"The beauty of stone is called jade" This is the definition of jade in the "Explanation of Words". Since ancient times, people have a natural liking for jade, but if it is not carefully carved, then jade is just a "beautiful stone", but how did the ancients cut jade? In the excavated Sanxingdui cultural relics, we can spy some information, what is the situation? Let me reveal the secrets to you.
Most of the jade excavated from the monuments in the Central Plains are accessories, but the Sanxingdui jade is mainly based on ceremonial tools: jade, jade bi and jade ding are common types, in addition, there are ge, mao, qi, knives, etc. in the honor guard, of course, there are also tools, such as jade axes, jade shovels and jade hammers, but they have always belonged to the minority. In the Sanxingdui jade, there are many unknown artifacts, there is a large jade knife up to one meter long, with intricate ornaments, which makes it neither like a ceremonial instrument nor a weapon; there is also a jade that looks like a ge, and the front even highlights the shape of a bird, but these unknown identity jade objects also show us the mystery of Sanxingdui.
In the early morning of late spring 1974, the town of Sanshui in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, began to smoke early, and most of the farmers in the village got up early, and there was always something to do in the fields. Villager Luo Xiongbao is no exception, not to mention that he has something to do today, in order to ensure sufficient domestic water, the village has to send people to dredge the river every year, and this year it is his turn to work. Luo Xiongbao came to the riverbed with a hoe on his back, and hoeed down one after another, but after a few hoes went down, he felt something abnormal.
He felt that the ground was particularly hard, there should be a huge stone, so he slowly began to dig out the outline of the boulder, but the more he dug, the more surprised he became, because he gradually determined that this was definitely not an ordinary stone, they were four in total, each one was a cubic meter large, and the color was very peculiar, it was a typical flower color jade. Because people had found treasures in this river decades ago, Luo Xiongbao felt that this should be a treasure, so he quickly put down his hoe and invited local archaeologists.
In the process of detailed research, the experts had a windfall, and there were strange cutting marks on the huge jade. When the ancients cut jade material, they all used "soft cutting", that is, using a thick rope to stick to the quartz sand, and then pulling the rope back and forth, repeatedly using the role of friction, and finally splitting the jade blank. But the cutting marks on these jade stones are very strange, they are high on both sides and low in the middle, and this cut mark is definitely not the role of quartz sand, but rather like the cutting of modern wheel saws.
Have the Sanxingdui people learned to make wheel saws? Experts tell us that this is not impossible, because the most developed sanxingdui civilization is not jade, but bronze. The bronzes unearthed from the Sanxingdui site are very rich in shape, and it is also an easy thing to make a bronze wheel-shaped saw blade, and the "sharp weapon" cut jade made of bronze should be better than soft cutting according to the reason.
Next, we may as well venture to guess the source of power for cutting Sanxingdui jade: in ancient times, the Duck River must have been a very wide river, so there was a steady stream of water, and the clever ancient Shu people were likely to take advantage of this. We create a wheeled cutting machine powered by water power. But all this is speculation, if there is really such a machine, then we should find its remains from the ground, at least can also find bronze saw blades, until this kind of saw blade is found, everything can only be speculation.
Today, these four huge jade blanks lie quietly in the sanxingdui museum, and the secrets they "hide" are still waiting for archaeologists to crack. I believe that one day, the relevant cultural relics will break through the ground, and this secret will eventually be revealed.
Source: 1. "Complete Record of Cultural Relics Unearthed in Sanxingdui", Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology; published by Tiandi Publishing House
2. "Sanxingdui Tuzhi" by Sichuan Provincial Local History Compilation Committee; published by Sichuan People's Publishing House