One day in June 1972, the People's Liberation Army was digging an underground air raid shelter facility for a military hospital in the eastern suburbs of Changsha, Hunan Province, and during the excavation, it accidentally found a jet cave, ignited and then burst into a pale blue flame. It was later confirmed that the cave was a Han tomb from more than 2,000 years ago, and the Mawangdui Han Tomb was discovered here.
Mawangdui Han Tomb is the family tomb of Changsha Xiang Licang in the Western Han Dynasty, tomb No. 1 is the cemetery of Li Cang's wife Xin Chai, tomb No. 2 is changsha Cheng Xiang Li Cang cemetery, and tomb No. 3 is the cemetery of Changsha Cheng Xiang Li Cang's son. On July 30 of that year, Xinhua News Agency published a report that shocked the archaeological community:
"An early tomb of the Western Han Dynasty, dating back more than 2,100 years, was recently excavated in Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan Province, and in this tomb, from the coffin of the corpse to a large number of burial utensils, it is relatively well preserved, which is an extremely rare and important discovery in the archaeological excavation work of the mainland." More than 3,000 years of cultural relics have been excavated from the Mawangdui Han Tomb, including silk fabrics, books, paintings, lacquerware, pottery, bamboo jane, seals, sealing mud, bamboo and wood ware, agricultural and livestock products, Chinese herbal medicine and other cultural relics.
Among all the cultural relics unearthed, the corpse of an incorruptible woman attracts the most attention. After the unearthing of the corpse of an uncorrupted woman for two thousand years, it immediately attracted the attention of the Japanese. The day after Xinhua published its report, Japan's Kyodo News Agency carried a special report, which compared the archaeological discovery to the discovery of the Peking ape skull. Kyodo News agency has a lot of influence in Japan, and this report has attracted the attention of Japanese scientists.
From September 25 to 30, 1972, Kakuei Tanaka visited China. According to the Arrangement of the Chinese Side, Tanaka Kakuei came to the Forbidden City to visit the exhibition of cultural relics excavated in a special period, including the T-shaped paintings excavated from the Mawangdui Han Tomb not long ago. After the visit, Kakuei Tanaka asked our staff if he could give him a few hairs of the uncorrupted female corpse of the Mawangdui Han Tomb as a gift.
In fact, Kakuei Tanaka himself was not very interested in female corpses, and he was commissioned by Japanese scientists to obtain a few female corpse hairs to study. The problem is that the Japanese side did not explain the reason for the need for female corpse hair, which caused the vigilance of Premier Zhou and others. At the same time, experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences also advised the state that "the hair of female corpses should not be given as a gift until the true intentions of the Japanese are clarified." ”
After Premier Zhou's euphemistic refusal, Tanaka Kakuei was still not dead hearted, and in the end he even hoped to get half a female corpse's hair, and asked for it 5 times before and after. It was gratifying that the more the Japanese wanted to get the female corpse's hair, the more we realized the importance of the female corpse, and we refused the Japanese request. So why are the Japanese so eager to get the hair of a female corpse?
At that time, our level of science and technology was backward, and we did not know the truth until 20 years later. It turned out that Japanese scientists hoped to extract DNA from the hair of female corpses, in other words, the Japanese hoped to obtain the DNA code of ancient people on the mainland by studying two thousand years of immoral female corpses. It is also said that the Japanese want to find out the real reason why female corpses are not incorruptible, and the results of which can promote Japan's progress in the field of embalming.
References: "Excavation Log of Mawangdui Han Tomb", "Tanaka Kakuei's Visit to China"