"The Earliest China" is actually the name of a book, the author of this book is the Director of the Xia Shang Zhou Archaeological Research Office and the leader of the Erlitou Task Force, archaeologist Xu Hong, the so-called earliest China actually refers to the first wide-area monarchy that appeared in China's five-thousand-year history, and it is also the beginning of China's history into civilization.
As we all know, There are a large number of historical records in China that the first dynasty to appear in history was the Xia Dynasty, for example, the "Records of History", which began to be recorded from the "Five Emperors Benji", even hundreds of years earlier than the Xia Dynasty, but because it is a documentary record, the lack of archaeological evidence to support, since the beginning of the 20th century by Gu Jiegang led by the ancient history of scholars suspected, until now, there are still some scholars who doubt the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
Since the 1920s, foreign archaeology into China, the country began a series of archaeological research, due to the large number of domestic cultural relics and monuments, so the development of archaeology by leaps and bounds, archaeological excavations of countless sites, for China's first dynasty is not the Xia Dynasty, has been controversial, and as the capital of China's first dynasty, whether it is the Erlitou site or the Tao Temple site, in fact, there have been controversies.
Erlitou ruins
Determining who is the "earliest China" is from an archaeological point of view, so the comparison between Erlitou and Tao Temple is also studied from archaeology, and the following is a comparison of the differences between the two from five perspectives:
First, the chronological comparison of existence
Erlitou site is located in Yanshi District, Luoyang City, Henan Province, located in the south of the Yellow River, according to its cultural characteristics, Erlitou is divided into phase I, phase II, phase III, phase IV, in order to accurately detect the time of existence of the Erlitou site, according to the shangxia Zhou Dynasty project academic topics, in the period of 1984 ~ 1991 has been the four phases of the site in the 9 samples of carbon 14 dating test, the data obtained are as follows:
The first period dates from 1880 BC to 1640 BC
The second period dates from 1740 BC to 1590 BC
The third period dates from 1610 BC to 1555 BC
The date of the fourth period is from 1560 BC to 1520 BC
The data source is one of the Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty Project Reports "Establishment and Improvement of the Archaeological Chronology of the Erligang Culture in the New Zhen Erlitou", the continuation time of the entire Erlitou site is 1880 BC to 1520 BC, if you compare the previous three carbon 14 dating data, and then remove some samples with large errors, the final existence time of Erlitou is about 2100 BC to 1300 BC.
Erlitou ruins distribution area
Tao Temple site is located in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province, Tao Si Village, located north of the Yellow River, Tao Temple site is divided into early, middle and late, according to a variety of scientific methods including carbon 14 dating technology, the absolute age of the Tao Temple site is 2400 BC ~ 1900 BC.
From the absolute chronological comparison, the rise time of the Taofeng site is obviously about 300 years earlier than the Erlitou site, according to the data of the Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty Project, it is determined that the xia dynasty started and ended in 2070 BC to 1600 BC, comparing the existence time of the two, it can be concluded that the Tao Temple site began to rise 300 years before the establishment of the Xia Dynasty, and the Erlitou site was established almost at the same time as the Xia Dynasty, and ran through the entire Xia Dynasty, until the fall of the Xia Dynasty, there were still 300 years.
From the perspective of time, the ruins of Tao Temple should be during the Five Emperors period, while the Erlitou site should be in the Xia Dynasty and Shang Dynasty.
The Observation Deck of the Tao Temple Ruins
Second, the scale comparison
Erlitou culture is between longshan culture and Erligang culture, mainly concentrated in the central and western parts of Henan Province, as far north as the middle of Shanxi Province, as far south as the northern part of Hubei Province, the Yangtze River Basin and the Han River Basin, as far as the east to Kaifeng, Lankao, Henan, to the west to the Shangzhou area of Henan, its cultural distribution range is up to 200 kilometers in diameter, and there are 250 Erlitou cultural sites found in the country.
Erlitou cultural core site Erlitou site covers a total area of about 4.56 square kilometers, about 2400 meters long from east to west, about 1900 meters wide from north to south, since the beginning of excavation in 1959, the cumulative excavation area has reached 40,000 square meters, and a large area of palace buildings and Miyagi castle walls have been discovered, of which the palace area has reached 110,000 square meters.
Floor plan of the tao temple site
The Erlitou site has also excavated more than 400 small and medium-sized road ruins, large bronze smelting and casting workshops, 1 turquoise stone tool manufacturing workshop, pottery making sites, bone-making sites, sacrifice sites, small and medium-sized tombs, and a large number of small and medium-sized housing sites, wells, ash pits, pottery, stone tools, jade, bronze and other cultural relics have been excavated.
Tao Temple site belongs to the Longshan cultural type, and is the largest site in the Longshan cultural site, mainly distributed in the south of Shanxi Province, the total area of the site is 3 square kilometers, the length of east and west is about 2000 meters, the width of north and south is about 1500 meters, less than the total area of the Erlitou site, the area of the Tao Temple Palace City is 130,000 square meters, which is greater than the Palace District of the Erlitou Site.
In addition to the palace area, more than 1,300 large tomb areas of 30,000 square meters have been excavated, in addition to walls, houses, religious buildings, roads, wells, pottery kilns, ash pits and semi-crypt houses, and a large number of pottery, stone tools, musical instruments, wooden tools and other cultural relics have been unearthed.
Erlitou unearthed a bronze knight
Compared in terms of scale, Erlitou is both a culture and a site, and the Tao Temple belongs to the Tao Temple type under the Longshan culture, there are many types of Longshan Culture, tao temple is only one of them, culture is based on the cultural similarity of excavated cultural relics and buildings to reduce the ruins of different regions to the same culture, and the site belongs to a kind of culture, Erlitou culture has a radius of 200 kilometers, and the Tao Temple site is only 3 square kilometers, from this point of view, Erlitou and Tao Temple are not a level, Erlitou raised the Tao Temple by one level.
