What exactly is something weirdly shaped?
People dug up a mysterious skeleton in Wudang Mountain, Hubei Province, and its shape was exactly the same as that of the legendary dragon!
Not only does it have a dragon's mouth, but it even has a dragon's claw, is it really dug up the legendary dragon?
What kind of earth-shattering secrets are buried under the ground of Wudang Mountain?
As a folk cultural treasure, Wudang Mountain is known as the Forbidden City, and the Wulong Palace is one of the earliest buildings in Wudang Mountain.
The Five Dragon Palace was first built in the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, and the entire palace is the ground floor building of the Baiyun Temple, which has a bell tower, a drum tower, a magnificent palace, and a tall building, which is breathtaking.
The reason why the Five Dragon Palace is so mysterious is because of a legend that spread during the Southern Song Dynasty:
It is said that the Five Dragon Palace is a place where immortals are introduced, and dragons often appear here, when a Southern Song Dynasty soldier found a dragon under the water when he was cleaning his weapons in the pool of the Five Dragon Palace.
At the same time, the sky began to sound thunder, and then the torrential rain poured down, and it was this mysterious legend that added a lot of legend to the place.
The Five Dragon Palace has a history of thousands of years, far-reaching influence, has a great reference significance for the excavation of human history, in order to explore the mystery of Wudang Mountain, the relevant departments set up an archaeological team, decided to start from the Five Dragon Palace ruins of the Sun Moon Lake excavation.
Because there are a large number of treasures in the Five Dragon Palace, their existence will reveal many historical mysteries for us, but no one thought that this time of excavation, the harvest is even greater than people imagine.
Did people really dig out the legendary keel? Let's follow in the footsteps of archaeologists and unravel this mystery.
In 2021, archaeologists began to excavate the Sun Moon Lake in Wudang Mountain, because there was a lot of silt in the Sun Moon Lake, and just when the archaeologists were cleaning up the silt, they accidentally found a strangely shaped thing.
It was a very large object, it was buried in the black silt, and from a distance it did not seem to know what it was, at first the archaeologists thought that they had dug up some god, but in the process of cleaning up, they found something wrong.
When this large object was fully presented in front of people's eyes, archaeologists quickly recognized it as a deity called a snout.
The kiss is one of the nine sons of the dragon, generally used as a decoration on the beam, because the kiss likes to swallow fire, so the ancients believed that it was placed on the beam to avoid fire.
With the excavation of the snout, everyone quickly realized that there must be more treasures underground, so the archaeologists accelerated the pace of excavation.
At this time, the entire excavation site was more and more water, and the ground was soaked with muddy water, but soon, a lot of things were dug out of the ground.
The first thing that came out was something resembling a modern "double-knuckle stick", and archaeologists could not be sure what it was for, and initially speculated that it was some kind of weapon of the Taoists.
The discovery of this "double knuckle stick" made the archaeologists very excited, and everyone held great hopes to continue the excavation work, but they all said that the greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment, and in the next few days of excavation, everyone's enthusiasm slowly extinguished.
Because nothing was dug in the subsequent excavations, this can't help but make everyone wonder, has this place been patronized by tomb robbers?
Just when everyone was languishing, who could have imagined that the next excavation work would shock the entire archaeological team, because people found a strange skeleton in the mud!
The identification results unveiled the keel
At first archaeologists suspected it was a portrait, but as the silt cleared, this hypothesis was overturned.
Because this thing is much larger than the size of a human, archaeologists once again speculate whether it is some kind of god buried in the ground.
When the entire price was cleared out, everyone found that it was a carved lifelike dragon statue, and just when the archaeologists were still immersed in joy, on the other side of the excavation site, there was a sudden exclamation.
This exclamation attracted the attention of all the staff present, and when everyone gathered around to look, they couldn't help but take a breath of cool air.
I saw that a strange skeleton had been cleared out of the mud, and this skeleton was like a dragon head, and then the remaining skeletons of various parts such as the dragon's claws were gradually cleared out.
Archaeologists first carefully took out this "dragon head" to clean it up, and then dug out a lot of remaining bones.
It is not yet known what kind of animal's skeleton this is, and to know the answer to the question, we must first take these skeletons back to the laboratory for identification before we can find out.
Only to see these bones have signs of blackening, just by the naked eye, do not know what caused this, archaeologists speculate that it may be related to some kind of ritual.
At the foot of Wudang Mountain, how many unknown secrets are hidden?
