should be no later than the formation period of the economy with agriculture as the mainstay.
Combined with the results of animal and plant archaeology and stable isotope analysis in recent years, crop planting and livestock breeding began to occur on the mainland around 10,000 years ago, and through the early and middle Neolithic periods, the proportion of agriculture in the biological economy gradually increased, until it entered the society with agriculture as the main economy, the development of agriculture matured, and the establishment of agricultural society experienced a long process. We speculate that the demand for salt should also grow gradually during this process, rather than a short-term upheaval from scratch. As far as the Central Plains region is concerned, agriculture has become the dominant economy either in the early Yangshao period or as late as the middle of Yangshao; since the case analysis and relevant data of the current system are not sufficient, it is difficult to give a definite judgment. In the early Yangshao period (about 5000 BC - 4000 BC), the number of sites found in various regions was generally small, the population density was low, and at this time it was the most suitable climate period of the Holocene Warm Period, and the nature was rich in wild animals and plants as an important food source, so it was not easy to determine whether agriculture and fishing and hunting were more important in the living economy than fishing and hunting, or there were different settlements in different environments. However, it is not problematic to say that yangshao's early agriculture already occupied an important position in the production economy, so we speculate that human beings should have begun to eat salt regularly and began to seek a more stable source of salt. By the middle of Yangshao (about 4000 BC - 3300 BC), archaeological findings show that the agricultural economy has an absolute advantage (perhaps in the second half of this period), then we can also speculate that at this time, the ancestors have begun to develop and utilize the salt industry resources on a large scale, and near the salt producing areas, different communities will also have confrontational competition for the acquisition and control of resources, thus exacerbating the development of social complexity. This is precisely the key issue that we will discuss below.
In the early Yangshao region of the Great Central Plains in the broad sense, there were two strong cultures with wide coverage, namely the Banpo culture and the Hougang Phase I culture. They expand around guanzhong in Shaanxi and southern Henan, and intersect north in central Jin and south-central Inner Mongolia to the north, and meet in central and southern Henan in the middle. In between, the Zaoyuan culture was confined to the southern Jin Dynasty and western Henan and the eastern edge of Guanzhong. How the Hougang Phase I cultural population in northern Henan and southern Hebei obtained salt is still unclear, but according to historical data, there were some small pond salt production areas in the early days of northern regions such as northwest Hebei, northern Jinbei, and Hetao in Inner Mongolia, and the migration and spread of Hougang phase I cultural population to this area may be related to tracking salt traces. In the Culture of Jujube Garden in Southern Jin, there are obvious cultural factors in the First Phase of Hougang, represented by artifacts such as pillar-foot basin-shaped dings, and the infiltration of the latter into this area may also be related to the acquisition of salt from the pond. However, limited to the mixed economic types, limited population size and limited demand for salt at that time, the expansion aimed at chasing the salt industry was not very large.
According to Tang Dynasty historical records, there were also some small salt lakes in the eastern part of Guanzhong, distributed in the area of present-day Tongchuan, Pucheng, Dali, Weinan and Lintong. It is reasonable to believe that these salt lakes existed as early as prehistoric times, and that the ancestors of the Banpo culture could obtain the necessary small amount of salt nearby. In addition, the expansion of Banpo culture to the east is also obvious, the Jujube Garden culture in southern Jin has some factors similar to the Banpo culture, and by the late Banpo period, that is, the stage of the Historian Period, the "Dongzhuang type" that replaces the Jujube Garden culture has also been formed, and the Salt of Hedong Pond is likely to be the object of coveting by the Banpo people. Judging from the current archaeological findings, among the above several cultures, the Banpo culture in the Guanzhong Basin seems to be the most developed, with the best development of settlements and relatively many and dense sites, which should be related to its proximity to rich salt resources.
But what is surprising is that the Southern Jinnan region, which sits on the largest salt lake in the Central Plains, especially in the Yuncheng Basin, has a relatively mediocre Zaoyuan culture here, with a small and sparse number of sites, low population density, and limited external cultural influence. On the one hand, this may indicate that the water and soil conditions here are not suitable for early agricultural development, on the other hand, the previous Neolithic culture has not yet been discovered in the local area, unlike guanzhong and northern Henan and southern Henan, which have a deep cultural and demographic foundation laid by the old Guantai culture and the Magnetic Hill culture, so the development is relatively slow.
