The China Silk Museum and the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology recently jointly held a press conference on the discovery of silk in the Yangshao era, saying that the silk fabric found at the Yangshao Cultural Site in Xingyang Wanggou in Zhengzhou City in the Yellow River Basin has been confirmed by research to be the earliest silk fabric found in China, dating back more than 5,000 years.
The Paper recently interviewed Zhao Feng, director of the China Silk Museum, and Zhou Yang, director of the key scientific research base of the State Administration of Cultural Relics for the Protection of Textile and Cultural Relics of the China Silk Museum, to talk about the origin of silk and the beginning and end of the discovery of silk at the Wanggou site. Zhao Feng said that silk originated in China, and originally everyone did not think that it was a problem, but in 2014, at the World Heritage Conference in which the three countries jointly declared the "Silk Road: Chang'an - Tianshan Corridor Road Network" as a world cultural heritage, officials from other countries proposed that their silk was earlier than our country. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage demanded that the silk originate in China be presented with solid evidence. Since 2015, with the approval of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the China Silk Museum and the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology have jointly carried out archaeological projects with the theme of "Searching for the Origin of Chinese Silk".
Zhao Feng, director of the China Silk Museum
The Paper: In 1983, silk remnants dating back to 5,500 years ago were unearthed at the Qingtai site in Xingyang, Henan Province, confirming that it was the earliest silk fabric found in China. The silk fabric found at the Yangshao Cultural Site in Xingyang Wanggou, Henan is also 5300 to 5500 years old, it should be said that the earliest silk age found in China has not been pushed forward, so where is its special significance?
Zhao Feng:
The first, of course, is the study of the origin of silk. There are three most explicit examples of silk fabrics excavated in modern China, namely, half a silkworm cocoon found in the Yangshao cultural site in Xiyin Village, Xia County, Shanxi Province in 1926, which is an empirical evidence of human use of silkworm cocoons; the silk thread, ribbon and silk pieces found at the Wuxing Qianshan yang site in Zhejiang In 1958 are the empirical evidence of silk in the Yangtze River Basin; the silk residues in the urn coffin excavated from the Qingtai site in Henan in 1983 are the empirical evidence of the appearance of silk in the Yellow River Basin, and are also considered to be the earliest silk fabrics found in China. However, the silk fabrics excavated from the Qingtai site in Xingyang, Henan Province, have not been preserved, and this physical evidence has disappeared. So I think the biggest significance of this discovery is that in the Wanggou site not far from the Qingtai site, we dug up the silk fabrics of more than 5,000 years ago, and we finally have first-hand physical data to confirm the existence of silk in China as early as 5,000 years ago, and with our new technology means, we also confirmed that the newly discovered silk fabrics are domestic silk.
Carbonized silk fabrics excavated from the Wanggou site
The Paper: When you discuss the origin of silk, you specifically exclude the use of wild silk and only use domestic silk as the object of discussion. Why exclude wild silk?
I think there are many different nodes in the origin of silk: one is to weave silk from the cocoon silk of wild mulberry silkworms; the second is to domesticate wild mulberry silkworms into domestic silkworms; and the third is to cultivate mulberry artificially for the purpose of raising silkworms. These three nodes should be sequential, and the theoretical level is first the use of wild mulberry cocoons by humans, then the domestication of wild silkworms, and then the artificial cultivation of mulberry trees. But there are also primary and secondary, the most critical of which is the domestication process from wild mulberry silkworms to silkworms. Because india has long been recorded in the history of the use of wild silk to produce fabrics, but thousands of years later, they are still wild silkworms, not domesticated. So I have never counted wild silk as the origin of silk, because the use of wild silk is only accidental, or a small production, which is different from what we call the concept of silk origin. Because only after successful domestication of silkworms can silkworms become stable and real production materials.
Comparison of ivory carving silkworms and silkworms excavated from the gongyi double locust tree site in Henan
The Paper: Does this new discovery add new evidence to the origin of silk in China? Can we say that it was the world's first silk fabric?
There should be no objection to saying that it is the world's earliest surviving silk fabric. Originally, silk originated in China, we all feel that this is not a problem, silk is a Chinese invention, this is the basic consensus in the world. In 2014, the "Silk Road: Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor Road Network", jointly declared by China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, was inscribed on the World Heritage List. After the successful application, the leaders of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage called me to the meeting to demand that the research and protection of the post-Silk Road era be strengthened, and the research on the origin of silk should be strengthened, because at that World Heritage Conference, officials from other countries proposed that their silk was earlier than ours. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage has made such a request to us to bring out the evidence of whether the origin of silk is china or not.
Wanggou urn coffin carbonized textile stranded tissue local enlargement photo
In 1996, I published a paper in Southeast Culture called "The Cultural Opportunity of the Origin of Silk", and the main idea was how people could think of using silk to make clothes. I think people first thought of domesticating silkworms not just for the sake of one more clothing material. I think it has to do with the worship of silkworms and the funerary concept of people moving from death to life. The life of a silkworm in nature, from silkworm eggs to larvae to pupae, this process is like a human life. We now have more evidence to prove that the ancients at that time were inspired by this, believing that the ascension of the soul after death is like a silkworm pupae, so the association of silkworms is associated with ascension. Therefore, when a person dies, he should be wrapped in silk, silk as a medium, to communicate heaven and earth, to guide the tomb owner to ascend to heaven; the second is the mulberry leaves eaten by silkworms, and after eating mulberry leaves, they can finally ascend to heaven, so the mulberry forest has become a very important place. So you see that the ancients sacrificed, prayed for rain, and asked for children basically went to the mulberry forest. And also from the mulberry tree imagined a kind of fuso tree, the fuso tree is the sky tree, is the place where the sun perchs. So the Fuso tree is often associated with the sun. The purpose of raising silkworms is to protect silkworms and protect people's passage to heaven.
