Qilu Evening News Qilu One Point reporter Guo Chunyu Wang Kaizhi
If you don't pay attention to the west of Xiaoxu Village, Qidu Town, Linzi District, Zibo City, this place is actually no different from other crop fields in the village.
The ears that had been blown by the wind hurt, and the wheat that had just endured the winter shrugged its head, and it had not yet woken up from the cold of winter. Stepping over the path between the fields, Dong Wenbin, deputy research librarian of the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, pointed to the archaeological site in front of him, "After nearly 5 years of archaeological excavations, it can be determined that this is the site of the Minoru Gakuen Palace." ”
After more than 2,000 years of time, the Minoru Gakuen Palace came from the dusty loess. As the leader of the Jixia Xuegong Archaeological Project, Dong Wenbin's "confirmation" of the site can only be regarded as the beginning of the archaeology of the Minoru Gakugu Project, and there are more unsolved mysteries waiting to be solved. "Our current location is the square of the Minoru Gakuen Palace, the equivalent of a school playground, where the ancients probably played a game of bow a thousand years ago."
The archaeological site of the building base site group outside the west gate of the small city of Qi
Look for it in the vast texts
According to professional sayings, the yellow rammed earth foundation site in front of you is the "group of building sites outside the west gate of the small city of Qi". As a historical site, it is not very ornamental: there are several rows of earth pits with broken walls with faint outlines of the old days, each with a detailed number on it, and workers are cleaning up the loess used for thermal insulation in winter.
Occasionally, one or two pieces of broken tiles appear in the pit, and there will be a faint pattern on it.
Other than that, it's really "unremarkable" here. However, on top of this undisturbed loess, experts believe that it was here that "the first university in ancient China" appeared: the Minoru Xuegong.
Jixia Xuegong, the world's earliest government-run institution of higher learning, is also the earliest "Academy of Social Sciences" and "government think tank" in China, which was founded in the Qi Huan Gongtian Noon period. "稷" is the name of a city gate in LinziCheng, the capital of the State of Qi, so it is named "Jixia Xuegong" because the Xuegong is located near the Jimen Gate.
Minoru Gakuen Ishigaku is the world's first officially organized, privately hosted institution of higher learning in a special form. This rare and spectacular "hundred schools of thought" in the history of Chinese academic thought is centered on the Qi GuojiXia Xuegong. During this period, academic works came out one after another, among which the authors of books such as "Guan Zi", "Yanzi Chunqiu", "Sima Fa", and "Zhou Guan" were basically people under the command of Ji Xia.
As the earliest and largest state-run university hall in Chinese history, the Minoru Gakuen Palace and the Greek Academy (also known as the Acadmi College and plato Academy) that appeared in Athens at about the same time can be called double- They are the world's earliest ideological and academic cultural centers integrating higher education and academic research, and they show the wisdom of early human civilization in similar ways in the east and west of the world.
This once glorious ancient institution in Chinese history has been gradually buried in the dust of thousands of years of history.
Dong Wenbin was at the scene
Compared with other archaeological projects, the search for the ruins of Minoru Gakugu Shrine is more difficult. As a university, the significance of Minoru Gakuen is more in its historical and cultural status, which means that the cultural relics it can excavate and study are very limited. More than a generation of archaeologists and historians have wanted to trace the ruins of minoru Gakugu, but because the time is too long and the clues are too slim to be determined.
The only clue is the grass snake gray line-like record in the vast classic literature: Liu Xiang of the Western Han Dynasty said to the "Beilu": "Qi has Jimen, Qicheng gate is also." The "Record of Qi Di" written by Yan Mo of the Southern Yan Kingdom during the Sixteen Kingdoms period stated: "On the west side of the west gate of Qicheng, there are lecture rooms on the left and right sides of the water, and the toes are often stored", "Outside the west gate of Linzi City, there is an ancient lecture hall, the foundation pillar still exists, and the Qi Xuanwang Repair Literature Office also".
Various records indicate that the location of the Minoru Xuegong is located on the "west side of Qicheng City" and "west of Linzi City", and there are waters nearby. The records that emerge from these historical books and classics have also been keenly captured, and have become the clues for posterity to pursue the Minoru Gakuen.
A relay race spanning decades
Finding the location of Minoru Gakugu is a relay race.
Generations of archaeologists have explored and recorded in the vast dust and smoke of history, and after the founding of New China, even Mr. Guo Moruo has passionately joined this relay race. In the pursuit of generations, the time came to 2017, and the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology set up an archaeological team in the ancient city of Linzi Qiguo and began to focus on the search for the Jixia Xuegong.
Floor plan of the building site
Dong Wenbin still remembers that when he first arrived near the west of Xiaoxu Village in Qidu Town, it was just a flat wheat field. Although we have a large number of clues about the location of the Minoru Gakuen Palace, it is difficult to find monuments from more than 2,000 years old from this crop field that is not at all unusual.
"We use a lot of methods to find detection, not only through advanced equipment, but also through experience to analyze." Dong Wenbin scratched his head a little bitterly, "I can't say about experience, because it's too complicated, this is the accumulation of my archaeology for more than ten years." Luckily, though, we found it. ”
The archaeological team conducted large-scale detailed exploration of the old city and the west side of the small city, found a large-scale Han Dynasty settlement outside the west gate of the small city, and found a large-scale rammed earth building base site group outside the west gate of the small city, a total of 14 single building sites; in 2019, the archaeological team also conducted a test excavation of the No. 5 base site in the building base site group outside the west gate of the small city, confirming that it belonged to a long strip of large rammed earth foundation site, and found ash pits that broke the building foundation site on the west side of the excavation area, and a large number of Qi Dao Coin Qianfan fragments were excavated.
