Wu Ding ordered that the two clans of "Ju" and "Wang" should go with Wang Shi to conquer the "Tiger Fang"

Wu Ding ordered that the two clans of "Ju" and "Wang" should go with Wang Shi to conquer the "Tiger Fang"

Oceania is a small town in Xingan County, Jiangxi Province, located on the east bank of the middle reaches of the Ganjiang River, next to the town of Chengjia Village, on the empty flat ground behind the waterlogging, there were several tall sand piles, and the villagers who dug the sand berm for many years gradually shoveled this to the ground, and its myths and legends have been popular in the folk. On September 20, 1989, the shovels of sand dug by the villagers inadvertently stirred up the relics that had been quietly buried here for more than 3,000 years, and 1,375 cultural relics were unearthed, of which 475 were bronzes, 754 pieces (pieces) of jade, and 139 pieces of pottery and original porcelain. This is a Shang Dynasty tomb, dating back about 3,200 years, this batch of cultural relics is large in number, variety, strange shape, casting fine, carved fine, beautiful ornamentation. China's bronze civilization once again shone with a fascinating brilliance, rewriting the history of the Shang Dynasty, the Chinese people were shocked, the world was sensational, this discovery was rated as one of the "top ten archaeological discoveries in the country during the Seventh Five-Year Plan period", in 2001. He was also awarded the honor of "100 Major Archaeological Discoveries of the 20th Century in China".

Because the site is located in Chengjia Village, Oceania Township, Xingan County, Jiangxi Province, it is called "Xingan Oceania Shang Dynasty Tomb Site". The "Shang Dynasty" here only serves as a time reference frame and an era coordinate.

Today, the Ganjiang River is just west of it, less than a kilometer apart, flowing north, entering Poyang Lake, and further north, entering the Jianghan River Basin.

This waterway leads all the way to the Central Plains, and the influence of Shang culture, from north to south, probably comes south along this waterway. From the artifacts excavated from the Xingan Oceania Tomb, it is easy to see the influence of the Central Plains Shang culture on Jiangnan.

The influence belongs to the influence, but it is not a Shang culture, and it is still part of the Wucheng culture in the Yangtze River Basin. From Oceania to the west, about twenty kilometers across the Ganjiang River, you will arrive at Zhangshu Wucheng, which is the Wucheng Cultural Site.

From this, go further north, into the Jiujiang area, on the edge of the Yangtze River, ruichang, there is a place called Tongling Village, there is a copper smelting site 3,300 years ago. This is the earliest site of its kind ever seen. It is about 7 kilometers away from the Yangtze River, about 40 kilometers away from the Hubei Daye Copper Green Mountain Mining and Metallurgical Site, and there are more than 100 copper mine sites, roughly along this line, distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Ganjiang River and south of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, located between Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake.

The plain embraced by this river and lake is the Jiangnan of the Shang Dynasty, which is the birthplace of Wucheng culture.

In the eyes of Yin merchants, what is Jiangnan? It's copper! Bronze culture can not be without copper, "the great affairs of the country, in the worship and Rong", all rely on copper. Yin merchants used copper as "gold", called copper plundering in the south "captive gold", and trade "tribute gold".

Someone has done lead isotope testing on Shang Dynasty bronzes and found that some of the Shang Dynasty Yi ware in Anyang were smelted and cast with Ruichang Tongling ore, which is the same ore used in Wucheng culture and Xingan Oceania. This shows that the Yin merchants had a bronze road, that is, their "tribute gold" and "captive gold" route, which entered the cultural territory of Wucheng.

For the Yin merchants, copper was important, because the core of the Shang Dynasty, whether it was theocracy or the royal power, had to be supported by copper. Some experts pointed out that during the three dynasties of ancient China, the site of jiandu was selected, and it was close to copper and tin mineral land.

But after all, it cannot change the situation of resource shortage. When he arrived at Wu Ding, his eyes went beyond the Central Plains. He looked south, looked far away, and found that the copper mines were all on the Yangtze River, especially in the Ganpo Plain on the south bank of the Yangtze River, and the copper mines could not be used up. Shi Zaiwu Ding's southern expedition, "Fighting for Jingchu", entered Gansu from Chu and opened up a route of "capturing Gold".

Judging from the Wucheng cultural sites, it is about the same time as the Shang Dynasty Wuding Zhongxing. Whether it is the camphor tree Wucheng cultural site, or the remnants of the Xingan Oceania culture, the "tiger" is their marker: fangs, with two tails, the whole body is geometric patterned, and a bird stands on the back, known as the "two-tailed bronze tiger of the volt bird".

In the oracle bones, "Tiger", as the name of the state, has "Tiger Hou" and "Tiger Fang", "Tiger Hou" is a close subject of the Shang King, sealed in Yong, in Wang Qi; and "Tiger Fang" is the Fang State, outside the Shang Dynasty.

Regarding the "Tiger Fang", there is a war-related bu word, found in the Oracle, which was ordered by Wu Ding to "Lift" and "Hope" to go with wang shi to conquer the "Tiger Fang", for which a ceremony was held to ask the first king. Although Wu Ding was good at fighting, he still had no certainty of victory, and he asked the first king. It seems that the "tiger side" is not weak, and the victory or defeat is difficult to predict.

From the ruins of Wucheng City in Zhangshu, we can see the outcome of this war. In the nearly 4-meter-deep outer city moat, the excavation area was less than 10 square meters, and the skulls and part of the limb bones of twenty Yin merchants were excavated, and according to experts, there may be a large number of skulls on both sides of the moat. Archaeological excavations, the excavation of skulls, there are usually two situations, or prisoners of war are beheaded, or for the sacrifice of the headhunting ceremony, as far as the current excavation situation is concerned, these skulls belong to the prisoners of war beheaded.

It can be seen that in the Wuding period, Hufang established a state in bronze and controlled the copper mines in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River from Ruichang in Jiangxi to Daye in Hubei, and successively developed Tongling Village and Copper Green Mountain Copper Mine.

Wu Ding went south to "capture Jin" and was defeated by the "Tiger Fang", so he changed his position to Panlong City in the north of Jiangbei and opened up a "tribute to gold" route from the east of the Han River into the Central Plains, so as to ensure the copper resources needed by the Yin Shang Dynasty Zhongxing. "Captive gold" is copper plunder, but what about "tribute gold"? Of course, it is the copper trade.

Yin merchants were originally good at business, so the national name was "Shang". Usually, they were prepared with two hands, one for war and the other for trade. What can be solved by war will be solved by war; as soon as the war cannot be solved, trade will be done. Bronze currency was traded, with bronze shells used by the Yin people and bronze hand axes used by the "Tiger Fang" people. Bronze in the Shang Dynasty, or for ceremonial tools, or for weapons, but there are few production tools, its use, but "worship and Rong". The remains of Wucheng in Jiangnan and Xingan Oceania have unearthed many bronze tools, including eighteen kinds of one hundred and forty-three pieces, including two tool groups, of which six kinds of seventy-five pieces are handicraft tool groups; twelve kinds of sixty-eight pieces belong to the agricultural tool group.

It seems that the bronze culture of the "Tiger Fang" is not weaker than that of Yin Shang in terms of its comprehensiveness.

(End of this article)