In ancient times, the ancients paid attention to "seeing death as life", and after death, they would bring the living utensils used before their lives, as well as slaves, gold and silver, into the tomb, so as to continue to enjoy glory and wealth after death.
Even Emperor Wen of Han, who advocated "thin burial", the "Records of History" recorded him: "The tombs are all made of tiles, and must not be decorated with gold, silver, copper and tin, and do not treat the graves, but want to be a province, and do not bother the people." ”。 Despite this, there is no ambiguity in the burial items, at present, the Shaanxi Provincial Archaeological Research Institute has carried out archaeological work on the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, of which more than 1,000 pieces of various types of ceramic figurines and more than 3,000 pieces of gold, silver, copper, iron and pottery cultural relics have been excavated.
In the southwest of the Jiangcun Tomb, there are 23 Han tombs, although these tombs were seriously stolen, but the largest tomb still unearthed more than 2,000 pieces of jade clothing, which is obviously a fragment of golden jade clothing. More than 200 precious cultural relics such as figurines, pottery chimes, and chimes have also been unearthed.
In fact, there are many cultural relics such as "yellow intestine inscriptions", "golden jade clothes" and "jade coffins" with very high specifications unearthed in the tombs of high nobles of the Han Dynasty. Even if it is a thin burial, for ordinary people,these funerary items still have a very great temptation.
These rich funerary items are not only the ideas of the commoners, but also the ideas of the ancient tombs in the years of turmoil. For example, in order to pay the army, Cao Cao specially set up an army to rob tombs, and the official position of "Lieutenant Touching Gold" came from here.
There are tomb robbery, there are anti-theft means, the ancients in order to let themselves not be disturbed by people after death, in the anti-theft means of a lot of ways, one of the types of tombs is specially built for anti-theft, it is "sand tomb".
Sand Tombs
Jisha tomb, that is, the sealing layer in the tomb does not use the original soil, but uses fine sand to fill the ancient tomb, but if you want to achieve the effect of anti-theft, but also the sand tomb is deep enough, Guo Zhuang Chu tomb is an ancient tomb in the early Warring States period, the tomb form is also a sand tomb, and the depth of the tomb is about 21 meters, so deep tomb, so that the sand tomb can play its anti-theft skills.
We know that sand has mobility, and most of the ancient tomb robbers were small-scale team crimes, and it was difficult to use the method of large top removal when robbing tombs, and often used the way of digging a robbery hole to approach the coffin.
The advantage of the sand tomb is that when the tomb robbers hit the robbery hole, the quicksand will roll, and when the tomb robber digs deep enough, the sand collapses, which will not only block the robbery hole, but also bury the tomb robber into it.
The upgraded version of the Sand Tomb will also put stones in the sand, and when the quicksand rolls, the boulders fall, which can better prevent theft.
The mainland once found a large sand tomb in the suburbs of Xiangyang, Hubei Province, this sand tomb has more than 200 large and small pirate caves of different periods, many of which are ancient robbery caves, and in these robbery caves, archaeologists have excavated more than 80 remains, and it is precisely because of this that the sand tomb is also known as "China's first murderous tomb", the general tomb robbers do not dare to build the idea of the sand tomb, but also make the cultural relics of the sand tomb usually protected.
For example: Guo Zhuang Chu tomb is a sand tomb, although it was stolen here, but the anti-theft effect in the core area of the tomb is better, more than 1,000 precious cultural relics have been unearthed, which shows that the anti-theft effect is still very good.
Why are the tombs of Jisha all large tombs?
For tomb robbers, the sand tomb is a murderous tomb, the general thief does not dare to dig, but for archaeologists, the sand tomb is a treasure, first of all, because the demand for sand in the sand tomb is very large, and the ancients have a weak transportation capacity, and the ability to build a sand tomb for themselves is not rich or expensive, and the cultural relics must be very exquisite and have great archaeological value.
On the other hand, the anti-theft effect of the ancient tombs in Jisha is very good, and there will be no situation of "ten tombs and nine empty spaces", even if the stolen tomb thieves have stolen, there are still cultural relics unearthed.
To say more here, under normal circumstances, even if archaeologists discover the existence of ancient tombs, they rarely take the initiative to excavate. This is because once the cultural relics are separated from the ancient tomb environment, they will be irreversibly damaged or changed, for example, the terracotta warriors have color when they are first excavated, but they will disappear after a while. Archaeologists generally do not take the initiative to excavate ancient tombs until there are measures to better protect cultural relics.
But if there are robbery holes in ancient tombs, or floods, subways, etc., in order to protect cultural relics, archaeologists will generally carry out rescue excavations, which is why archaeologists always chase after tomb robbers, and even clean up the mess left by tomb robbers, such as: tomb robbers died in the robbery caves.
Another difference between archaeologists and tomb robbers is that archaeology is about protecting artifacts, not for money, and every work of archaeological work is documented, including not limited to when excavations, excavation environments, etc., to provide data support for subsequent research and conservation. On the other hand, the cultural relics excavated by archaeology will be exhibited to the public, such as the cultural relics in the Sanxingdui site, showing us the splendid culture of the ancient Shu kingdom.
Archaeologists are also able to fill in history or corroborate it with historical records. For example, the Tomb no. 1 of The Duke of Qin unearthed a yellow intestine inscription, and the yellow intestine inscription is a tomb specification that can only be used by Zhou Tianzi, which also shows that the ambition of the Qin State to dominate the world has long existed.
Therefore, in the days to come, we must not associate archaeologists with tomb robbers.