After the skeleton of this dragon was cleared out, another dragon was found in the silt, and archaeologists thought that because this place is called the Five Dragon Palace, does it mean that there may be five dragons in the ground?
In order to confirm this conjecture, archaeologists have continued to excavate with all their might.
The excavation had been going on for several days, and all the archaeologists were stepping on the black mud, and although everyone was tired, the next discovery swept away everyone's fatigue, because the dragon-shaped reliefs were dug up one after another.
It is worth mentioning that in the process archaeologists discovered a peculiar object.
This turned out to be a weapon, associated with the historical record of the Southern Song Dynasty soldiers here to clean weapons and find the story of the dragon, now there are weapons with keels as evidence, is this story true?
Thinking of this, the archaeologists once again set their sights on the dragon head that had just been excavated.
Although there are myths and stories as evidence, everyone knows that so far, people have not found any traces of the existence of dragons in the world.
Therefore, archaeologists have made this hypothesis: perhaps the story is true, but what the Southern Song Soldier saw at that time was not necessarily a real dragon, it may be some kind of dragon-like animal, or it may be a statue of a dragon buried under the water.
And this keel found in the mud is most likely a dragon-like creature.
With this speculation, the laboratory quickly identified the keel, and the result was that it was the skeleton of a herbivores, and the result was not unexpected.
As the excavations progressed, the next discoveries did not confirm the archaeologists' ideas, because the five dragons were not dug up as desired, and then a relief in the shape of a turtle was excavated.
At this point in the excavation work, everyone felt very unreasonable, was it not five dragons buried underground, but four divine beasts? But why did the four great divine beasts appear in Taoist culture?
The secret buried deep at the bottom of Sun Moon Lake
With doubts, the archaeologists actually dug up a snake-shaped relief.
In the continental mythological system, Xuanwu, one of the four great divine beasts, is the image of the combination of a dragon and a turtle, but it is strange that the shape of this dragon dug out at the bottom of the Wudang Mountain is not a common image in ancient mainland China.
In the Western mythological system, there is such a creature as a three-headed snake, and the snake dug up in Wudang Mountain actually corresponds to the image of a three-headed snake.
This is even more puzzling, Taoism is a very important part of the ancient culture of the mainland, the history is very long, but how can the ancient Taoist holy land appear in the western legend of the creatures?
Just as the archaeological work was about to continue, a heavy rain hindered everyone's footsteps.
After the rain stopped, the archaeologists cleaned up the rainwater in the pool and washed the archaeological site, which accelerated everyone's archaeological work.
With the subsequent excavation work, this "three-headed snake" was finally fully presented in front of people's eyes.
Seeing this picture, everyone was shocked, it turned out that this was not a three-headed snake, but a giant snake hovering under the water, because the silt had not been cleaned up before, resulting in a visual difference.
The entire snake-shaped relief is vivid, and the details show superb carving skills, which makes everyone marvel.
Subsequently, three reliefs of various shapes were gradually excavated at the bottom of the pool, and after cleaning, archaeologists found that these were dragon reliefs of different shapes, which also confirmed the origin of the name of the Five Dragon Palace.
In addition, people also found a jade rabbit pounding medicine shape relief, there are also many flame shape reliefs around, jade rabbit represents the moon, flames represent the sun, at this time everyone suddenly realized, the original relief at the bottom of the pool actually corresponds to the name of the sun and moon lake.
After a large number of searches, experts learned that Sun Moon Lake was a place of sacrifice in ancient times, and the relief at the bottom of the pool should be some kind of sacrifice prop.
The excavation work is basically almost here, according to what has been dug up so far:
As a place of sacrifice, Sun Moon Lake was supposed to use some kind of herbivores as a sacrifice, and after the sacrifice, this animal was left here, and after a thousand years of change, it was also hidden deep under the water for a thousand years.
The excavation of the entire Sun Moon Lake has undoubtedly allowed archaeologists to discover a complete cultural inheritance chain, which undoubtedly provides a supporting evidence for China's history and culture.
In fact, the excavation of the Five Dragon Palace is not just to make these dragon-shaped reliefs appear, but to prove the cultural significance of China's Wudang Mountains in the past thousand years.
And that was the original motivation for the archaeologists' decision to excavate here.
There are still many myths and legends in the ancient times of the mainland, under the premise of respecting these histories and cultures, we must also look at history objectively, do not believe in rumors and do not spread rumors, based on real archaeological excavations, is the main source of our understanding of Chinese culture.
So do you think this archaeological discovery surprised or disappointed you?