As one of the four ancient civilizations, China is the only remaining ancient civilization with a coherent history. The other three ancient civilizations, ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon, and ancient India, some have completely disappeared into the long river of history, and some have been replaced in the process of development, completely replacing the culture of the past.
The missing history is the biggest regret in the study of human culture, but in the five thousand years of Chinese history, there was also a 1500-year historical gap period, during which no written record of this history, to verify its development trajectory and authenticity, has become the biggest problem faced by archaeologists.
Disappearing texts, torn off a page of Xia Shang history
Chinese civilization has a history of nearly 5,000 years, but the real written history excavated by archaeologists is only about 3500 years.
Tracing back to the source, the earliest 1500 years of history, almost no written records and historical materials have been handed down, the main reason for this is that the age is too old to preserve the written records, and another important reason is that paper and pen have not been invented in that era, and written records are a very difficult thing.
At the time of evolution from primitive to slave societies, there is no clear record of how human beings gradually shifted from matriarchal to patrilineal societies. However, the "Records of History" of the Han Dynasty records the story of Xia Yu passing the throne to his son Qi.
This story clearly shows the transition from zen to feudalism, the essential change in the state system, and the birth of a slave society.
However, in the past 1500 years from the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the Xia Dynasty and the Shang Dynasty, a variety of histories have been summarized and written by people after the Spring and Autumn Period, and archaeologists have not found any documentary records that have been clearly handed down from this period.
Therefore, the history of this period has become a blank stage in the documentation, and historians cannot examine whether the story of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors is true.
But why is there such a gap in history? The main reason for this is related to the invention of writing. The earliest written document is the oracle bone written on bamboo jane, and the real sense of paper only appeared in the Han Dynasty.
Therefore, before the Han Dynasty, people's writing conditions were very inconvenient, from the writing pen to the book that recorded the text, it took a lot of manpower and material resources.
If you want to record the history of a dynasty in detail, you must store at least a whole room of bamboo strips, and you must also patiently engrave words on it and then save it.
However, for the people of the agricultural society, production was the first element, and the people at that time were still tirelessly overcoming the problem of survival, so where was the time to free up their hands to record things and write words?
Similarly, the rulers at that time did not have much awareness of this aspect, believing that the major events of the country should be recorded on the bamboo and passed on. In that barbaric era, civilization had not yet been born.
Therefore, as a carrier of civilization, the written word does not have much importance.
And in the early civilizations, people first recorded important events with knotted ropes, and this simple and crude method could not be preserved in the long years, and it was all lost.
Justify history, and the remaining skeletons bear witness to history
However, there is no documentary record, which does not mean that this history does not exist, but the authenticity of the historical details needs to be examined.
During the Xia and Shang dynasties, the etiquette system was not yet perfect, and people still lived a life of drinking blood. But early civilizations have taken shape, and despite their bloody smell, they still leave behind many cumbersome rules.
Human beings, who have just entered the slave society, have not yet shaken off many of the old habits of primitive society.
In the context of the ancient flood era, the strong sacrificial culture became an important tool for rulers to govern society. The rulers spread the cultural consciousness of the ruling class to the people in this form through cumbersome and mysterious ritual sacrifices.
Although the ruler did not use paper and pencil to record all these sacrifices, it can be seen from the excavated artifacts that the sacrifice was a project that was highly valued by the rulers at that time, and there was a particularly important cultural relic in the sacrifice, which replaced the paper and pencil to fill the gap in history.
It's bronze. Bronze ware was first refined by the Xia Dynasty 4500 years ago, the earliest used by the ruling class, to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, bronze ware development flourished, from the imperial palace to the folk, from daily life to sacrifice supplies, bronze ware became the most important utensils.
The sacrificial culture that developed along with the bronzes was also deepened by the rulers, and archaeologists can find carved patterns on the excavated sacrificial bronzes, which tell the story of sacrifice one by one.
We can infer its use according to the color and style of the bronze, through the patterns depicted on it, restore the major events that occurred in this period, restore the country with strict system at that time, its cultural and social level, etc., will be reflected in the bronze.
At the same time, the smelting level of bronze is also constantly improving, archaeologists call that blank historical era the Bronze Age, and the bronze uses its cold and silent body to tell the cultural level and customs it saw in that era.
In addition to the bronze culture, another important historical site that has been preserved is the tomb excavated during the Bronze Age.
Although the written records of early civilizations are blank, there are always traces of what existed.
The ancients feared death and regarded death and life as equally important, so they did everything possible to leave the last part of themselves in the world, and at the same time arranged the scene exactly like his life in the place where the deceased was placed.
These burial cultures, which were highly valued by the ancients, became the last and most powerful evidence for archaeologists to spy on that era.
There is nothing more powerful than the appearance of the ancients, the tombs of the ancients restore a real scene of the ancient life for modern archaeology, and it is better preserved than the literature.
The placement of these tomb supplies, the wearing of the tomb owner, and the tomb feng shui, etc., not only show the productivity level at that time and the tomb owner's pursuit of luxury life, but also show the world view, death view, life view and so on.
The excavation and archaeology of tombs mainly reflect the cultural and ideological changes of ancient people, and provide a reliable basis for the stories recorded by later generations.
Blank history is not blank, it comes from the call of the barbaric era
From the Three Emperors and Five Emperors to the Xia Shang Period, mankind had just emerged from the evolutionary crisis and opened up an era of unification belonging to large tribes, when the concept of human domination was not yet comprehensive, and the use of force to establish absolute class differentiation was the usual means.
In order to establish the image of the ruler, they evolved one exaggerated deification legend after another, creating a terrible atmosphere of living sacrifice, in order to deter and extremely exploit the lower people, so that the upper rulers can achieve a hedonistic life of poverty and luxury.
In these terrible and bloody eras of rule, they erased the true appearance of their rule from history, leaving only some fragments of culture on the remaining bronzes of the fruit, waiting for posterity to paste and restore.