In mid-April 2019, on the hillside outside Daocheng in the beautiful internet red town of Daocheng in Sichuan Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, stood a white and clean young man wearing glasses, Zheng Zhexuan, director of the Paleolithic Research Office of the Sichuan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.
Although Daocheng is beautiful and charming, Zheng Zhexuan is not here to play, and as a Paleolithic expert, he is attracted by the scattered and vague Paleolithic clues near Daocheng.
On this day, he came to the hillside on the outskirts of Daocheng, and looked out at a very beautiful place, which was surrounded by water on three sides and backed by mountains on one side, with abundant water and grass, and rich in animals and plants. Zheng Zhexuan couldn't help but sigh inwardly: Such a beautiful place, if I were an ancient, I would definitely live here.
It was this eye that made this young man and Pirro form an indissoluble relationship, and at the same time, he became famous in one fell swoop, unveiling a mystery that many archaeologists dreamed of.
The place is called Pilo, which means the place where two rivers meet in Tibetan.
Beautiful rice city scenery
introduction
In the long river of human history, it is full of too many hardships and accidents,
Human history is a long and thick volume, and 99% of human history has been lost in time and space, and less than 1% of human history has been recorded in writing.
Portraits of ancient humans
Time cannot be turned back, just as the river cannot flow back, and the exploration of the history of human civilization can only be achieved through archaeological excavations.
Because of its age, the ancestors left too few things, and the stone has become an extremely important basis for archaeological excavations to study ancient humans because of its long preservation time.
These stones have accompanied our ancestors through the long dark nights before the arrival of civilization. They selected some of the stones and machined them into simple tools. Although the figures of the early ancestors have disappeared into the long river of history, the tools they left behind are still quietly sleeping in nature. —The opening remarks of Sabine's "The Lecture Begins."
In the 1940s, the Anthropologist Morvis of Harvard University in the United States drew a "cultural line" from the north-central part of the United Kingdom to the Indian Plate near the Himalayas, and he believed that in the Paleolithic Age, the area west and south of the line was an advanced area of early human culture, represented by the Ashley hand axe cultural tradition; and China and other areas north of the line were "marginal areas of cultural lag" characterized by the tradition of making smashers.
Morvis Line. The lower left of the line includes Africa and Europe, which Is called the advanced area of early human culture by Morvis, and the lag zone in the upper right, including China
The Chinese civilization has made outstanding contributions to world civilization with its brilliance in human history, but it is claimed by Western experts that the civilization of the ancient ancestors lagged behind the West, which cannot but be regretted.
Is it true that the land of China cannot find the remnants of advanced production in the Paleolithic Era?
This question also bothered Zheng Zhexuan.
Ordered
In 2019, with the continuous extension of the construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway, the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology received a task to conduct archaeological surveys along the red line of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway to avoid irreparable damage to valuable cultural relics during the construction of large-scale infrastructure projects.
Although this kind of investigation is necessary, because it is a cooperative work and there is no preliminary clue, it is often a passive investigation, and the results are unknown.
Sichuan-Tibet Railway
After Zheng Zhexuan heard about it, he took the initiative to ask for help, he thought it was an excellent opportunity to realize the dream in his heart, and he really lived up to expectations and gave people a "stone-shattering" discovery.
found
In March 2019, before the ice and snow had melted, Zheng Zhexuan and his team came to Kangding, the capital of Ganzi, and climbed the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, where they struggled all the way, and after crossing the folded mountains, an open field appeared in front of them.
According to Zheng Zhexuan's experience, there are no remnants of the Paleolithic era here, and there will also be traces of the Neolithic era, and it will definitely not return empty-handed.
However, what I did not expect was that after more than ten days of dragnet investigation and exploration, nothing was found, not to mention ancient sites, and even the traces of modern times were not found.
The exhaustion and headaches caused by altitude sickness suddenly overwhelmed like dark clouds, and they felt a deep sense of frustration.
However, kung fu pays off,
The mountains and rivers are full of doubts, and the willows are dark and the flowers are bright and another village
。
Zheng Zhexuan and his archaeological team
On the afternoon of March 31, Zheng Zhexuan searched as usual on a flat spot at the confluence of the two rivers in East Russia and Romania, with his head bowed, and constantly pulled the stones on the ground with his feet, and the cold wind blew on his body, although he was wearing a thick field suit, he still felt the bone-chilling cold.
Suddenly, a different stone appeared at Zheng Zhexuan's feet, and he was surprised in his heart, so he quickly bent down to pick it up, looked at it carefully, and couldn't help but shout: "Oh my God! ”
The stone in Zheng Zhexuan's hand was the size of a palm, thick and sleek on one side, thin and sharp on the other, and Zheng Zhexuan, who had a wealth of professional knowledge, immediately judged that it was a Paleolithic hand axe.
