Archaeology is an important way for a country to understand its own history, but there are three countries in the world that do not like archaeology very much, and at most they are only studying dinosaurs, they are the United States, Japan and South Korea.
The United States does not archaeologize because it is not its ancestors buried under its own soil, but Indians.
Japan does not archaeologize because it is afraid of confirming that its ancestors are Chinese.
Korea does not archaeology because digging may dig up the graves of your grandparents.
In contrast, our country has always been able to receive surprises in archaeological research, constantly refreshing the world's understanding of the history of the continent, and repeatedly using facts to prove that the wisdom of the ancients on the mainland is far ahead of the world level of the same period.
Ancient black technology
Metallurgy in Sanxingdui, crystal cups from the Warring States period, or vernier calipers made by Wang Mang, who is suspected of being a modern crossing, have advanced the inventions and technologies that the West is proud of by hundreds or even thousands of years.
Even the ceiling of the Egyptian "mummy", which is the field of preservation of the remains, has been broken by a beautiful woman on the mainland, who is sacred and what is her ability?
First acquaintance with Ma Wangdui
In 1951, shortly after the founding of New China, the mainland archaeology team found two connected mounds in the eastern suburbs of Changsha, shaped like a saddle, which were preliminarily determined to be tombs of the Han Dynasty after exploration.
Experts further consulted the local historical materials and found that the owner of the tomb was most likely Ma Yin, the king of Chu during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, hence the name Ma Wangdui.
However, since the country's center of gravity was still on the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea at that time, there was no leisure on archaeological excavations, leaving protective signs and leaving no one interested.
Suddenly, 20 years have passed, and if it were not for an unexpected military operation, I am afraid that I would still not know who was buried under the Mawang pile.
Inadvertent discovery
On March 2, 1969, the Sino-Soviet conflict broke out on Zhenbao Island, and in order to cope with the war that could break out at any time, all parts of the country were "digging deep holes" for several years.
Under these conditions, by the end of 1971, the 366 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army planned to build an underground hospital under the cover of the Mawangdui Mound.
The process of construction can be described as tortuous and bizarre. At first, it was very smooth, the soil was soft and effortlessly excavated, and it extended more than ten meters into the mound.
But digging and digging the hoe could not be pulled, as if an invisible force was pulling. The warriors looked closely with the miner's lamp and found that it was a problem with the soil.
Compared with the soft soil at the beginning, the front of the eyes is simply blue-gray dough, and the hoe is easy to pull out and difficult to pull out, which greatly affects the construction, so the workers reported the situation to the leader.
The leaders who heard the news signaled to first chisel with steel to see how deep the soil was.
However, after tossing and turning for a while, the warriors were about to take out the steel shovel to rest for a while, but a pungent smell came with the pulled steel shovel, which made the warriors cough and call out that this green mud was really evil, and it would fart, how to expect that more evil things were still to come.
To mask the pungent smell, a warrior drew a match against the cave wall with the intention of lighting a cigarette.
Suddenly, with a "bang", a flame directly destroyed the match, and then a blue flame floated from the air port just now, frightening the warriors to run out, thinking that they had seen the "ghost fire".
The leaders saw that the soldiers were terrified, and it was definitely no play to continue to work, so they could only clarify the matter first, so they reported the matter to the Hunan Military Region, hoping to find archaeological experts to study it, after all, the underground things must be understood by professional people.
The news reached the ears of Mr. Hou Liang, who was working at the Hunan Provincial Museum at the time, and he was extremely excited. What kind of ghost fire is this, this is the fire pit tomb mentioned in the Hunan dialect, and the tomb robbers have certainly not patronized it.
So Mr. Hou came to the scene with an empty oxygen bag borrowed from the hospital, intending to collect gas samples for research.
Unfortunately, it is still a step too late, from the gas spewed out to Mr. Hou's arrival, it has been a full three days, during which other stomata have been chiseled out one after another, and the hole has been unable to distinguish whether it is the unfinished gas or the air from other holes, which has lost its research value, which has also become a major regret for the excavation of the Mawangdui Han Tomb.
Fortunately, experts can see at a glance that the difficult green mud is the green paste mud used for sealing tombs in the Han Dynasty, and Mr. Hou's judgment of the fire pit tomb is undoubtedly correct.
This time, the underground hospital was completely unbuilt, and the experts submitted an application for excavation directly to the State Council, and they quickly received a reply.
