Text/Light and Shadow Science
Editing/Light and Shadow Science
As the old saying goes: there is a house of gold in the book, and there is a beautiful jade in the book.
In 1963, Yunnan villager Li Mou dug up a "golden house" in a nearby quarry, and after the news came out, it caused a sensation in the archaeological community!
Because it weighs 5,000 pounds, even the experts present doubt life!
Xiangyun Dabona bronze coffin
The quarry dug out a gold house
One day in the 1960s, Yunnan, China.
Villager Old Li Zheng and his five companions were very busy, they held shovels in their hands, and they planed the soil out one by one, only listening to the sound of "bang", as if they had touched something.
With doubt, everyone lifted the gravel in front of them, only to see that in the wet soil, a section of dark wood appeared in front of everyone's eyes.
"Hey, what's this?"
At first, Lao Li thought that this was just a small fallen tree, but Lao Zhao in the team disagreed, his ancestors were carpenters for three generations, and the "ebony" in front of him aroused his interest:
He leaned down carefully and began to fiddle with it, while muttering quietly, "Strange, we haven't grown ebony here for many years, where did this thing come from?" ”
"Why do you care so much?" This thing is thick and hard, just pulled home to make furniture! ”
Yes, even the paint is saved when making the bed board!
So the five men rounded their arms and began to dig up hard, and in a few moments they cut out a pile of wood.
"It just so happens that one of the five of us is a person, and we don't have to fight."
Before the words could be heard, Old Zhao on the side exclaimed, "Look, there is water seeping underneath!" ”
Only to see the place where the wood was dug out, I don't know when it fell, this time it is spraying water outward, watching the water flow getting bigger and bigger, Old Li picked up a wooden stick and went under the water.
"Boom, boom," a sweet metallic sound, echoes through the air.
The sound was so strange that all five people were stunned, and at this time, they never dreamed that there would be something in the water, let alone realize that this stick would actually "knock out" a national treasure!
When the water had slowly receded, the five men were busy again, and they shaved out the sediment and wood one by one, and it didn't matter, a few hours passed, because there were too many of them, and they were tired and sweaty.
When all the garbage was removed, a huge earth pit appeared on the originally flat ground, and in the middle stood a rusty metal house.
"Oh my God, what is this?"
Because no one had ever seen it, the five men carefully gathered around and gently tapped it with their hands, only to find that the house was actually made of copper.
With the courage of the artist, Old Li picked up the shovel and opened the "roof", and looked inside, because the time was too long, the area was full of silt.
"Look around, maybe there are other treasures"
Under the reminder of Lao Zhao, the partners began to rub around, and as a result, in the corner, they found two circles similar to bracelets.
Old Li took it and put it in the palm of his hand, but before he could make it, it shattered into slag.
Scenario restore
"This thing is too untouchable"
It was too late, it was fast, and a surprise came from the corner: "Come on, I've found something good!" ”
A few people looked over and were so frightened that they almost peed their pants
"Bones, this seems to be human bones!"
Only to see a white bone, embedded in the soil, unusually terrifying!
"Oh, it's unlucky, whose grave is this?"
This is the most unfortunate in the countryside, old Li a few crying and mournful face, hurriedly planning to leave, but before leaving, still worried about this golden house. Fortunately, the house in the tomb is composed of a mortise and mortise structure, which is not difficult to dismantle.
After some tossing, the copper house was demolished into seven huge copper plates, and Old Li borrowed a trolley and happily pulled it back to the village.
When I arrived home, this "house" actually weighed 5,000 pounds.
Old Li was so happy that he couldn't find the north in an instant, a few old guys couldn't close their mouths happily, and the people in the village were even more like you said a word, praising Old Li for his good luck and making a fortune!
At that time, it was the era of the planned economy, and there was a shortage of materials, and to buy meat and oil, we had to rely on food stamps.
According to the market price of old Li, this house is just selling scrap iron, a pound of a dollar, you can earn more than 5,000 yuan! At that time, this money was definitely a sky-high price, enough for him to marry his daughter-in-law and build a house.
Because for the time being, before they could think about how to deal with this treasure, several people temporarily hid the copper plate in Lao Li's house.
Unexpectedly, in the middle of the night, he walked out of the wind and learned that a "golden house" had been dug up nearby, and the village party secretary and people blocked the cemetery and urgently reported the situation to the higher department.
Four days later, the province sent a team of experts to the tomb and began a large-scale investigation.
It turned out that a few years ago, a military airport runway was built at the location of the tomb, because a steep slope was formed at the front of the tomb, which was discovered by Lao Li and his gang.
At this time, Old Li was still squatting in the room in a daze, where would he expect that he had "stabbed a treasure trove of heaven"!
With the development of the rescue work, all kinds of funerary items have been seen one by one, from sharp weapons to exquisite bronze bells, each of which can be called a national treasure level cultural relics.
In particular, the "golden house" that Lao Li found should be a bronze coffin, which was determined by experts.
It is exquisitely made, painted with a pattern in the style of auspicious clouds, which must have come from an extraordinary source!
The truth of the "Golden House" was revealed, and experts called it incredible
A week later, all the excavated artifacts were pulled back to the institute, especially this huge "golden house", which attracted the attention of the expert group.
After measurement, it is about 200 cm long, 62 cm wide, 64 cm high and 1.2 cm thick. The entire room is made up of a traditional tenon technique, with a total of seven copper plates, and the top of the house also protrudes from a spire-like structure, with the bottom as the main support point.
