The ancient funerary customs of the mainland can be described as diverse in form and in very different styles. There are ancient and mysterious water burials, there are warm and noble cremations, and there are cumbersome and solemn heavenly burials. Most of these funerary customs have gradually disappeared with the development of modern civilization, and it is difficult to find them.
However, there are still some peculiar ancient funerary remains, which have been preserved intact and are still clearly visible today.
(Hanging coffin staying on a cliff)
Hanging coffin burial is a very unique funerary method in ancient times, it is widely distributed in Sichuan, Guizhou and other southwest regions, and there are still many such ruins.
In Sichuan's Juan County, there are still as many as 250 hanging coffins, quietly resting on a cliff in Luobiao Town. On both sides of the Three Gorges of the Yangtze River, there are also more than 300 hanging coffin monuments. In places such as Ziyun Ge cong in Anshun, Guizhou, archaeologists have also found more than 600 coffins in cliff caves.
These hanging coffins are nothing more than three forms, one is the wooden stake type, that is, the wooden stake is embedded in the cliff face and the coffin is placed on the wooden stake; the second is the rock drilling type, where the ancients chiseled the rock as a hole and placed the coffin inside. The third is the cave type, the ancients looked for a dry and ventilated cave with a rock wall, and put their relatives into the cave after burial.
Either way, these hanging coffins are always erected on cliffs ranging from tens to hundreds of meters above the ground, forming a spectacular hanging coffin monument.
So, who is buried in these hanging coffins? How did the ancients place coffins on the cliffs?
According to expert research, most people believe that the owner of the hanging coffin was a servant who lived around 250 BC.
The History of the Servants in Chinese history has thousands of years, and in the historical documents from the beginning of the Xia Dynasty, there are records of the Servants, which continue until the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. During the Zhou Dynasty, they had already established a powerful ancient marquisate.
In ancient times, the servants paid attention to "living in the mountains and dying as a mountain burial". Therefore, some scholars believe that the hanging coffin in Juxian County was left by the earliest servants. Later generations of servants wandered in all directions and reached Guizhou, which is adjacent to Sichuan, and also brought this funeral custom there, leaving behind a misty hanging coffin site.
(Ritual Dance)
Some people also believe that the hanging coffin is buried by the ancient Baiyue people 3,000 years ago, or that it is nearly a thousand years later than the servants.
Why did the ancients bury their loved ones in the form of hanging coffins?
Legend has it that this is related to Zhuge Liang. It is said that before Zhuge Liang died, he found two henchmen, gave them a military book that he had spent his life writing, and his own sword, and instructed them to pack two treasures in a coffin, place them on a cliff that no one could climb, and seal them permanently.
Of course, this was only because of Zhuge Liang's god-like presence in Shuzhong that the mystery of the hanging coffin was transplanted to his body, which was not to be believed.
The reason why the ancients placed the coffin on the rock wall is because the ancients had great reverence for the landscape in which they lived. They revere nature and cling to the flowing waters of the mountains. Therefore, after death, they must also be buried in the mountains and rivers, preferably on the cliffs. In this way, it returns to the embrace of nature and is protected from the invasion of the remains by wild beasts.
So, how did the ancients transport the coffins?
Most of the coffins on the cliffs are carved from single-rooted nan wood, and very few are spliced. Some are boat-shaped, some are house-shaped, some weigh more than a thousand pounds, and the lightest ones are nearly 200 pounds. The place where the hanging coffin is placed, whether it is a wooden stake type or a cave type, is tens of meters or even more than 100 meters above the water surface from the peak and below, and the individual hanging coffins are even more than 200 meters, and the upper and lower left and right are extremely steep stone walls.
In ancient times, when there was no modern equipment, how did the ancients place such a heavy coffin on a cliff where the water was rushing and the birds and beasts could not climb?
(Hanging coffin)
Scholars have proposed four approaches.
The first is to build a boardwalk law.
The ancients first cut holes along the cliffs, then punched thick wooden stakes into the holes, then laid wooden planks on them, approached the location of the coffin step by step, and finally destroyed these boardwalks.
However, the construction of the boardwalk first appeared in the Qin and Han Dynasties. In the era of the formation of the hanging coffin, iron tools have not yet appeared, and it is undoubtedly a very difficult project to dig a hole in the hard cliff and build a boardwalk.
The second is
rampart
• Soil construction method.
This method is similar to the ancient method of building large ground tombs, the ancients piled up soil from the bottom of the mountain to the mouth of the cave, put the coffin in, and then transported the soil away. However, this method cannot explain the placement of the hanging coffin at the waterfront.
(Hanging Coffin Hometown)
The third is the theory of geological change.
People of this view believe that thousands of years ago, the water level of rivers was much higher than it is now, and it was at that time that ancient people drove canoes and placed coffins in their current positions. When the water level gradually decreased, it naturally formed the hanging coffin site that people see today.
However, geologists are opposed to this claim. They argue that even thousands of years of vicissitudes are not enough to see such a large drop in water level unless there is a large geological change. But in the area where the hanging coffin appeared, there has been no major geological change for thousands of years. Otherwise, the hanging coffin on the cliff would have long ceased to exist.
The fourth is the noose completion method.
The ancients set up a winch at the top of the mountain, tied the rope to the coffin, hung down from the top of the mountain, and reached the position of the hanging coffin, and then the people inside the cave or on the cliff grabbed the tow rope and slowly placed the coffin on the stake or inside the cave.
This method should be in line with the actual situation at that time, and the ancients were also capable of completing it. The only problem was to find ropes that were long and strong enough to help them place the coffin, which was actually quite difficult. You know, thousands of years ago, there was no nylon rope today, and even hemp rope did not appear.
In short, these hanging coffins are still full of mysteries,
(Reference: The Unsolved Mystery of China, etc.)