Mawangdui excavation
Due to the destruction of the sealing environment of the ancient tomb due to the construction of underground fortifications, the State Council approved the request of experts to carry out rescue excavations of the Mawangdui Han Tomb to ensure the safety of the tomb Chinese.
In this way, the mysterious veil of the tomb owner will soon be unveiled, whether it is Ma Yin, the king of Chu, or not, the experts are waiting for the result.
Since the underground hospital was not dug, there was no need to spend labor there, and the bulldozer quickly razed the small mound to the ground, and the 20-meter by 17-meter tomb was also exposed.
In order not to destroy the artifacts that could be discovered at any time, the workers who had just rested for a few days were called back to work in place of the machine.
The excavation of the tomb is like a roller coaster, stirring the heartstrings of experts at all times, and their biggest fear is to dig and dig to find a hole, a hole that adults can pass through.
That's right, it's the cave, the hard evidence that the tomb robbers have visited. However, this most worrying thing happened, a dark and deep robbery hole appeared in front of the experts, was it that after digging for so many days, the bamboo basket would be empty.
Fortunately, the cave lasted for 17 meters and then came to an abrupt end, and it was obvious that the tomb robbers gave up on digging deeper. At this time, the experts were happy to blossom, and the original depressed mood returned to the original appearance, continued to work hard to excavate, and then encountered the same problem as when digging the underground hospital before.
The large patches of green paste mud slowed down the speed of the archaeological team's digging, but they knew that the fruits of victory were about to ripen, the true face of the owner of the tomb under the green paste mud was about to be revealed, and the workers were digging hard... Digging... Digging...
Suddenly, a worker reported that charcoal had been dug under the green paste mud and was so deep that experts had to call in trucks to remove the charcoal from thousands of years ago.
It seems that the owner of the tomb is not ready to be re-launched, and several trucks have pulled more than 5,000 kilograms of charcoal back and forth to clean up.
The courtyard of the tomb owner
Underneath the charcoal layer is a huge bamboo mat that blocks the stains caused by the charcoal.
Unveiling the bamboo mat is followed by a rafter room in the shape of a "囬" (same as "Hui"). The sheer size amazed the old workers who had been present for a long time, for they had never seen such a well-preserved and huge rafter.
So the question is, how to carry this behemoth with a side length of 4 meters and a height of 1.5 meters back to study.
The slabs were dismantled and numbered sequentially piece by piece, during which the exclamations of experts and workers began one after another.
The partition on all four sides of the word "囬" is called the side compartment, which is filled with various funerary items, which shows how luxurious the life of the owner of the tomb was before he died, and he wanted to bring the things used in his life to the world after death to continue to enjoy happiness.
Speaking of this rafter is also a treasure, the heaviest one is more than a thousand pounds, interlocking with the tenon structure is closely combined, it took everyone a lot of effort to successfully disintegrate it, and the cultural relics in it were also carefully taken out. The most amazing thing is the color of these old objects.
One by one, it looks like it has just been put down, especially the lacquerware, the color is clear, the moisture is shiny, and you say that the paint you just brushed has been believed.
Therefore, the workers were extra careful when carrying these lacquerware, for fear of bumping into a piece of paint, so that the experts would not be sad to die.
Just when a worker was about to take out a round lacquerware from the side compartment, he suddenly failed to put it up, was there something in it?
Sure enough, open the lid inside actually contained a pot of lotus soup more than two thousand years ago, although the color is not so appetizing, but the structure of the lotus piece is still clearly visible, two thousand years can still maintain this form is simply incredible, experts hurriedly picked up the camera to take pictures, but the excitement did not last long.
At first glance, it looked like dozens of pieces of lotus, but in the blink of an eye, it was half less, and then brought back to the museum where there was no slag left, all that was left was a pot of muddy sewage and a photo that could prove that it was originally a lotus.
When the funerary goods in the side compartment have been cleaned up, all that remains is the coffin of the owner of the tomb in the center.
Thousands of calls began to come out, holding the pipa half-covered
It was a pure black coffin, large enough to hold the next big man. Could it be that the owner of the tomb is not the King of Chu but a general or something like that?
With doubts, the workers opened the lid of the black coffin, but did not get an answer to the question.
