"Ant, yeah. Yi'er's descendants, stinging. - The Book of Verses
In the feudal agrarian society, having more children and having more grandchildren meant that more productive resources could be obtained, so the mainland has always had the traditional idea of having many children and many blessings since ancient times. Such ideas are of course obsolete in modern times, not only because we have crossed the period of agrarian society, but also because we are aware of the cruel oppression of women imposed by "many children and many blessings". Since the reform and opening up, "women can hold up half the sky" has become the common understanding of mainland society, more and more independent women have gone out of the family to invest in social production, and the improvement of women's status has obviously driven the development of social economy. These are unimaginable to ancient women, and the burden of having children almost overwhelmed their lives.
Even in the modern era of medical development, women's childbirth is a major event that steps into the ghost door. In ancient times, medical treatment was not developed enough, the production environment was harsh, and production became a weapon to kill people. In the Qing Dynasty, there was such a woman, who fainted due to difficult childbirth, but was mistakenly sentenced by her family to die and buried in the museum, and the scene in the coffin unearthed 200 years later was miserable. What's going on?
In modern times, women have been guided by professional doctors since they are pregnant, and most of them have been hospitalized with full armed hospitals near the due date, and there are sterile delivery rooms and professional doctors to assist in childbirth. All this is the benefit of the development of modern medicine, and there was no such good thing in ancient times. Even if it is a rich family, when giving birth, it is only to ask a stable wife to help give birth, and most of them have to survive by the mother herself. If there is an accident in the production process, it is only resigned to fate.
What is even more tragic is that if a pregnant woman falls into a state of deep coma due to difficult childbirth, there is no professional doctor around, and it is easy to be misjudged as death. During the Black Death in Europe, there were many such suspended death patients who were buried alive and revived, which gave rise to the legend of the vampire. In China, the shape of the tomb coffin is more sealed, and if the suspended death is buried in the coffin and revived, it can only be fake death into real death, and it is suffocated alive in the coffin.
This is how the Qing dynasty woman was crucified alive in a coffin by her family. The accidental excavation of an ancient tomb in Heilongjiang has attracted the attention of archaeologists, and the numerous robbery caves and the specifications of the tomb all reveal the unusual identity of the tomb owner. According to archaeologists, this is a tomb from 200 years ago, and the dynasty of the owner of the tomb should be the Qing Dynasty. Most of the funerary items in the tomb have been stolen by tomb robbers, and only the coffin of the owner of the tomb has not been opened.
After careful cleaning and disposal, the experts carefully opened the coffin, and the scene inside the coffin surprised everyone. A corrupted corpse was painfully curled up inside, dead and miserable, and there was still a placenta between the legs of the corpse that had been preserved to this day, and the corpse's hand bones were worn and broken to varying degrees. From the situation in the coffin experts deduced that this is a pregnant woman, who encountered difficult childbirth during childbirth and had difficulty delivering the baby, but was exhausted and fell into a suspended animation, and did not expect to be mistaken by her family for death and put into the coffin for a hasty burial.
When she awoke in the coffin, she could only hammer the coffin, but all this was in vain, and the increasingly thin air in the coffin eventually took her life. The absurdity and pain of all this happening, which is now unimaginable suffering, but it really happened to ancient women.
This is not only a problem of the backward development of medicine, but also the legacy of the ancient idea of male superiority and female inferiority. Ancient society regarded women as appendages of men, only to set up a male and female defense to prohibit men from entering the delivery room, the limited medical knowledge of the stable mother could not give more help to the mother, and in ancient times, the lang who was allowed to study medicine was mostly male, unable to give birth on the side, and no one to judge the life and death of a comatose mother, which caused such a tragedy.
"Life is not a woman's body, a hundred years of bitterness by others." Bai Juyi said a word about the difficult situation of ancient women, and involuntarily became the biggest sorrow of their lives. Just like this Qing Dynasty woman who was buried alive, she could not live by herself, nor could she die. The vast majority of women in ancient times were born as if they were put into a square coffin, bound by body, life and mind. Perhaps they also had a flash of light of freedom, but in the end they disappeared into endless darkness.
Reading history makes people clear, tomb archaeology is talking history, is living history. Although the excavation of this tomb does not have the appearance of rare cultural relics, it exposes the cruel persecution of women by ancient feudal society with tragic bones. Striving for equality between men and women and liberating women's labor productivity is the correct direction for promoting social progress. We should cherish the freedom won by our predecessors with suffering and blood and tears, create the wealth of society with labor and hands, and let the dark evils in the four-square coffin become history forever.
Resources:
The Book of Verses
《Taihang Road》
Bacon Essay