Source: Cai Dongchen, Liu Chunyang
The Hotan, Yarkand and Aksu rivers meander here to form the Tarim River. Ancient humans who lived in the water and grass oasis also left many historical relics here. The mysterious tomb community found in the Tarim Ancient River Channel is located in the Taklamakan Desert, the southern desert of the 13th and 15th Companies of the 11th Regiment under the jurisdiction of the 1st Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps.
According to the international anthropological authority, the tomb group has a history of 4600 years. The discovery of this group of tombs provides a wealth of physical data for the study of the ancient history of Kungang (Aral).
Fill in the gaps in the paleoanthropological sites in the Tower area
Driving about 10 kilometers away from the eleven regimental headquarters, you can see the ancient tombs distributed in the desert in bands, and there is a small lake nearby, and researchers initially conclude that it is the location of the Tarim River Ancient Road and the Hotan River Ancient Road.
The landform here is typical of fish-scaled sand dunes, due to the proximity to the Tarim River, the groundwater table is high, and the salinity erosion is serious. Suddenly, the sand dunes in the highest cemetery in the whole terrain resemble the famous small river cemetery.
According to experts from the Western Culture Research Institute of Tarim University, some of the ancient human bones and cultural relics excavated from the cemetery just happen to resemble the Xiaohe Cemetery, and the initial discovery is six series of three layers, which are 4600 years, 4300 years, 3800 years, 2600 years, 1200 years and more than 900 years.
Sheng Chunshou, director of the Xinjiang Cultural Relics Bureau, called it "filling the archaeological gap in the ancient human sites in the Tazhong region."
However, due to the lack of necessary protective measures, the damage to the tombs was more serious.
At present, the tomb group has been identified as a municipal immovable cultural relics protection unit, and there is a barbed wire fence in the Second Cemetery, and it is guarded by special personnel.
Walking into the ancient tomb group, we can still see scattered poplar wood coffins, in a larger coffin, a female dry corpse appears in front of our eyes, and we can still see the thinning hair on the head and the cloth clothes on the body.
According to the tomb keeper, the body unearthed by Mu Fu was very well preserved when it was first excavated, and even the skin could be seen clearly, and the clothes were relatively complete, but because there were no protective measures after the excavation, it was quickly "weathered".
So far, 5 dried corpses have been found here, and only 3 are relatively well protected so far.
On the edge of the cemetery, there is a depression with water and reeds, which can be seen that in the past, this place was also a place of abundant water and grass.
"This place was formerly the Tarim River, a place where human beings gathered to live. In fact, the oldest inhabitants of this ancient human site are most likely Qiang people. Since most of the ancient Qiang people were already engaged in farming and fishing and hunting, these characteristics are prominent here. Judging from the scale of the cemetery and living area, as well as the grass baskets, grains, and food products unearthed, the scale of farming is not small. Aral Ren Xinnong, director of the Spiritual Research Institute of the 359th Brigade, said.
He had come here many times to investigate, and he had also picked up an ancient coin. From the historical records and excavated documents, it is known that Alal is called Kungang. This group of ancient tombs was thus named "Kungang Ancient Tomb".
If the results of carbon-14 determination are combined to determine that the owner of the cemetery is mainly Qiang, it corresponds to the ancient literature records of the activities of the Western Qiang in the Tarim Basin. Xinhe County around Aral has unearthed the "HanGui Yiqiang Long Seal", and the names of Hotan, Minfeng, Zhimu, ruoqiang and other places are closely related to Qiang culture.
In the Aral region on the northwest edge of the Tarim Basin, if a large number of Qiang remains have appeared, it shows that Chinese civilization has long existed in Xinjiang.
Are tomb groups related to the "Giants' Horde"?
The most peculiar thing about this ancient tomb group is that signs of "giants" have been found here.
The "History record Zhou Benji" and the "Book of Poetry daya sheng min" and other records of the legend of giants. In the cemetery's improvised exhibition hall there is a shelf 2. Tall bones of more than 3 meters, with a coffin of up to 2. 8 meters.
Coffins of similar size have also been found in many places in the local area. This corresponds to the legend that there were giant tribes in the Tarim Basin in ancient times.
Liao Zhaoyu, a professor at Tarim University and dean of the Western Studies Institute, said, "The corpses unearthed in the cemetery have golden hair, towering frontal bones, narrow faces, and thick leg bones, and the overall appearance of Europa ethnic characteristics. There are many complete skulls in the tomb group, and some of the hair connected to the scalp are golden, which is good-looking. Many of these lower front teeth are not long horizontally like we modern people, but laterally, that is, vertically. As for the ethnic structure, dietary habits, or other reasons, it remains to be further studied and confirmed by experts. "
Although the series of cultural relics excavated from the Alarkungang Tomb are very "poor", they are of great historical value. Some of the burial forms and excavated artifacts are the same as those of the Xiaohe Cemetery, and some eras are even older. All the coffins unearthed had no base, and the men and women were buried together, and the flexion burial became the dominant type. The remains of the ancient river channel near the tomb are clearly visible, and the dry poplar forest is particularly large and has obvious living area characteristics.
Where did ancient civilizations come from and where did they go?
In the tomb group, each cemetery is densely packed with wooden sticks and shaped in a square shape, with small sticks inserted in the children's cemetery and large sticks inserted in the adult cemetery. One of the beautiful wooden sticks is brown in general, and the space inside the longitudinal section hides a coiled snake with a front head, full of mysterious atmosphere.
In addition, there are a pair of male and female poplar wood carved figures with simple heads, dry buns and lower limbs, with thin grooved eyes, corners of the mouth and slightly raised nose, which are probably substitutes for the deceased, and the meaning of which is still unclear.
The local area has also unearthed a small basket of straw woven from the stems and rhizome fibers of plants, which are bulging belly-shaped and cylindrical, with round bottoms and pointed bottoms, and there are lifting beams on small baskets of different shapes. All of these are very similar to the Little River Cemetery, but the causes and conditions of the two are still difficult to determine, because there are still many differences between them.
Stone tools, woodware, pottery, bronze, iron, beads, felt hats, felt boots, silk, and "8" shaped yarn ropes have been found in the burial area, living area and its vicinity. Animal bones, fish bones, charcoal abound, and fruit tree seeds, foliage, and unidentified animal furs and droppings have been found buried in the ground.
The local copper and iron smelting sites are huge, and the broken pottery pieces, copper slag, and iron slag are everywhere, indicating that the area where the ancestors lived here is huge, the degree of civilization is quite high, and it lasted for a long time from formation to final abandonment.
The Kungang tomb group and living area are very similar to the Xiaohe Cemetery about 700 kilometers apart, but slightly different. According to the theory of river culture, the middle and lower reaches of the river are the areas where human settlements are most concentrated, and with the development of productive forces and population growth, the ancestors gradually expanded along the banks of the river to the middle and lower reaches, and the Loulan civilization in the lower reaches of the Ta River in later generations really has a deep relationship.
Ancient ancestors flourished in the Tarim River Basin. Since then, in the continuous advancement of the desert, people have had to abandon their homeland and migrate to the edge of the desert repeatedly, and now hundreds of dry riverbeds crisscross the hard and hard, and large areas of dry poplar forests can not be seen, as if telling the prosperous history of that year.
The thousand-year-old Kungang, the majestic Kunlun, the vast Gobi Desert, and the relics of the history, race and event of the Silk Ancient Road are scattered in it. The local government expects more experts and scholars to come to study, and at the same time hopes that the relevant departments of the state will provide more help for the protection of these ancient tombs.
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