Compared with the Erlitou ruins under the Erlitou culture, the Tao Temple site is about the same scale, and the Erlitou site covers an area larger than the Tao Temple site, but the Tao Temple Palace Area covers an area larger than the Erlitou Palace Area, which is the scale comparison between the two.
Iii. Comparison of the characteristics of the two sites
The Erlitou site has the following characteristics:
1. There is the earliest network of urban trunk roads.
2. The palace building area with the earliest central axis layout.
3. The earliest bronze ceremonial vessels have been unearthed.
4. The earliest bronze workshops have been excavated.
5. The earliest turquoise workshops have been excavated.
6. There is evidence of the earliest use of two-wheeled vehicles.
Turquoise dragon unearthed in Erlitou
The tao temple site has the following characteristics:
1. The oldest script was discovered.
2. The oldest Chinese musical instruments were found, the drum and the special chime, of which the brass bell was the earliest metal instrument in China.
3. The earliest dragon totem was found.
4. The largest group of tombs in the Yellow River Basin was discovered.
5. The oldest observatory was discovered.
6. The world's earliest building material tiles were found.
Comparing the characteristics of the two sites, you will find that the Erlitou site has entered the Bronze Age, not only found bronze cultural relics, but also found a workshop for making bronzes, indicating that the Erlitou people have the conditions and technology to make bronzes, and the bronzes unearthed at the Erlitou site include weapons, ceremonial instruments, musical instruments, ornaments, tools, etc., such as bronze knights for drinking alcohol, as well as ge and gong used as weapons.
The only regret is that no text was found in Erlitou, and although the tao temple site found a small musical instrument such as a bronze bell, but no professional bronze workshop was found, the excavated bronze ware is also relatively small and very rough, indicating that the tao temple has just entered the budding state of bronze, although the tao temple found the text, but only a simple 2 words only, some people think that one of the words is Yao, but it is not certain, still controversial.
Texts unearthed from the Tao Temple
The same thing about both is that they have the function of the city, the city has a clear division of labor palace area, city wall area, sacrifice area, residential area, from the perspective of civilization, the degree of civilization of the Erlitou site is higher than the Tao Temple, mainly reflected in the manufacturing process of excavated cultural relics, after all, the Erlitou site is hundreds of years later than the Tao Temple site.
Fourth, the comparison of cultural influence
The cultural influence of the Erlitou site is far beyond the Tao Temple site, this influence is reflected in the spread of culture, the cultural relics with the characteristics of Erlitou can be spread around by virtue of the influence of Erlitou, and the Tao Temple site can not do this, this diffusion is not only the spread of culture, behind it is the Erlitou rule to use its own political, economic, military, cultural advantages to spread, this is very easy to understand, such as the Han Dynasty defeated the Xiongnu to open the Silk Road, this is a kind of external proliferation, It will spread the supplies of the Han Dynasty to all parts of the world, and the porcelain and silk of the Han Dynasty will be found in distant Europe.
Pottery plates unearthed from the temple
For example, in the Xiajiadian lower cultural cemetery of the Dadianzi site of Ao Han Banner in Inner Mongolia, two different styles of pottery have been excavated, one is the local indigenous culture style represented by the barrel belly mane and painted pottery, and the other is the pottery of the Pottery Lord, Lu, And Mane styles that are closely related to the Erlitou culture, which is separated from the Erlitou site by the entire Shanxi Province, hundreds of kilometers away, why did the Erlitou style pottery come to the Dadianzi site in Inner Mongolia?
To know that the culture of a region is a distinctive local characteristics, different regions have different characteristics, unless it is the same cultural area, if different cultural areas have the same style of cultural relics, that is the spread of culture, Erlitou ruins have a strong ruler, can use their own military, economic, political advantages to expand externally, the Erlitou culture to expand in all directions, in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River Maqiao culture also appeared Erlitou style pottery, there are Jue, Mane, Yao and so on.
Tao Temple sites also have the ability to expand the style of the outside world, for example, in the Dawenkou site in Shandong Province, you can find a small number of Pottery Temple style pottery, but also in the eastern and northeastern regions of Inner Mongolia Houhongshan culture, and the number is not much, the region is not as far as Erlitou, the expansion ability is obviously not as good as Erlitou, indicating that the ruler of Tao Temple is not as strong as Erlitou.
A bronze medal unearthed in Erlitou
In addition, the Tao Temple and the Erlitou site existed for more than 200 years at the same time, after which the Tao Temple began to weaken, and the Erlitou just began to become stronger, which can also show that the rise of Erlitou and the decline of the Tao Temple have some connection, which is the rise and fall of the rebellious site from the archaeological culture.
Xu Hong has this sentence in his book "The Earliest China": The Erlitou Site is the capital of the earliest known wide-area royal state in China. It also has this description:
The earliest civilization entity, "China", represented by the Erlitou site and the Erlitou culture, shows two characteristics unprecedented in the history of human development in the East Asian continent. These two characteristics can be summarized by one point and one side, one point refers to the hugeness and complexity of its capital center, which can be called "the first royal capital of China", on the other hand, it refers to its large-scale cultural radiation, forming the earliest strong "core culture" in China and even the entire East Asian region.
Therefore, from an archaeological point of view, the Erlitou culture and sites are the earliest China, and the Tao Temple site is one of the Longshan cultures that are earlier than the Erlitou site, or the Tao Temple is in the embryonic stage of "the earliest China".