It turns out that the black is only the outer coffin, and there is a delicate black background gold pattern inner coffin, which is painted with all kinds of rare beasts and is very gorgeous, which is a bit of an emperor's appearance, the dragon robe in the Qin and Han Dynasties is black gold pattern, it seems that the horse king lying in the pile is really the horse king.
Just when the experts opened the lid of the inner coffin and wanted to see the dignity of the horse king, they found that there was also an inner coffin in the inner coffin, an inner coffin that could be said to be magnificent, and the red bottom depicted various beasts with yellow, green, brown and other colors, if the upper layer of gold on a black background represented solemnity and domineering, then the meaning of this layer was obviously auspicious.
This is the third layer, the size of the tomb owner is also slimmed down three times, everyone thinks that there will be no more layer inside, it will not become a Russian matryoshka doll, layer by layer endlessly.
As a result, there is indeed another layer. And it is a fashionable inner coffin in the design of the pattern, which is fashionable in modern times. The background, like the outermost layer, is black and wrapped in brocade on the outside, looking like the products of an international luxury brand. It really makes people sigh at the exquisiteness of the owner of the tomb.
However, at this moment, experts do not have the patience to slowly appreciate, continue to open matryoshka dolls.
Continue to open the fourth layer of the inner coffin, this time there is finally no fifth layer, but still can not see the appearance of the tomb owner. The fourth layer contained an oversized rice dumpling, and a silky quilt was tied with several ribbons, wrapping the owner of the tomb tightly.
The staff present were stunned by the sight in front of them, because the color and pattern of the silk quilt were almost like new, even more advanced than the silk craftsmanship at that time, and everywhere revealed a sense of high quality.
The crowd sighed and were about to uncover the quilt when something unexpected happened.
Seemingly brand new silk quilt, in fact, has been decayed, leaving a bright and beautiful appearance, the staff's hand just grabbed the quilt it felt like pinching a piece of tofu as if there was no real sense, grasped and did not catch, but there is already a gap in the quilt.
There was no way out, so I had to carry it back and slowly find a way to uncover the quilt. The identity of the owner of the tomb is still unable to be confirmed, and the experts have to divide into two ways, one way from the funerary products to find clues that can confirm the identity of the owner of the tomb, and the other way is of course to find a way to communicate with the owner of the tomb "face to face".
After a brief discussion, the experts decided to divide the silk into several small pieces, so that the pattern of the lump could be retained for research, and the owner of the tomb could come out to meet them as soon as possible.
When I thought about it, I immediately started to do it, and the quilt was removed piece by piece, but there was a new situation below.
Layers of clothing from different seasons were neatly covered on the tomb owner's body, including silk, linen fabrics, etc., and finally counted down to a full 20 layers.
The experts had to endure and carefully take it down layer by layer, a process that was quite painful, not only time-consuming, but also quite nose-consuming, because as time passed, an indescribable stench came out of the coffin.
Wait, this is not reasonable, it has been more than two thousand years, is there anything that has not completely decayed? The experts were completely confused by this phenomenon, because this was something that had never happened before, let alone a thousand years, even if it was ten years, the corpses had turned into white bones.
Thinking of this, the experts could not bear the stench of spiritual attacks and could not wait to see the owner of this miraculous tomb.
Finally, under a layer of linen clothing, the expert's hand had a familiar touch. It was cold skin, and it was still elastic. Unveiling the last clothes, the owner of the tomb finally met with everyone, but the experts became more confused.
Miracle, what a miracle, the hair is not rotten, the eyelashes are not rotten, the wheat-colored skin is still very elastic, and some joints can move. Is this really a corpse from more than two thousand years ago? The newly buried body was worse than her. Also, why is "she", she is actually a woman, then it can't be the horse king, who is she, the experts' heads are full of question marks.
Who the hell is she?
At this point, for her, the work of archaeologists can only come to an end. After being embalmed, she was sent to the Hunan Provincial Medical College for further examinations to find the cause of her death and other valuable clues.
Thankfully, it wasn't long before another group of experts found her identity in the funerary.
A seal is engraved with the three words "concubine XinChai", then her life word should be called Xin Chai (another way of saying that it is not called "Xin Chai", the combination of the two words is "avoidance", it should be called "avoiding concubines", but the mainstream is still "Xin Chai").
And some funeral products also found the logos of "Yuanhou Jiacheng" and "Yuanhou Family", combined with the identity of concubines, indicating that she should have been the wife of this Hou Hou before she died.
