In many urban museums, there will be some artifacts from the primitive social period, such as various kinds of stone tools, as well as some strangely shaped pottery, such as pointed bottom bottles. For a long time, all walks of life thought that the cupped bottom bottle was a water intake, but according to Oracle, the cupped bottom bottle was a container with a unique role... What is the real purpose of the culet-bottom bottle? If you also want to know, the following Xiaobian will reveal the secret to you from scratch.
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In the early 1920s, archaeologists inspected Sanmenxia in Henan Province and found a primitive cultural site with an area of about 360,000 square meters, which was mainly distributed in Yangshao Village, Shichi County, so it was named "Yangshao Culture" according to custom. Based on later archaeological excavations, experts determined that the Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture, dating back about 7,000 years, and unearthed a large number of pottery products, the most distinctive of which was the red pointed bottom bottle.
For a long time, pointed bottom bottles are representative of the Yangshao culture, they are about 30-60 cm long, with a round mouth at the tip and a pair of ears on the abdomen. Archaeologists have speculated that the tip bottom is a water extractor, that is, a rope in both ears, and then put into the river, the pointed bottom bottle will automatically fill the river water. However, some experts have repeatedly tried and found that the cupped bottom bottle cannot be filled very quickly, so people have to continue to explore, what is the real use of the cupped bottom bottle?
The pointed bottom bottle seems ordinary, but it is also very learned, after all, it is a cultural relic from more than 7,000 years ago, and it is one of the few windows that can let us understand the mystery of primitive society. For more than half a century, the true role of culet-bottom bottles has been debated endlessly, until in recent years, with the development of science and technology, archaeologists have used electron microscopy to observe that there are white residues on the inner walls of some well-preserved culet-bottom bottles.
The discovery of the residue made the experts very happy, and after the identification of chemical molecules, it was determined that the white residue was oxalic acid, which is what we often call beer stone in daily life. Archaeologists wonder, because the beer stone is a crystal produced during brewing, so this shows that the pointed bottom bottle has been brewed, so it also indirectly proves that the Yangshao people 7,000 years ago have mastered the brewing technology, indicating that the pointed bottom bottle is actually a container for brewing.
If the pointed bottom bottle is a wine vessel, then its shape structure must also conform to certain scientific principles, and archaeologists have analyzed and solved the mystery. First of all, the ancients did not use a flat bottom and used a pointed bottom, not because it is simpler to make a pointed bottom bottle, but the tip bottom is conducive to the precipitation of impurities in the liquid when brewing, which can allow impurities to gather in the tip bottom, so that when pouring wine or sucking with reeds, impurities are not easy to float, and the wine will remain clearer for a longer time.
In the process of brewing, it is also necessary to bury the bottle in the silt for fermentation, if it is a flat-bottom container, it is necessary to dig up the silt to put it in the silt, otherwise it is difficult to put the flat-bottom container into the silt, if it is a pointed bottom container, you only need to press hard to insert the pointed bottom bottle into the silt. In addition, the contact area between the culet bottom bottle and the silt is large, which is also more conducive to fermentation. It can be seen that the ancients chose to make wine in a pointed bottom bottle, which may also be the best choice after repeated attempts.
The most critical thing is that the pointed bottom bottle is more stable when inserted into the underground mud pit, and there is basically no possibility of being overturned, otherwise the wine jar is broken, the year's effort is wasted, and the flat bottom container is more likely to be kicked down on the ground. In later studies, experts also found that the "wine" in the oracle bone is written as a "unitary" with a pointed bottom next to "yin", which also shows that in the early society, wine was packed in a pointed bottom container.
In modern wine-making factories, a kind of cone fermentation sealing equipment is also used, so this shows that the pointed bottom bottle of Yangshao culture is a kind of wine making vessel, and the pointed bottom bottle is not uncommon in other countries.
From a worldwide perspective, the culapid bottle is not unique to the Chinese civilization, in ancient Rome, ancient Greece, ancient Egypt and ancient Babylon, as well as in the ancient Indian region, there are various types of pointed bottom bottles, and they are all winemakers or wine containers without exception. In the ancient Egyptian murals, you can see the scene of the ancient Egyptians transporting wine with pointed bottom bottles, and a large number of pointed bottom bottle pottery has been excavated in ancient Rome, and after testing, there are also crystals left over from the wine making. In the Americas, archaeologists have also found that wine is traded in pointed bottles, and in general, the role of the culet bottle is related to wine.
Nowadays, in some museums, there are also labels that the role of the culet bottle is a water intake device, which is actually not true, I hope you will pay attention to the next time you visit the museum. For ancient cultural relics, experts need to carefully study and interpret them in order to uncover their mysteries, after all, they do not know how to know the future in the past. In fact, the mystery of the pointed bottom bottle is only a small problem, and there are more artifacts to explore.
Resources:
"Yangshao Cultural Research" by Yan Wenming, Publisher: Cultural Relics Publishing House
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's