Civilizations that have lasted for thousands of years have obliterated thousands of years of memory and slowly unveiled the mystery

Civilizations that have lasted for thousands of years have obliterated thousands of years of memory and slowly unveiled the mystery

On March 27, 1900 AD, in the Taklamakan Desert, the explorer Swede Sven. Hedin, with several guides and a few camels, was following the course of the Gutarim River, looking for the uncertain Lop Nur when the sun set and they finally came to an earthen mound. At this time, Sven. Hedin noticed that the camel's water bag was leaking, and there was not much water left. The guide found that the shovel they had to use to settle down was also lost. The old man decided that all the men would rest on the spot at once, and the guide would return alone to find the shovel.

On the way, the lone guide accidentally found the walls, streets, houses, and even beacon towers of an ancient city. The guide thought he was hallucinating, and rubbed his eyes hard to be sure that all this was not an illusion. He immediately returned and told Sven Hedin of the discovery. They followed the guidance of their guide and came to the ancient city again. Since there was no water, they left after a hasty inspection, and the next year they returned to the same place and carried out a large number of excavations. polite. Hedin presumed the name of the ancient city as Loulan based on the local excavation of the word "kroraina" in the Local Luwen Jianmu. Since then, the name Loulan has been deeply attracted to the world for more than a century. The Uyghur guide who first discovered the ancient city of Loulan was named Eldik.

polite. Hedin excavated a large number of artifacts here, including coins, silk fabrics, grain, pottery, thirty-six pieces of paper with Chinese characters written on them, one hundred and twenty pieces of bamboo, and several brushes. This one was sven. The ancient city that Hedin called "Pompeii in the Desert" shocked the whole world. Subsequently, archaeologists, geogeologists, and expeditions from many countries followed...

The abundance and value of the cultural relics excavated by expeditions from various countries in the ancient city of Loulan and the Lop Nur area shocked the world. Stone tools, woodware, pottery, bronze, glassware, ancient coins, etc. of various eras have been unearthed here, and the variety is extremely diverse and has a long history. Among the various excavated cultural relics, the Han Jin and Jin Dynasty hand-copied Warring States Policy excavated from the ancient city of Loulan are the most precious. Han Jin was made around the 1st-2nd century AD, with fine workmanship, brilliant colors, and embroidered with characters such as "Longevity and Longevity", "Changle Guangming", "Longevity and Longevity". The Jin Dynasty hand-copied paper excavated here predates the earliest paper of Europeans by more than 600 years. Among the excavated cultural relics, a letter written by Li Bai, the governor of the Western Regions during the Western Jin Dynasty, to the King of Yanqi was also found, that is, the "Li Bai Document". The explorers, represented by Sven Hedin, praised Loulan as a "treasure land in the desert", a "museum" left in a corner of history, and a "Pompeii city of the East".

The civilization that has lasted for thousands of years has obliterated thousands of years of memory, and the mystery has slowly been unveiled, and the ancient city of Loulan has gradually emerged in the wind and sand and desolate smoke.

Archaeologists deduce from the dry corpses of ancient tombs excavated from the ruins near the ancient city of Loulan that about 4,000 years ago, a group of nomadic people lived in the Loulan area, who had blond hair and blue eyes, and were of the same ancestry as the ancient Europa people. Perhaps because they hunted for water and grass, they left only a few dry corpses and mysteriously disappeared.

For more than 2,000 years, there was a fault in the history of this area, and no trace of Loulan could be found in archaeological excavations and documentary records. At that time, the natural environment of the Loulan area was not as harsh as it is today, but it was very suitable for nomadism or agriculture, but this period of history became a mystery.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Loulan was one of the Thirty-Six Kingdoms in the Western Regions. After Zhang Qian passed through the Western Regions, Loulan became the main route of communication between the East and the West. The Chronicle of the Great Wanlie records: "In the west of Khotan, the water flows west, injecting the west sea; its east water flows east, injecting salt." Shiozawa sneaks underground, and the South River flows out. Multi-jade, river injection China. And Loulan and Gushiyi have Chengguo and Linyanze. In the time of Sima Qian, the name "Loulan" was already known to the Han people, and these records were based on what Zhang Qian saw and heard during his mission to the Western Regions.

During the Wei and Jin dynasties, the central government set up the post of Governor of the Western Regions, and the seat of government was in Loulan, which became the political, military, economic and cultural center of the Western Regions. Starting from Chang'an, the ancient Silk Road extended all the way to the west, and when it reached Loulan, it began to divide into two roads, north and south. As a transportation hub town in the heart of Eurasia, Loulan has played an important role in the cultural exchange between the East and the West. Loulan, caught between the mighty Han Empire, the Xiongnu, and many surrounding nomadic nations, often faced existential crises, and countries often fought large-scale wars for Loulan.