However, this situation has changed dramatically in the middle of Yangshao, in addition to the central and eastern parts of Guanzhong, the originally weak Southern Henan and Western Henan have suddenly prospered, and even become the birthplace and central area of the Miaodigou culture, with a large number of ruins, a high density, and most of them are distributed in clusters, and in the adjacent areas of Shaanxi and Jinyu, there have been large sites with an area of tens to millions of square meters, such as Quanhu Village in Huaxian County, Xiguan Fort in Huayin, Xipo and Beiyangping in Lingbao, Yuancun and Xiyin Village in Xiaxian County, WenxidianToubao, and Yunan in Daixian County. In other distribution areas of the Miaodigou culture, although the number of sites has increased significantly compared with the previous ones, large sites like this are very rare as far as is known. For example, in the central and eastern parts of the Luoyang Basin, which are also systematically surveyed by the region, which is close to Sanmenxia and Yuncheng, the number of sites has also increased significantly compared with before, but it is rare to have large sites of more than 300,000 to 500,000 square meters. The above situation shows that agricultural technology and agricultural society have matured during this period, settlements and populations in various places have grown rapidly, and some areas have begun to diverge and integrate into regional organizations. At the same time, people began to develop and utilize salt in large quantities, and the neighboring areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Yu were sitting on some small salt lakes in eastern Shaanxi and the largest salt pond in Hedong in the Central Plains, which had more advantages in development than other regions, forming some larger and stronger central settlements. This is the most reasonable explanation for the explosive prosperity and development of the adjacent areas of Shaanxi, Jin, and Yu in the middle of Yangshao.
A society with a prosperous culture, a developed civilization, and a large external impact must be based on a rich economy, and having advanced productive forces and being able to control important resources often plays a decisive role in economic development. Miaodigou cultural relics are almost all over the middle and upper reaches of the Yellow River in parts, and its faience pottery is far-reaching, spreading to the lower reaches of the Yellow River, northeast Yanliao and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, etc., which can be described as far-reaching in prehistory, and behind it must be the social and cultural influence supported by the developed economy of the core area of Miaodigou culture. However, compared with other areas in the Central Plains, it is not obvious that the Miaodigou cultural core area has any special advantages in terms of land, environment, and production technology. The only significant difference is that the shaanxi-Jin-Yu border area has abundant salt resources that are lacking in other parts of the Central Plains, which should have played a crucial role in the prosperity of the early agrarian society and the prosperity of the early complex society.
Jinnan Yuncheng and Linfen Basin, Sanmenxia in western Henan, and the eastern part of the Guanzhong Plain are close to the salt lakes in the south of Yuncheng and the small salt lakes in the east of Guanzhong, which are the closest and most convenient areas to the salt lakes. Yuncheng needless to say, itself is the place where Xiechi relies on it, and the Linfen Basin is connected with its barrier-free; Sanmenxia is on the south bank of the Yellow River, going north through Dayudu, Maojindu and other Yellow River ferries, and then crossing the Zhongtiao Mountain Convenient Passage can go straight to Xiechi, and to the west there is a road through Tongguan Pass; in addition to the several small salt lakes it owns, there are also convenient ways to cross the Yellow River through Fenglingdu, Pujindu, Longmendu and other ferries to Xiechi. Other scholars have made special studies of several major passages from southern Jin to the south bank of the Yellow River to the Luoyang Basin. These major transportation routes have probably been formed since prehistoric times, and should also be the main passageways for the transportation of salt (and of course, Bronze Age copper) and the passage between places. (Figure 1)
As mentioned above, due to water and soil reasons, the sites in the area near Xiechi from the prehistoric to the pre-Qin period are relatively rare, and the sites of the eastern stages of the Yuncheng Basin, especially the large central settlements, are mostly concentrated in the middle and upper reaches of the Shushui River and the Qinglong River in the northeast of the basin. However, in the middle stage of Yangshao, about 5 kilometers northeast along the Qinglong River Ancient Road from Xiechi, a large site appeared, namely Xiaxian Yuancun (Figure 1), with a surface pottery distribution area of more than 900,000 square meters, and the survey showed that the remains of the subsequent late Yangshao, Miaodigou Phase II, Longshan, Erlitou and Erligang periods still existed continuously, but they were concentrated in the narrow areas on both sides of the Qinglong River Ancient Road, and the area was very small. Before the Erligang period, this was the closest site to the Salt Lake. Under the circumstance that the groundwater in the salt lake area is difficult to drink, the village and its nearby settlements probably rely mainly on the surface runoff of the Qinglong River for domestic water. In the middle of Yangshao, it suddenly developed into a large settlement of nearly one million square meters (but the accumulation was not thick, indicating that the use time was shorter or the living form was more scattered), and it is speculated that it is likely to be related to the development of the salt industry resources of the pond, and perhaps it is precisely because of the benefits of the nearby salt industry that the village can flourish for a while and gather a relatively large population. In the autumn of 2006, we conducted a small-scale excavation at the Yuancun site, revealing a total of about 500 square meters, and obtained a number of remains from the middle Yangshao, Erlitou and Erligang periods, but unfortunately found no direct evidence of obvious salt industry. Probably still due to the constraints of water source and soil quality, Yuancun did not last long as a large settlement, and became a small settlement after the late Yangshao period. Despite this, there have been small-scale people who insisted on living here, which is likely to be related to the Xiechi salt industry.