Money Fan Pit
However, based on the discovery of more than ten building sites, it is not possible to determine that this is the site of the Minoru Gakuen Palace. There are two questions that have not been solved: First, what is the relationship between the location of the excavated Qian Fan and the architectural site? Second, is the complex walled, and what is its overall layout?
Archaeologists gathered to comb through the documents, look at the drawings, analyze the landform, and re-explore the site carefully. The breakthrough appeared in 2020, and the archaeological team soon found that there were trenches on the south, west and north sides of the building base group, and the inner wall of the south trench remained, and there was no trench between the small city of Qi Gucheng, but found a north-south road, north of the west gate of the small city, and the south side may lead to the south gate of the small city. At the same time, it was found that the outer trenches of the building base site group were connected with the moats of the small city, and the two formed an integrated pattern. An east-west square was also found between the south wall and the base of Building 11. As for the excavation of Qian Fan's ruins, the original building site was broken and belonged to the late Warring States period.
All kinds of evidence point to the "Minoru Gakuen Palace".
"If there's only one clue, it could be a coincidence, but with so many coincidences superimposed on top of each other, it's no longer a coincidence." Dong Wenbin told the Qilu Evening News Qilu One Point reporter, "Based on all the clues, we can be sure that this is the site of the Minoru Xuegong." ”
A thousand years have passed, and it has long been a sea of mulberry fields, but there are always some traces left, "The location of the Minoru Gakugu Ruins is relatively low-lying, and there was indeed a lake before, until the construction was carried out in the 50s, and the lake was drained." Dong Wenbin said, and this is also in line with the Northern Wei geographer Li Daoyuan's "Water Commentary on Zishui" record: "The water flows north of the city, the west of the Yang gate, and the water has a place of old sealing, the so-called Qi Zhi jixia also."
Minoru Gakuya, "Magnificent Moriya"
With the determination of the ruins of the Minoru Gakugu Shrine, this highest institution of learning a thousand years ago is slowly unveiling its mysterious veil.
"We performed a carbon fourteenth yearning of the soil layer beneath the square, and the results showed that it was 400 BC to 390 BC, which was just earlier than the Tian Qi Huan Gong period. Historical records record that the Minoru Gakuen Palace began with the Duke of Qi Huan, so the carbon fourteen determination and the time recorded in the literature are also in line with the time. Dong Wenbin said that it was this archaeological excavation that found hardened squares, and also found drainage pipes from thousands of years ago, and these buildings have high historical research value. This also proves Sima Guang's description of the architecture of the Jixia Xuegong in the "Jixia Fu": "Build a huge room, Linkang Qu ... The high gate is crossed, the summer house has a long eaves, the bottle is clear and clean, and the staff is clear and strict."
"In the excavations in 2019 and 2020, we found a large number of building elements with paving tiles and a small amount of screw decoration, which proved that these buildings were of high specification and that drainage pipes were pre-buried in the walls of the building site, so the complex was designed and built in an integrated way." From the bits and pieces of these relics, we can glimpse the grand situation when the Jixia Academy Palace gathered the world's sages and opened the hundred schools of thought:
Schools of thought gather, celebrities gather, the number of people as many as "hundreds of thousands". During the reign of King Xuan, at one time, seventy-six scholars under the jixia were "all given the title of Shang Dafu and discussed when they were not cured", that is, they gave high-ranking officials Houlu instead of having to take care of government affairs and specialized in teaching and research.
In his article "On the General Trend of Changes in Chinese Academic Thought", Liang Qichao passionately described the situation of the controversy between the hundred schools of thought in the Warring States: "Kong North and Old South, confrontation and confrontation, nine streams and ten families, and follow the track and do together." Like a spring thunder, all green qi thrives in the vast field, like a volcano exploding, and hot stones flying in the sky. Magnificent! The grand view of non-special Chinese academic circles is also the great deed of world academic history. And believes that this is the historical song of "before the air to rob, after the dust".
In the course of more than 150 years of history, the Jixia Xuegong has always been the center of Chinese thought and culture, and has influenced all countries, writing a glorious page in the history of Chinese and even Oriental culture.
The determination of the ruins of the Minoru Gakugu Shrine has made the originally deserted small Xu Village lively, and wave after wave of media have come here to interview, and some people are curious to look at the archaeological site with barbed wire.
Archaeologists who work with loess and cultural relics on weekdays began to face the camera, introducing the Minoru Gakuen Palace over and over again, telling the excavation process, and emphasizing the significance of cultural relics protection. In the face of these, Dong Wenbin felt that interviews and live broadcasts were "much more tiring than work." ”
During the interview, a friend from the school called and wanted Dong Wenbin to take a group of students to field internships, and on the phone, Dong Wenbin repeatedly stressed that boys and girls are very good, but he has only one requirement for students, that is, "can study, willing to endure hardships", "as long as he can study and be willing to suffer, I will definitely let him learn something." ”
In addition to the hard work, there is also a lot of fun. Archaeology is really a dialogue with the ancients. The ruins of the Minoru Gakuen Palace are built close to the small castle, and the small castle moat directly encloses it. After discovering this pattern, Dong Wenbin thought that this exposed the ambition of the rulers of the State of Qi to dominate the world; when he found the square paved with floor tiles, Dong Wenbin would guess that the students were bowing together here at that time.
After more than 2,000 years, Minoru Gakuen Palace has come to us from history.