"When a parent dies, the dog is sacrificed, and a four-way letter is made to hold the corpse." After drinking and singing, it is still suspended between the rocks of the mountain, and it is not buried in the soil as a tomb. ”
China believes in ghosts and gods, and as long as the family is not unsustainable, it will hold a decent funeral. The common method of burial in ancient China is earth burial, but in ethnic minority areas there are customs such as water burial, sky burial, cremation, etc., of which there is an unknown burial method
- Hanging coffin burial.
The earliest hanging coffin burials came from the Han Dynasty, which is dealt with in the Book of Han, and other documents such as the "Chaoye Youzai" and the "Chronicle of Foreign Objects in linhai" are also mentioned. Combining literature and field investigations, we found that hanging coffins mainly appear in Sichuan, Chongqing, Guizhou, Hubei and other places, covering one-third of China's provinces and cities.
Generally speaking, hanging coffins are hanging corpses and coffins together on cliffs, and some are used to cut holes in cliffs
Rafters
do
pile
，
Place the coffin on the pile. Some are carved out of a cliff and the coffin is placed
Stone niches
inside. Others took advantage of the terrain and placed it in a hole in the cliff. It's just that the cliff is so steep and the coffin is so heavy, how did the ancients put it up?
1978
In 2000, experts inspected Wuyi Mountain, a famous hanging coffin site in China, and used modern tools to remove a hanging coffin from the cave in an attempt to unravel the mystery of the hanging coffin. Although they have not made significant progress and cannot answer this question, they do offer a few points of view.
First, judging by the wood chips in the crevices of the cliffs, experts believe that the ancients first built a boardwalk in the cliff face, then transported the coffin up, and then dismantled the boardwalk. However, in ancient times, when there was no gunpowder and advanced tools, the difficulty of repairing the boardwalk was obvious, especially the cliff where the coffin was placed was almost vertical. Moreover, there are multiple hanging coffins on a cliff, and if they are to tear down the boardwalk, how can they be sure that it is the last coffin to be put on it? In addition, the weight of the coffin is hundreds of pounds, and it is very difficult for people to carry it on the unreliable boardwalk.
The second theory is based on ancient texts
"Asano Yuzai"
Propose, place the coffin at the top of the cliff and then put it into the cave with a rope. But this practice is also very difficult, after all, to control the heavy coffin with a small force point, it basically requires a lot of synergy.
The third theory is to use the water level, which in people's imagination may not have been high in ancient times, so that people could easily put it in. Regardless of whether the water level will change so much in thousands of years, but in terms of the meaning of hanging coffin burial, if people only put a little above the water level in order to save trouble, why not use water burial directly?
The fourth statement is more reasonable than the previous ones. Experts found that the coffin can basically be split and combined, so it can be transported separately and then put into the hole for integration, but to achieve this, it is necessary to repair the boardwalk, so in fact we have not solved the mystery of the hanging coffin.
It can be seen that although modern society is more convenient than ancient times, the ancients still did many things that modern people could not do, and the wisdom crystallization of ancient people was indeed admirable.
Nowadays, The Dragon and Tiger Mountain in Jiangxi, the Hanging Coffin of The Stone Gate,
Hanging coffins
、
Dragon River Rock Coffin
Wuyi Mountain Jiuqu Creek
There are hanging coffins in other places, and those who want to know can go to these scenic spots to watch.