Mr. Guo Moruo praised in the poem "Visiting Anyang Yin Ruins", "The central plains culture was founded by Yin, and it is better to look at this than to read ancient books", such an evaluation is by no means exaggerated for Yin Ruins.
There are many forms of civilization in the Yin Ruins, the most famous of which is the Oracle. Oracle bones are engraved on animal bones and were originally sold as hemostatic drugs.
In fact, these oracle bones are the most valuable part of the historical research in the excavations of Yin Ruins, which confirms the truth of a series of documents such as the "Records of History".
Yin Ruins, the first documented site of an ancient capital city in China and confirmed by archaeological excavations, has pushed forward the recorded history of Chinese civilization for nearly five centuries.
In the Shang Dynasty more than three thousand years ago, due to low productivity, people were very superstitious and wanted to obey the will of heaven in everything, so they had to divinate and predict auspiciousness before doing things.
At that time, in the court of the Shang Dynasty, there were fortune tellers, the status of the fortune teller was very high, he would usually pay attention to collecting some turtle belly armor and back armor, or cattle, sheep, pigs shoulder blades and ribs, divination took out a piece of armor or bone, dug a groove or chiseled a few holes on its back, and then put it on the burning wooden branch to bake, to bake to a certain temperature, the armor or bone will burst cracks, the fortune teller will judge the will of the heavens according to the depth or direction of these cracks, and report to the king. The king decides whether to carry out the activity on the basis of the report of the fortune teller.
Afterwards, the divinator also engraves the results of the divination on this oracle bone, which is the oracle bone, also known as the oracle bone.
Because people have to divinate in every detail, the content of the oracle bone is also very extensive, clearly recording the activities of the Shang King and the economic and social life at that time, and some also record the trivialities of life such as living and dreaming.
The large number of discoveries of the oracle bone allows us to understand all aspects of the various social fields of the Shang Dynasty, and provides us with rich information for studying the history of the Shang Dynasty.
Since the discovery of the oracle bone, there are more than 160,000 pieces of oracle bones with characters unearthed from Yin Ruins, of which more than 5,000 single characters can be recognized, and more than 1,700 Chinese characters have been recognized by experts.
From the perspective of the writing structure of the oracle bone, in more than 3,000 years, although the oracle bone has undergone changes in different writing forms such as gold script, seal book, lishu, and script, the text and basic grammar characterized by shape, sound and meaning have been preserved to this day.
Oracle bone is the earliest in the ancient Chinese characters on the mainland, the system is relatively complete, has a certain regularity and systematicness, its style is given changes, the structure is sparse and dense, the line is thick and thin, the turning is round and square, the ranks are strict, some are free, these differences have formed the oracle bone script different from other artistic styles.
There are also many painting images preserved in the oracle bone text, such as the image of people and various animals, as well as the dynamic behavior portrayal of various things and people, which can grasp the characteristics of the object and clearly express it.
The writing engraved on the bones of the beast is very exquisite, the calligraphy and paintings are horizontal and vertical, accurate, and the carving method of this oracle bone is the same as the technology of the bone craft at that time.
Unfortunately, due to the poor protection of the early days, the oracle bones were excavated and sold in large quantities, and have been dispersed to 12 countries and regions, with a total of more than 100,000 articles, which is a huge loss to the archaeological community on the mainland. However, as the important value of Oracle is gradually recognized, more and more scholars have conducted special research on Oracle, and a new discipline has been formed internationally, Oracle.
In 1903, Liu Hu published the first oracle bone work in mainland China, "Tieyun Hidden Turtle".
In 1956, Chen Mengjia published the book "A Review of Yin Xu Bu Ci", which systematically discussed all aspects of oracle bone discovery and research.
From 1978 to 1982, the "Oracle Bone Collection" edited by Guo Moruo and edited by Hu Houxuan was published one after another, which is a collection of oracle bones and words from Dacheng and has indelible merits in the history of oracle bone science.
Bronze is another splendid cultural treasure in the cultural relics excavated from Yin Ruins, and the bronzes of this period are numerous, complete in variety, beautiful in shape, and superb in craftsmanship, reaching the peak of china's Bronze Age.
Archaeologists in the archaeological excavations, once found a casting bronze factory, the factory has a cast round bronze inner fan, the caliber of 1.6 meters, much larger than the Simu Pengding, the production level at that time has reached a certain height, the social division of labor is very strict.
Casting this scale and size of the Ding, the need to have a number of furnaces to work at the same time, but also a large number of casting workers, cooperation between each other, the Shang Dynasty people not only pay attention to the improvement of the level of craftsmanship, but also in the process of casting bronze, into their own aesthetic taste.
The bronzes excavated from the Yin Ruins have many ornate and intricate ornaments, some of which have a sense of realism, and some of which are engraved with short inscriptions, which are important evidence for studying the family form, family system and religious concepts of the Shang Dynasty at that time.
Jade also largely reflects the aesthetic consciousness of the Shang Dynasty. The jade artifacts unearthed from yin ruins are magnificent and colorful in color, crystal and lustrous.
The raw materials of Yin Xu jade are very precious, most of them are Hetian jade and Liaoning Xiuyu in Xinjiang, and the variety is also very complete, mostly in the number of ornaments, many of which are quite well carved, but these exquisite bronzes and jades are not available to everyone, because in the slave society, the social hierarchy is very strict. There were great differences in the status between commoners and slave owners, and between slave owners and the Wang clan, which can be seen in the Tomb of Yin Ruins.
There are a large number of tombs in the Yin Ruins site, including royal tombs and a large number of ethnic tombs, including large tombs with tombs, rectangular vertical cave tombs, tombless tombs and sacrificial pits, which are rare in other cultural sites in the world.
These tombs are hierarchical, with the size, shape, combination, and quantity of funerary vessels, representing the different ranks and identities of the tomb owners.
The tomb of the king's tomb is grand in scale, with many martyrs and exquisite ceremonial utensils.
The burials of civilians and slaves were few, if not none.
The Shang Dynasty people also had impressive innovations in architecture, and the palace temple within the Yin Ruins already had the planning prototype of Chinese palace architecture "sleeping before and after, left ancestor and right society".
In particular, the discovery of the Zigzag palace building, the Huanbei Shangcheng and its rammed earth complex near its central axis, has epoch-making significance in archaeological history, it fills the gap between the early Shang culture represented by Erligang in Zhengzhou and the late Shang culture represented by Yin Ruins, and perfects the chronological framework of the Shang Dynasty.
The rich relics of Yin Ruins provide a unique historical and scientific testimony to the Yin Shang culture that has been annihilated for 3300 years, just like Mr. Guo Moruo's praise for Yin Ruins, "Huanshui Anyang is worthy of the name, three thousand years ago it was the imperial capital."
The excavation of Yin Ruins marks the birth of modern Chinese archaeology, and the study of Yin Ruins provides many physical materials for the correct history and supplementary history, and advances the history of letters on the mainland to the Yin Shang era.
As the first ancient capital city site in China that has been documented and confirmed by oracle bones and archaeological excavations, its important historical, scientific, artistic, cultural value and its far-reaching influence on the history of human civilization determine the unique position of Yin Ruins in the history of Chinese and even world civilization.
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