Silk fragments excavated from the Qianshan Yang site
This kind of cultural background of "the unity of heaven and man" is only available in China, and there is no such cultural background in India, so only in Chinese culture there is "cocooning and self-binding", the emergence of the Fuso tree, the emergence of this primitive worship, only in such a cultural background can silk be domesticated from wild silkworms to silkworms, and silk can also have a real origin.
This time the discovery of silk fabrics in the urn corroborated my point. Why were the earliest silk fabrics found in urn burials? First, the urn burys the child, it is wrapped in silk, which confirms that what we said at that time silk is related to the concept of human funeral, silk is used as a wrapping after death; second, the shape of the urn is very similar to the shape of the cocoon, which will not have a kind of "cocoon to bind itself", "break the cocoon to ascend to heaven" This kind of meaning, buried the body in the cocoon, the soul can ascend to heaven, which is equivalent to adding some supporting materials to my theory.
Urn coffins were excavated from the Wanggou site in Xingyang City, Henan Province
The Paper: Why did you choose to start your silk exploration in Zhengzhou?
Zhou Yang:
Sourcing silk is a very difficult task. To find the origin, we generally look for it in myths and historical materials, but there is a lack of archaeological evidence, so we began to do this kind of work. In 2015, we went to the Qingtai Village site in Zhengzhou for the first time, because the earliest silk was unearthed in 1983, around 5500 silk. Then we think that the Yellow River Basin as the origin of silk is very likely. First, that place was the location of the Yellow Emperor's settlement in 5500; second, the historical records record that the Yellow Emperor's concubine Concubine Ancestors were also in that area, and we feel that myths and legends are not empty, but in the end we still have to pass archaeological evidence, and 1983 gave us a good confidence.
Neolithic pottery silkworm pupae excavated from the xiawanggang site in Zhejiang, Henan. Collection of Henan Museum
The Paper: What is the specific discovery and identification process of silk fabric samples at the Xingyang Wanggou site in Zhengzhou?
From the second half of 2015 to 2016, the China Silk Museum and the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology jointly applied for the archaeological project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage "Searching for the Origin of Chinese Silk", and the academic goal is to find the origin of silk. The archaeological site of the excavation project was found in Qingtai Village in 1983, so we began to do this work. In 2017, we took our technology to the Zhengzhou Archaeological Research Institute, to Qingtai Village, and also cleaned up several urn coffins at the Wanggou site. The Wanggou site and the Qingtai site are about the same period, not far apart, and from the judgment of archaeologists, they should belong to the same cultural type. We were actually very lucky in 2017, we cleaned up two urn coffins at the Wanggou site, and in fact, we found silk, and then in 2018, we expanded the scope of our research to include not only Qingtai, including Wanggou, but also the double locust tree in Gongyi and the double locust tree site of the craft. It was a very high-grade site, and the most amazing thing was that it produced a silkworm carving of a wild boar fang. That place was rumored to be the Yellow Emperor Settlement, and then tried there for a while and found nothing new, and in June 2019, we continued our work in Wanggou and found 4 of the 5 urn coffins with textiles inside the four urns. This announcement is our 2017 research results, because of the 2019 research results, we still want to deepen the refinement, but eight or nine is not far from ten, because we are constantly expanding the scope of sampling and the number of samples, but also constantly improving our technology, so we feel that we will have more support next.
Ivory silkworms have been excavated from the site of the double locust tree
The Paper: Is this the first time that you have used the enzyme-linked immunoassay technology independently developed by your museum to identify silk fabrics?
This is an innovation in our scientific approach. Because the previous silk identification is mainly based on the shape, the fabric fibers of human textiles are mainly cotton, wool, linen, and silk, and the cross-sections of it are different when enlarged, and have their own characteristics. But when the material you identify is very fragile, and when you touch it, it will not be preserved, and it is difficult to identify. This time, our fiber research team based on Zhou Yang used the self-developed enzyme-linked immunoassay technology. It has greatly enhanced our detection capabilities and expanded our detection scope, so this time it should be said that we are a very successful case.
Fragments of silk fabrics excavated from the Qingtai site
This time can not be said to be the first use, because our technology is a little bit of progress, the first to be used in relatively easy to identify things, such as Shang Zhou bronzes and so on. Another important use of ours is in the wreck of The South China Sea 1. The "Nanhai No. 1" shipwreck has a ship silo that is empty, there is no ceramics in it, and there is still a little impurity left in the bilge, and we found silk from this impurity, indicating that the cabin was loaded with silk at that time, so we called this technology "finding the real thing in the invisible". So we applied it in different places, but applied to such an early age, to find silk, this is still the first case.
The residue in the urn coffin unearthed at the Wanggou site has been severely carbonized and looks like soil. In the past, it was difficult to achieve the detection of carbonized textile fiber materials. With the continuous optimization of enzyme-linked immunoassay technology and the continuous reduction of testing costs, we will carry out a wider range of sample testing in the Yangshao cultural settlement group in Zhengzhou, in order to outline the distribution of silk origin in this area.
The scene where researchers take samples from an urn coffin
The Paper: Is there any earlier silk in other places?
It's entirely possible. I believe that if we continue to do it, this scope will definitely expand, and the era will move forward.
In the future, we will focus on the Yangshao culture in the north and the Liangzhu culture in the south. Liangzhu culture it has tombs, tomb rank is also relatively high. The so-called "turning dry into jade", jade is a thing that reaches the heavens, so we feel that there should be some kind of connection between jade and silk, so in the future we will do more work in Liangzhu, of course, our work is based on archaeological excavations, archaeology has no new progress, we are equivalent to saying that there is nothing easy to do.