After the Jin Dynasty, Loulan suddenly disappeared again, and an important town in the Western Regions, which was once prosperous for a while, disappeared again for more than 1,500 years.

From 176 BC, see the records, to 77 BC renamed "Shanshan", flourished for a time, and then around the fourth century, suddenly disappeared, Loulan left in the literature of the history is very short, but also left many mysteries. When Loulan was founded, what kind of political system was practiced, what kind of social and economic life it had, what religion it believed, what kind of nationality it was, and so on, it is impossible to verify. The most recorded in the literature is simply to say that in the first century BC, in the fierce struggle between the Han Empire and the Xiongnu, Loulan "small countries between large countries, two subordinates are unable to live in peace", and strive to maintain their own survival. Feng Chengjun, a famous historian of the Western Regions, sighed: "Examining the ancient countries and present places in the Western Regions, often a simple problem becomes an extremely complex problem, and Lou Lan is an example. How big is the territory of Loulan? Where is the capital city? It is now assumed that although there are several statements, there is no definite conclusion. ”

Although Lou Lan quickly and quietly withdrew from the stage of history, he left "a monument to the tense history of the world". Today, 1,700 years later, Lou Lan in the desert ancient road still maintains the posture she had when she "closed the curtain", and the ruins and broken walls reveal dusty memories, making people suddenly feel that history happened yesterday. Reciting the famous sentence in Li Bai's "Plugged Down Song": "Willing to put the sword under the waist and cut the Lou Lan straight", you can still feel the hunting wind and dust of history. Why has Loulan become an inaccessible desert Gobi? For years, this has been an unsolved mystery.

One view is that Lou Lan died because of changes in the global climate. Since about 10,000 years ago, the earth's environment has undergone three major phased changes, ranging from 10,000 to 8,000 years as a warming period, about 8,000 to 3,000 years as a high temperature period (climate suitability period), and 3,000 years from now to the present. Three major stage changes determine the scope and mode of human activities, and the demise of the ancient city of Loulan was about the second to fourth centuries BC, which was the period of intensification of drought. In this process of drought, not only the ancient city of Loulan disappeared, but also due to the expansion of the desert, the demise of countries and cities such as Nya, Milan, Karadun, Khan, Tongwan, and Nyam. The ancient city of Loulan is located in the hinterland of Eurasia, in the arid inland, and its demise is inevitable in the context of the drought of the earth's climate.

One view is that Lou Lan died at the uplift of the Tibetan Plateau. Between 70,000 and 80,000 years ago, the Tibetan Plateau uplifted rapidly, which had a decisive impact on the climate of the central Eurasian region, and the warm and humid air currents of the Pacific and Indian Oceans could no longer reach here, and the entire Central Asian region had drought and desertification and Gobi tendencies. Water sources and trees are the key to the survival of the oasis on the wasteland, and the ancient city of Loulan was built in the lower delta of the Peacock River with a developed water system, during which the intensification of human activities and changes in the water system further deteriorated the original fragile ecological environment. Lou Lan had promulgated the world's first environmental protection laws discovered so far, but the water source still shrank rapidly and eventually disappeared, and the city could not survive.

One view is that Lou Lan died in the war. After the fifth century AD, the kingdom of Loulan began to weaken, the northern powers invaded, and the city of Loulan was destroyed and abandoned.

One view is that the disappearance of Loulan was related to the opening up of the northern Silk Road. An important reason for the rise of Loulan is that the early ancient Silk Road passed through here. Later, after the opening of the North Silk Road through Hami and Turpan, the Silk Road Desert Passage through Loulan was abandoned, and Loulan also lost its former glory.

One view is that Lou Lan died of plague disease. A plague from other places took the lives of most of the residents of Loulan City, and those who survived fled Loulan and fled away from home, and Loulan died.

One view is that Lou Lan died as a result of biological invasions. According to the research of relevant experts, an insect fly introduced from the Two Rivers Basin brought fatal disasters to Loulan. This kind of slug lives in the soil, they live on white paste soil, and enter the land and houses of the residents in groups, there are no natural enemies in Loulan, people can not destroy them, so they have to abandon the city.

In any case, the demise of Lou Lan is enough to show that only when man and nature live in harmony can human beings themselves be better developed. Loulan once had the glory of holding off the main road and the east-west traffic left and right; there was a feat of accumulating millions of millet and subjugating the neighboring countries, however, the evolution of the natural environment, the change of the water system, the intensification of human activities and the destruction of war further deteriorated the original fragile ecological environment, which eventually led to The transformation of Loulan from an oasis into a desert, from a prosperous world to a barren land. In the past, the oasis outside Saiwai, today's yellow sand and chaotic tombs, the gap between the rise and fall of success and failure, leaving endless thinking for future generations.

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