In ancient mainland China, the development of bronze ware was super high technology and status, at the end of the Shang Dynasty, it was already possible to skillfully smelt into exquisite bronze products, and those who could possess these bronzes were the princes and nobles of the time. By the time of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the technology of bronze ware was more perfect, and gradually became a food utensil, and many bronzes would be engraved with some inscriptions, recording some events at that time, so that its historical significance and the study of the history of that time were more useful, so it has always occupied an extremely important position in the archaeological work of the mainland.
However, the history of bronze is too old, resulting in the discovery and transmission of very few works, especially the Bronze ware of the Shang Dynasty, almost not found in the archaeological community, so the value of preservation is also extremely high. In order to preserve these historical treasures, we have carried out extensive archaeological and excavations of bronzes. Unfortunately, no matter how high their value, in the eyes of some ordinary villagers, it is just a copper breaker that is not very valuable, and it cannot be used.
In the 1980s, there was a story of bronzes as broken iron in Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, mainland China. An ordinary villager in this place, ready to renovate the old house where he lived, just when the foundation was being built, he encountered a hard thing, and found that the volume of this thing was particularly large, so with the full cooperation of the family, this hard big knot was excavated from the ground. After a simple wash of the surface of the soil, although the surface oxidation is serious, it can be simply seen that this is a wild boar, and the material is all copper.
The wild boar is an animal with strong fighting power, thick skin, and it is also an omnivore, and people in the countryside will not like this animal, mainly because it destroys crops and is not easy to hunt. Therefore, it is slowly rumored that if a wild boar appears in his field, then there will be bad luck in this family. Therefore, after these villagers see this wild boar-like object, they will not like it, and their hearts are also particularly annoying, so they want to dispose of this thing as soon as possible. The superstitious villagers also invited someone to do it, and then sold the copper lump to the waste collection station, which was also bought for 10 yuan. The purchasing power of 10 yuan in the last century was very high, and even so, the price of 10 yuan is equivalent to the value of several hundred yuan today. It can be seen that at that time, it was also acquired at the value of broken copper and iron, and it could be sold at this price only because it was heavier.
In the era of lack of entertainment at that time, stories like digging up things in the field were people's talk after tea and dinner, and even widely circulated. Gradually, this matter also spread to the local cultural relics department. Subsequently, the cultural relics department sent archaeologists to quickly understand the situation. When the villagers found the waste station and found this bronze, the archaeologists' mood can be said to be very excited, because in the eyes of experts, this bronze is extremely rare, and the preliminary judgment should be the late Shang Dynasty or the early Western Zhou Dynasty.
Finally, experts took this bronze back to study. It is a length of 72 cm, a height of 40 cm and weighs more than 20 kg. Such a volume and weight is completely a very large bronze wine vessel. The pig form of this bronze vessel has two fangs protruding from the mouth, and this form is indeed the appearance of a wild boar. Moreover, on the lid on its back, there is a phoenix bird, and there is a dragon pattern all over the body, which can be judged that it is definitely the object of a person with an identity, and the identity of this person is absolutely noble.
Although the total number of bronzes unearthed in archaeological excavations is still quite large, few bronzes are in the shape of animals. Most bronzes are inscribed on the surface of the bronze with the appearance of animals. We can also learn from this bronze that the ancestors of the mainland showed superb smelting technology.
Finally, this bronze of extremely high historical value was stored in the Hunan Museum. And also rated it as a national first-class cultural relic. So how much was the "broken copper and rotten iron" that was sold for only 10 yuan at that time? In the mainland, cultural relics before the Tang Dynasty were forbidden to buy and sell, and there were cultural relics that were rated as national treasures, so experts did not value it. And we can assess its value by comparing other cultural relics, once in the United States auction, there was a similar cultural relics for auction, the shape of that cultural relics is also a pig, but its volume is much smaller than this cultural relics, the cultural relics at that time were finally sold at a price of 150 million yuan, so the price of this cultural relics mentioned in this article will definitely not be less than 200 million yuan.
Cultural relics are important national treasures of the mainland, which cannot be measured by money, and they are the embodiment of Chinese civilization. We must also protect these historical treasures left to us by our ancestors.