According to historical records, The Marquis of Yuan was a knighthood in the early Western Han Dynasty, and it was the chancellor of the State of Changsha who was given the title of "Li Cang".
Moreover, the Tomb of Licang was later found under another mound in Mawangdui, and three seals of "Changsha Xiangxiang", "Seal of the Marquis of Yuan" and "Licang" were also found in the tomb, which confirmed the records of titles and positions in the history books.
Therefore, it is not the horse king buried under the mawang pile. Counting the tombs that were later found next to Xin Chai's tomb, which had been stolen as early as the Tang Dynasty, and suspected of being the son of Li Cang, Ma Wangdui seemed to be the family cemetery of Li Cang.
A medical experience spanning millennia
Mrs. Xin Chai could not have imagined that two thousand years later, she would be able to experience modern medicine. After a series of instrumental tests, doctors found a variety of diseases from her, including cardiovascular, gallstones, lumbar spondylosis, fractures and so on. But that wasn't enough to determine the cause of her death.
In order to find the secret of Mrs. Xin Chai's death, and to better preserve her body in the future, the State Council approved the dissection of the body, and it is more conducive to the embalming of the body to take out the internal organs and keep them separately.
After receiving the news from the State Council, Mrs. Xin Chai's dissection room gathered experts from almost all departments. They all wanted to see what was the difference between this patient from more than two thousand years ago and the current patient, except that only one department expert was not involved. That is pediatrics, after all, Mrs. Xin Chai was 50 years old when she died, which was already a very old age in that era, and it was definitely not a baby.
Professor Peng Longxiang, the chief surgeon, was still very young at the time, and he still remembers this thousand-year-old dissection.
Professor Peng recalled that at that time, according to mrs. Xin Chai's skin, she should have died suddenly, and she was not tormented by illness for a long time. The specific cause of death has gradually surfaced with the cooperation of experts in various disciplines.
First of all, experts doubted whether it would be sudden death caused by cerebral infarction, and as a result, any lesions were found in her brain, and this direction was first ruled out.
If her eyes and tongue protrude outwards, will she hang herself? The integrity of the neck bone also excludes this option.
While the crowd was still arguing fiercely, at the mouth of Mrs. Xin Chai's duodenum, a stone the size of a small thumb pointed them in the right direction.
How painful it would be to block such a large stone, and it would not be painful to die of pain. Cardiovascular experts also found that Xin Chai's heart condition is not very good, there is a very serious coronary heart disease, 70% of the main arteries are blocked, should not be able to withstand severe pain toss.
In order to confirm this conjecture, experts continue to search for favorable evidence in Xin Chai's body. Suddenly, experts in the department of gastroenterology found that there were a large number of melon seeds in Xin Chai's esophagus and stomach.
If it is only in the stomach, it can only mean that you have eaten melon before death, but even the esophagus has melon seeds, which means that Xin chased death just when he was eating melon.
Experts found a total of 138 melon seeds in Xin Chai's body, which is how much he loves to eat melons. This thing ate too much gallbladder contraction to push the stone into the duodenum, the result is too big to go out and can not come back to the kana, so the severe bile colic induced coronary heart disease, and eventually died suddenly in his own luxurious daily life.
Sleeping Beauty of the East, a treasure of the world
The archaeological work of Mrs. Xin Chai's tomb has been settled, so what is the most valuable treasure in the tomb? Is it a well-preserved variety of lacquerware? Or a plain gauze jacket as thin as a cicada's wing (total weight 48 grams)? Or a giant painting (2 meters long) draped over the outermost melanin coffin?
These can be regarded as irreplaceable treasures in the history of mainland archaeology, which fully reflects the developed technical level and superb artistic achievements of the Western Han Dynasty of the mainland.
However, although these are priceless treasures, they are not unique beings, and they are not so special together with the burial items at the imperial level.
The most precious nature in the tomb is the "Oriental Sleeping Beauty" Lady Xin Chai, who has been sleeping for more than 2,000 years. She not only provides a reliable basis for modern medicine to trace the history of the development of diseases, but also shows the world that the technology of the Chinese nation for the preservation of remains is far beyond the world level, and interprets that "it is not necessary to be air-dried to achieve long-term preservation".
She is the treasure of my Chinese nation and even the world, and the bald eagle and Little Yo Xi are all vying to get her, even if it is half a hair, even if it is a piece of carbon in the grave.