Salt resources, though very important, will not be the only factor that determines the rise and fall of a region or a culture. After the Shaanxi-Jin-Yu border area flourished for a while in the middle of Yangshao, it began to tend to be flat and even declined in the late Yangshao period, and rare large-scale sites were found. In contrast, the outer regions of Ganqing in the northwest, Hetao in the north, central and northern Jin, northern Henan and southern Hebei, and central Henan began to show different degrees of prosperity, all of which formed different regional cultures with different characteristics. In particular, in the central and western parts of Guanzhong to Longdong and the Songshan area of Zhengzhou, large central settlements have emerged, showing a more prominent momentum of development. This may indicate that with the development of agriculture and the development and utilization of various resources in various places, people everywhere have also obtained a relatively stable source of salt, so other factors will affect the development of regional societies more, resulting in the rise and fall of regional societies. As for what these factors were in the prehistoric period, it is a subject that requires further efforts to explore.
However, from a long-term perspective, the development of the Central Plains in the later Longshan Era, especially the outstanding performance of Jinnan in the Longshan Era, and the subsequent rise of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties in the Central Plains, as well as the political and cultural centers of the Unification Period of the Han Nationality and the Northern Ethnic Minorities in various historical periods, have long hovered in the Great Central Plains, and I am afraid that there is also a huge support and contribution from salt resources such as Xiechi.
Five
In flashbacks, this article traces the history of the development and utilization of Hedong pond salt, as well as the relationship with the process of civilization in the Central Plains. Among them, the earliest conclusive documentary records about the salt in this area can be found in the excavated written materials of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. However, due to the unique natural crystalline raw salt and artificially assisted salt production methods of the salt lake, coupled with the lack of specialized field work, no direct evidence related to the early production of pond salt has been found archaeologically. Therefore, there are only some hypotheses that can be proposed about the early history of the acquisition and use of salt from the pond in the early period, especially in the prehistoric period. Although the development of pond salt is not easy to leave a production legacy. However, if we do more work in time, I believe that there will be a breakthrough in the future. The existence of the Feng Zhao Shang salt warehouse in the east, and the site of Terry-Potou, which may be closely related to the control of the pond salt export channel, suggests that we can look for earlier remains related to the storage and transportation of the salt industry. Appropriate archaeological excavations of possible salt pans by the lake could also be considered to attempt to look for early traces of production and associated remains.
The two major resources of copper and salt in southern Jin are closely related to the development of early civilization in the Central Plains. However, in the early days of civilization, copper had a limited role. If we push the origin time of the Central Plains civilization to the middle of Yangshao, when a complex society first appeared, copper has not yet officially entered the field of "civilization construction" and has not yet become a strategic resource for society. Even in the Longshan era, the role of copper was still not prominent, and its key role in the growth of the Central Plains civilization began with the establishment of the Xia Dynasty. As an indispensable basic means of subsistence after the maturity of agricultural society, salt is also a relatively scarce resource, which should play a pivotal role in the early stage of civilization. Those social groups that are close to the salt production area and facilitate the control of salt production and distribution will soon gather a large number of people and strong energies, and if supplemented by superior agricultural and other production conditions, such a region or community will take the lead in embarking on the "road of civilization" and develop a complex society that is rich, powerful, and externally influential, while at the same time having a distinct hierarchical differentiation internally. However, whether such a society can continue to develop and further give birth to early states depends on a variety of factors.
P.S. Thank you To Mr. Tian Wei for his help in cartography.