Editor's note: Recently, Henan discovered the news of the "Ancient Country of Heluo" more than 5,000 years ago, which received considerable attention. It can be said that with the continuous explosion of archaeological excavations in recent years, China's 5,000-year history of civilization is being proved by more and more cultural relics. The living conditions and the degree of civilization development of our ancient ancestors have become clearer and clearer. This article will talk about a dispute between the "fighting nation" and the "art nation" in the ancient Chinese.
The Liangzhu site and the Shiya site are the two most popular prehistoric cultural sites on the Internet in the past two years, because the discovery of these two sites shows that China did not have the primitive tribes and villages imagined before 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, but had regimes and cities. One of these two places is in Zhejiang and the other is in Shaanxi, which can be said to be one south and one north. Not only are geographically different, but even cultural characteristics are not a little bit different. How to say it, in the past two years, Russia has often been called a fighting nation, but the ethnic group represented by the ancient city of Shi'an more than 4,000 years ago is a typical fighting nation. At present, with the in-depth excavation of the Shiya ruins and the study of the surrounding similar cultural stone cities, it can be found that these stone cities like to choose to build cities at the top of the mountain, that is, the top is flat and the surrounding area is a bit steep. And its walls have horse faces, plus obvious traces of violence.
The ancient city of Liangzhu in liangzhu cultural area is in a network of water, and the south of the city is mountainous, because the means of transportation are mainly bamboo rafts and canoes, so more attention is paid to transportation and resources (wood and jade can be obtained in the mountains), so the ancient city of Liangzhu itself does not have many fortifications, and can only rely on the surrounding river network and wetlands as a defense. Compared with a large number of production tools and works of art, the Liangzhu culture itself has few weapons found, according to archaeologists such as Xiang Ming and other scholars, Liangzhu culture is not like a fighting nation advocating force. So how different are the ancient fighting nations and the artistic peoples in terms of armament? Leng Yan had previously written about the Liangzhu Jade, and although the Jade was exquisite, it was not a combat weapon. The Shi'an site is also limited in the discovery of various weapons due to the progress, so it is mainly compared with the more common weapons - arrows.
The arrow has been around since the Paleolithic Age and can be used as a long-range weapon to help people hunt more easily and fight against other large predators. Therefore, the meaning of bows and arrows for people is very important, the ancient arrows have stone hammers and bone hammers, this article mainly compares stone hammers, and after comparing stone hammers and Liangzhu arrows, it is possible to get an unexpected but reasonable result.
Why unexpected? Judging from the arrows found in Shi'e, the shape is triangular or flying wing-shaped, the surface is relatively rough but the material is flint, and as a stone pendant of the Inner Mongolia Tiger Mountain culture that is close to the cultural attributes of Shi'e, it is also obvious that this shape is also flint in material. This shows that this kind of flaky triangular flint arrow can represent the stone stone hammer, which is obviously made from the process point of view, which can be said to be very retro. How ancient is it? If we look at the earlier Hongshan culture and even the Paleolithic Zhazhan noor culture stone arrows, we can find that these stone hammers and stone hammers also have similarities. Even the arrows used by the North American Indians are similar to the stone arrows used by the stone barriers.
So, what about Liangzhu culture? Judging from the museum and the arrows from recent archaeological excavations. The Liangzhu culture arrows unearthed in various places are basically willow leaf-shaped sections, similar to diamonds. It also has the characteristic that it is collared, rather than directly opening the tail of the arrow as in the North American natives or the Paleolithic. In terms of craftsmanship, Liangzhu culture stone hammers are obviously very finely ground, and the material is mostly based on argillaceous rock.
Therefore, whether from the perspective of specifications or process, these arrows of different sizes, similar shapes, but carefully polished can show that the ancestors of Liangzhu culture have obvious tendencies to process and standardize in the production of arrows.
In the nearly two years of excavations in the ancient city of Liangzhu, a stone hammer manufacturing workshop was found in the area of Zhongjia Lane in the east of the city. From the analysis of the occupation of the ancient city's inhabitants, in addition to being a political and religious center, the ancient city was also a regional industrial and commercial center, with specialized handicraft residents who were separated from agricultural production. Those who made stone arrows were probably hereditary professional families.
Obviously, the stone craftsmanship of the ancestors of Liangzhu is much better than that of the stone in the Shi'an Cultural Area, but the war color of Shi'an is very strong, and Liangzhu attaches great importance to agriculture and handicrafts. As mentioned earlier, the outer city of Liangzhu Ancient City is not so much an outer defensive line as a mixed area of residential commerce. Judging from the pottery, lacquerware, and jade of the Liangzhu culture, the Liangzhu cultural ethnic group is obviously an artistic nation, and the Shijia era is hundreds of years later than liangzhu. It is reasonable to say that the weapon technology of Shiya should be more advanced, but it is still an old tradition of the Paleolithic Age. For such a Liangzhu ethnic group that values agriculture and handicrafts, as well as luxury goods, force is not the primary consideration, but it is surprisingly good in craftsmanship.
In fact, considering that the war itself is fierce, the production of weapons is required to be fast. The choice of the ancient city of Shi'a, as well as the horse faces on the city walls and the outposts found in the southeast direction of Shi'an City, all show the severity of the situation at that time.
Judging from the combat habits of some tribes in later generations, tribal members often have to configure their own weapons. Therefore, some weapons advocate simplicity and low cost in production. This Paleolithic flint arrow, which only requires a baton, a pad, a pile of stones, can be made quickly. And flying wing or triangular arrows can bring larger wounds. In addition, thanks to the hardness of the flint, such as the Central Plains or the Taihu Lake area, the penetration of arrows is not bad. The picture below is a blade-toothed tiger skull that was shot in the head by Homo sapiens at that time.
The blade-toothed tiger is a beast that lived in the Oligocene period, compared to today's Siberian tiger, the blade-toothed tiger has long teeth like a dagger, and the saber-toothed tiger in many film and television works or the usual impression is actually a blade-toothed tiger. This skull belongs to the larger of the Blade tooth tigers. Modern lions and tigers are younger brothers to the blade-toothed tiger, and the destructive blade-toothed tiger has preyed on the earth laziness as large as an African elephant.
As can be seen from the skull, the skull bone arm of the blade-toothed tiger is very thick but it is still shot like that, and some people have also tested that this flint arrow can shoot a red deer. However, because of its shape, this kind of arrow is prone to wind deflection. In particular, the distance is more than thirty meters on the wind side, from the distance of the horse face of the stone, some horse face distance of more than thirty meters probably also consider the range of the bow and arrow. The Liangzhu arrow hammer does not have this shortcoming, thanks to the strong social production capacity (the construction of the dam ancient city found hundreds of thousands of pounds of carbonized rice), Liangzhu culture has a clear social division of labor and professional production departments, so the arrow hammer is more refined, can also have a greater output, because the power of the mud rock arrow hammer is also enough for people, more convenient for processing, so the range accuracy is higher. So, which arrow is better? Historically, Liangzhu's arrows have become the mainstream situation of ancient Chinese arrows, especially the structure of collar, which has almost become the standard of ancient Chinese arrows. The Liangzhu civilization, on the other hand, is likely to be destroyed by other, more militant civilizations heading south...
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