As we all know, table salt is an indispensable seasoning in our lives, table salt contains trace elements needed by the human body, if people do not eat salt for a long time or salt intake is too small, it is easy to induce various diseases. It is recorded in the "Sayings" that those who are born are called brine, and those who cook are called salt. Legend has it that during the Yellow Emperor's period, there was a prince named Su sha, who boiled and brine with seawater and fried it into salt, and the colors were blue, yellow, white, black, and purple. Chinese began to boil salt around the time of the Shennong (Yandi) and Yellow Emperors, and the salt in ancient China was boiled with seawater. In the 1950s, cultural relics were unearthed in Fujian, including salt frying utensils, proving that the ancients in the Yangshao period had learned to cook sea salt. According to the above information and physical evidence, in China, the origin of salt is as far as the Yanhuang Era five thousand years ago, and the inventor Su Shashi was the originator of the seawater salt cooking with fire, and later generations revered it as "Salt Sect". Today I want to tell you that the discovery of prehistoric salt industry sites in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, has become the earliest empirical evidence of the ancient salt industry in the mainland.
Back in the 1980s, villagers in Xiachang Village, Daxie Development Zone, Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, accidentally found some stone hammers and other utensils when they were firing kilns to collect soil. In 2008, during the third national census of cultural relics, the existence of the site was first confirmed, when the site was named "Dongyue Palace Ruins". In September 2015, in order to cooperate with the local economic construction in Ningbo, Zhejiang, the Ningbo Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology conducted preliminary archaeological investigation, exploration and test excavation of the site, and the preliminary discovery site preservation area was about 20,000 square meters. Among them, the first phase of excavation covers an area of 4,000 square meters, and found 4 tombs, 5 stove pits, 66 ash pits, 2 ash ditches, 18 sintered surfaces and several wooden piles. More than 50 various relics from prehistory to the Song and Yuan dynasties have been found, and the relics have mainly unearthed a large number of pottery and stone tools, as well as a small number of bones, wood, bamboo weaving, as well as more land and marine animal bones and plant cores.
The excavation area of the second phase reached 4,000 square meters, and 27 salt stoves, 5 ash pits, 2 pottery piles and 18 salt waste piles were found. The relics are mainly excavated with more pottery and a small number of stone tools, as well as bones of land and marine animals. Carbon fourteen chronology of carbon samples collected near the salt stove and in the salt waste heap can be traced to be dating from about 2400-2100 BC. The second phase of the remains of the soil platform fill contains more white small particles of nodules, which contain a large amount of calcium carbonate, through oxygen isotope analysis, it was found that its precipitation temperature is about 37 degrees, which may be deposited from calcium carbonate deposition after precipitation in the process of solar and concentrated brine; the calcium carbonate powder on the excavated clay pot fragments has also experienced a higher temperature, indicating that the clay pot should have had some form of heating. Comprehensive scientific and technological testing results, combined with related relics, and after several rounds of expert argumentation, it is believed that they are related to the salt-making activities of the ancients, and there are steps of sun-based concentration and heating brine in the salt-making process.
Judging from the pottery and stone tool specimens excavated from the excavations, the era in which the main cultural relics are located should be in the middle and late Liangzhu culture in the prehistoric period to the Stage of Qianshan Yang Culture. The preservation of the site is relatively good, the cultural accumulation is relatively rich, and it is relatively rare to find such well-preserved prehistoric cultural sites on the island. The discovery of salt-making remains in the second phase of the Daxie site is the earliest evidence of the manufacture of sea salt in the coastal area of the mainland for the first time, and provides an important clue for discussing the early salt production problem in the coastal area of eastern Zhejiang. In addition, the daxie site has a unique geographical location, which can be said to be a bridge for cultural exchanges, dissemination and population migration between the Ningshao Plain and the Zhoushan Islands in the prehistoric and Shang zhou periods, and has certain research value for the changes in the island environment, human-land relations and foreign exchanges, as well as island culture and marine civilization in this period.