This shape of the coffin, in the archaeological community has a proper term - "pole railing coffin", because of the complex shape, harsh materials, historically often used for big people.
Don't look at it as just a bronze product, but because it weighs 5,000 pounds, its value has already exceeded real gold and silver! It is not too much to say that it is worth a fortune, and it is at least hundreds of millions of dollars on the market!
On the top of the whole coffin, there are also carved a variety of vivid and meticulous ornaments, bird and beast patterns, Thunder snake patterns are interspersed, looking both mysterious and solemn, such a large bronze coffin, let alone see the light is incredible.
Because of the fear of collapsing underground, the entire coffin is supported by a huge wooden frame, and between the wood and the wood, it is firmly sealed with mud, and in order to isolate the erosion of groundwater, a large amount of lime, charcoal and other moisture-proof materials are also placed at the bottom of the coffin.
These measures resulted in the entire burial chamber, constituting a closed environment, so that the bronze coffin was preserved and was not corroded by a large area.
During the entire cleanup process, the most common phrase the experts said was "unbelievable."
To know that thousands of years ago, human beings have not mastered advanced metallurgical casting technology, making such a large bronze coffin is simply a fool's dream, but the reality is that it was indeed built, and it stands in front of us.
In order to show honor, archaeologists named this coffin "Xiangyun Dabona Bronze Coffin", and it has become the largest surviving bronze coffin on the mainland.
The mortise and mortise structure on it has shocked future generations and reflected the ancient superb metallurgical technology of the mainland.
The secret behind the bronze coffin
With the advent of the bronze coffin of Xiangyun Dabo, the debate about its owner began.
Because of the age and the destruction of the environment, experts can only hope for some surviving evidence.
As is customary, they extracted some substances from the inside of the coffin and sent them to the institute for carbon-14 testing.
According to the instruments, the coffin is dated to about 2350 plus or minus 75 years ago, that is, the late Warring States period.
But this conclusion was soon questioned, and in the latest Carbon 14 test, the results issued by Peking University showed that the bronze coffin of Xiangyun Dabo was located in the middle of the Warring States period.
That is to say, there are huge differences about the age of the burial of the tomb owner, in addition, the identity of the tomb owner is also confusing.
Because according to the records of the ancients, there were only two different tribes in the history of Yunnan, namely the "Dian people" and the "Kunming people".
They have lived in the Erhai and Dianchi lakes for generations, but their living habits are very different from each other, the Dian people are deeply influenced by the Central Plains and like to farm, while the Kunming people mostly live by grazing.
Sima Qian, a famous historian of the Northern Song Dynasty, once described the life of these two tribes in the book.
A new question was born: whether it was the Dian people who were good at cultivating land, or the Kunming people who lived by water and grass, they did not look like a race that could cast huge bronzes, so the question is, who is the owner of this auspicious cloud and big wave bronze coffin?
There is still debate in the academic community on this issue.
Fortunately, one thing is certain, the owner of the tomb must have been rich or expensive, because in this tomb, a large number of bronze artifacts have been excavated, which also include things similar to scepters.
According to the productivity of the time, this indicates that the owner of the tomb was probably a figure of the level of princes and nobles, and some people even speculated that the real owner of the bronze coffin of Xiangyun Dabo should be a king.
Mysterious blue bones
Just as everyone was arguing about the owner of the tomb, in 2014, good news came from the excavation site!
During an archaeological process, experts found a brown material that resembled a human bone, and then found a number of remaining bones and teeth in an area of two meters.
At first, archaeologists worried that the bones were left by animals, after all, the tomb has passed thousands of years, but the results showed a surprise: the bones unearthed in the tomb belong to human bones.
When they learned that human bones had been found, the researchers cheered! A few days later, another piece of good news came: on some of the bones that had been found, a blue substance appeared, and as the excavations continued, more and more human bones were found, almost filling the ground.
So the question is, what are these blue things? Does it have anything to do with human bones?
After investigation, most of the human bones unearthed in the tomb are between 20 and 25 years old, which means that these people are at the strongest age in life, and those blue substances, according to the instruments, are a mineral called "ferrous phosphate".
According to archaeologists, this was used to dispose of dead bones, which is not uncommon in history.
Not far from the tomb, in Binchuan, Dali, researchers once found a red human bone in an ancient tomb covered with minerals similar to ferrous phosphate.
From this, experts speculate that this bone with blue minerals should belong to a person of prominent position before he died.
In this way, all the puzzles will be solved, Old Li they found should be a huge secondary burial group, and the owner of the tomb must be rich and noble, because the luxurious bronze coffin can prove it, as for who his surname is, there is still time to answer.
Today, the bronze coffin of Xiangyun Dabona has become a star in the field of cultural relics in the mainland, and has been placed in the Yunnan Provincial Museum to be admired by enthusiasts all over the world.
There are even many countries that hope to take this bronze coffin to their territory and slowly admire it!
However, because most of the traditional coffins in the mainland are carved from jade wood, the xiangyun Dabona copper coffin is the only bronze coffin, so it is strictly protected.
Every time the museum is open, it will be crowded with tourists in front of it, and everyone will rush to see the relics of a thousand years ago, and the mouth can't stop marveling!
Even the owner of the tomb did not expect that the Warring States coffin thousands of years ago had actually become the treasure of posterity.
Whenever the light flashed, the cloud patterns and animal figures on it seemed to be alive, dancing the dances of the ancient period and celebrating the inheritance of Chinese civilization.