Cover news reporter Zeng Jie Dai Zhuxin according to Sichuan Radio and Television Station
On the evening of March 31, the second episode of the large-scale archaeological documentary "Treasures of Ancient Shu" produced by Sichuan Radio and Television Station, "Migration and Integration", was unveiled on CCTV9, and Sichuan Satellite TV was also broadcast simultaneously. Taking the latest excavations and research results of the ancient Shu civilization site as the main line, the film crew tried to retrace the development path of the ancient Shu civilization and outlined the formation of the ancient Shu civilization from 5100 to 2600 years ago.
On the same day, coinciding with the announcement of the results of the 2021 National Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries Selection, the Daocheng Piluo Ruins and the Guanghan Sanxingdui Ruins Sacrifice Area from Sichuan were both selected and became the "Twin Stars" of Sichuan Archaeology. The broadcast of the documentary "Treasures of Ancient Shu" has aroused strong concern, and the history of ancient Shu is gradually becoming clear.
Excavation site of the Baodun site
Where is the source of the ancient Shu civilization?
In units of time—artifacts, writing, vegetation, grain—are all evidences of the study of the history of the evolution of ancient civilizations.
In the Qiang Museum in Maoxian County, Sichuan Province, there is a ceramic sculpture of a human face on display. From a contemporary aesthetic point of view, it is made in a simple way, and it is only a part of the fragment of the overall object. Through scientific testing, archaeologists concluded that it is the earliest pottery portrait artwork found in Sichuan.
Since 2000, archaeologists have excavated tens of thousands of cultural relics at the Yingpanshan site in Maoxian County, Sichuan Province, including stone tools, pottery, jade and so on. Among them, faience pottery is the most eye-catching. By comparing them with other faience styles of the same period, archaeologists have found that these faience pottery most likely came from the Majiayao culture.
A growing body of evidence links Yingpanshan to Majiayao in Gansu. One of the most powerful is the carbon-14 dating. The age of paleontological fossils is determined by the degree of scientific carbon-14 decay, thereby inferring the specific age of the culture. After comparison, the age of Yingpanshan is about 5300 to 4600 years old. This is comparable to the late Yangshao culture and the Majiayao culture in the upper reaches of the Yellow River. At the same time, the study of crops and sites has provided more important physical evidence for the origin of the ancient Shu civilization.
The origin of the ancient Shu people gradually became clear. More than 5,000 years ago, the ancestors of Majiayao set out from the upper reaches of the Yellow River in Qinghai, Gansu, passed through the Gannan Grassland, entered the Western Sichuan Plateau, and then entered the Sichuan Basin along the Minjiang River Valley.
Guo Hanzhong repairs the sacred tree
How did the ancient Shu civilization develop?
Archaeology has found that the ancient Shu people have been carrying out periodic migrations on a regular basis.
4600 years ago, the yingpanshan ruins were abandoned. The ancestors left their hometown where they had lived for 700 years and went all the way south. From north to south, from west to east. The road is long and difficult. So what exactly is the reason for them to have to make such a choice? Huang Ming, a researcher at the Chengdu Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and his colleagues spent 6 years finally unveiling the mystery of the migration of the ancestors of Yingpan Mountain.
Between 6,000 and 4,000 years ago, the Earth's climate changed drastically, and temperatures plummeted in the Northern Hemisphere. The once glorious first empire of mankind, the Akkadian Empire, withered away. At the same time, Yingpan Mountain was no longer suitable for human habitation.
4700 years ago, the Chengdu Plain was densely packed with river networks, frequent floods, and climatic conditions were not suitable for human habitation. But this time the climate catastrophe has just changed the phenological conditions here. Two branches of ancient humans originating from the upper reaches of the Yellow River and from the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.
It enters the Sichuan Basin along the Minjiang and Yangtze rivers respectively, and meets on this new fertile land of the Chengdu Plain. They stationed, repaired, and multiplied here, thus opening the prelude to the large-scale transformation of Sichuan by the ancient Shu people.
Yan Xue studies rice
How did the ancient Shu civilization develop and grow?
The migration of a large number of people will inevitably require more food, more land, and more production materials. The people take food as the sky, how did the ancient Shu people solve the food problem?
Through plant archaeology, Yan Xue, a librarian at the Chengdu Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, tried to figure out the production and lifestyle of the ancient Shu people. Plant archaeology includes the exploration of plant remains and the restoration of ancient ecological environments. She found traces of rice from plant remains unearthed in the ancient city of Takayama. So, she plunged headlong into the rice field, fully simulating the production methods of the ancients and studying the recipes of the ancients. Archaeological results show that during the alpine ancient city period, rice had surpassed millet as the main food crop. Gaoshan Ancient City and Baodun Ancient City have become the birthplace of rice cultivation civilization in the Chengdu Plain.
It's not just production methods that change.
Bronze sacred trees, longitudinal masks, jade, gold masks... Under the witness of ancient Shu artifacts, Sanxingdui "woke up and shocked the world". Unprecedented in this variety of cultural sites. Through horizontal comparison, these artifacts are inextricably linked to the Xia culture and Shang culture of the same period. This can also confirm that the Sanxingdui culture is the product of the integration of ancient Chinese cultures and has created an unprecedented glory of the ancient Shu civilization.
The popularity of the documentary "Treasures of Ancient Shu" has made people believe that with the discovery of more archaeological clues and the use of new technical means, more and more unsolved mysteries of ancient Shu civilization are expected to be answered in the future.
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