But he still couldn't believe his eyes, and quickly called his brother Chen Youcheng, who was standing not far away, Chen Youcheng took the axe and looked at it for a while, looked up at Zheng Zhexuan, and the two couldn't help but laugh.
At this time, the mood of the two people was like seeing the sun in the clouds, and the sky was clear all of a sudden.
What Zheng Zhexuan did not expect was that the bigger surprise was still behind, and he was about to open one
The time and space tunnel gate more than 100,000 years ago has changed the historical cognition that people have mastered.
surprise
The basic geomorphological survey of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway was soon over, and Zheng Zhexuan's team wanted to return to the provincial city, but Zheng Zhexuan had an inexplicable premonition in his heart, and he had a premonition that there would definitely be unusual secrets waiting for him in this place.
Before returning to the provincial capital, Zheng Zhexuan came to the outskirts of Daocheng alone, and he strolled up a small hill, and when he looked out, a wide and beautiful place appeared in front of his eyes.
This place is surrounded by water on three sides, one side is backed by mountains, the water and grass are lush, like a fairyland, Zheng Zhexuan can't help but sigh: "It's really a good place, if I were an ancient, I would definitely live here!" ”
Zheng Zhexuan
This place gave Zheng Zhexuan a powerful shock and attraction, and he felt that this time he had come for this place.
Because it was late, they had to rush to other places, so they had to leave Daocheng, but the place on the outskirts of Daocheng was deeply imprinted in Zheng Zhexuan's heart.
He was determined to come to this place to investigate.
This wait is one year.
On May 11, 2020, Zheng Zhexuan couldn't wait to bring his team to Pilo, this place that haunted his soul was a large and flat open land, about 2 kilometers long from north to south, about 0.5 kilometers wide from east to west, with more than 20,000 square meters, which is definitely a very livable treasure land.
Panoramic view of the Pirro ruins
Zheng Zhexuan and his teammates began to search in this mysterious land,
On the same day, they found a small number of stone cores and stone chips, and the next day they found a typical stone axe, and then found the second and third, and Zheng Zhexuan was excited in his heart: this place is indeed unusual!
On the third day, an even more shocking scene appeared, in an area, all kinds of stone axes and stone tools were all over the ground, and Zheng Zhexuan and his teammates constantly bent down to pick them up, and they couldn't stop.
The weather on the plateau changed as it went, the sky was suddenly cloudy, and the raindrops with large bean grains crackled and fell, but Zheng Zhexuan and his teammates did not feel it at all, they were in a state of high excitement, constantly shouting in the rain, constantly picking up the "baby" on the ground, until the clothes were all wet, and the cold shivered before finding a place to hide.
According to later statistics, Zheng Zhexuan and his teammates found more than 7,000 Paleolithic stone tools alone.
Stone tools found by the archaeological team
Fruits
This major discovery alarmed the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, which immediately instructed the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the College of Culture and Science of Peking University to jointly carry out archaeological excavations of Piluo.
Although there were good expectations and psychological preparations, the results of the on-site excavations surprised, ecstatic, and even stunned archaeologists.
They excavated 8 layers of human activity remains here, which is very rare and rare, and what makes experts even more excited is that they have been excavated in the soil layer
Ashley-style hand axe
！
Ashel hand axe found at the site of Pilo
Here is the concept of Asheli.
Ashley stone tools are a stage of the Paleolithic period from 1.7 million years ago to 200,000 years ago, named after saint-Ascher, which was first discovered on the outskirts of Amiens, France, and the outstanding feature of this stone tool is the symmetry of the processing surface left and right, and its great significance is to show that human beings have the concept of standardized processing and symmetry for the first time, which is of great historical significance.
However, There has been no archaeological discovery of Ashley-type stone tools in China, although Guangxi Baise and Shaanxi Luonan and other places have unearthed some similar hand axes, but they are not strictly speaking of Ashley hand axes, so the aforementioned "Mowei line" determines that the vast areas, including China, can only process some simple smashing tools in the ancient ancestors' era, which is relatively backward.
Ashley's hand axe found in the West
However, the discovery of the Pirao site completely erased the Morvis line and finalized the controversy that has long plagued the archaeological community.
Zheng Zhexuan participated in CCTV's "Talking" program
The discovery of the Pilo site has pushed the history of Chinese civilization forward by 150,000 years, and it allows us to see the wisdom of the ancient ancestors and the spirit of daring to explore in the harsh environment of the plateau, which has created a splendid Chinese civilization that flows in the blood of each of our Chinese descendants, and is endless and eternal.