Where did the world-famous Sanxingdui site come from? The evidence points to something a bit unexpected

The discovery of the Sanxingdui site began in 1929 by chance discovery of a peasant family in Guanghan, Sichuan Province, and has been more than 90 years so far, and after many excavations in the middle, a large number of unique works such as bronze sacred trees, jade tooth walls, gold mask bronze heads, bronze bird-bodied human heads, and longitudinal people have been unearthed.

According to previous on-site archaeology and carbon-14 test reports, the Sanxingdui site shows that there are four different civilizations:

The first phase is equivalent to the Neolithic Age from 4740 to 4070 years ago; the second period is 4070 to 3600 years ago, spanning the Xia Dynasty and the early Shang Dynasty; the third period is 3600 to 3200 years ago, equivalent to the middle and late Shang Dynasty; the fourth period is 3100 to 2875 years ago, from the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty. Among them, the culture of the first and second phases is very primitive and backward, and does not have the conditions for producing bronzes, while the culture of the third period is very prosperous, with the ability to produce bronzes, coupled with the fact that the central plains of the same era have also been excavated, similar size, technology, part of the shape and pattern of bronzes, so that experts will be the third phase of the excavation of bronzes Manufacturing time, set in the middle of the Shang Dynasty.

In fact, the bronze pictures promoted by the Sanxingdui Museum to the outside world are also impressively marked with the words "Middle Shang Dynasty" and "Shang Dynasty". Of course, this is not without problems.

The carbon-14 detection method used in archaeology cannot be used as direct evidence of bronze dating, but only as an indirect reference. Why? When an organism dies, it releases the carbon it absorbs while it is alive, or "decays." In the case of carbon-14, its half-life is about 5730 years, which means that every 5730 years, the carbon-14 element in the organism will be reduced by half.

Carbon-14 detection is to determine the era in which the organism is located according to the measurement of the content of carbon-14 elements. It can be seen that carbon-14 detects not the bronze itself, but the measured objects of the formation similar to the bronze, which is used as a reference for determining the bronze.

Historically, a tomb has unearthed a bronze vessel without an inscription, and according to the test results of carbon 14, it was determined that the tomb belonged to the Qing Dynasty, and this bronze was naturally identified as the Qing Dynasty. In fact, the bronze ware belonged to the Western Zhou Dynasty, perhaps because the owner loved it, regarded it as an ancestral object, passed down from generation to generation; it was passed down to the Qing Dynasty and was placed in the tomb by the master's descendants as funerary products.

The Sanxingdui Phase III culture dates from 3600 to 3200 years ago, basically covering the entire period of the Shang Dynasty (16th century BC to 11th century BC). The previous Sanxingdui Phase I and II cultures were very primitive and backward, and no traces of processing and smelting had been found so far, not even a small piece of metal or transitional bronze products had been found.

Since then, according to Li Shaohe, deputy director of the Sichuan Institute of Archaeology, in addition to Sanxingdui, in the process of excavating tens of thousands of tombs and sites in Sichuan, no metal products before the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States have been found, which cannot but make people doubt the inference of scholars.

To this end, scholars have given 300 years of "development time", and set the bronzes unearthed in the third phase in the middle of the Shang Dynasty, making up for the cultural "lack" between the second and third phases, which means that the ancestors of the ancient Shu kingdom took 300 years from contacting copper ore to mastering the addition of other metals, smelting bronze, and then manufacturing exquisite bronzes. Compared with the Central Plains, which was far more civilized than Sichuan at that time, this process took at least 2500 years, which is somewhat strange. It can be seen that there is not only no similarity between the cultures of Sanxingdui Ivy, but also no inheritance relationship, and even a rupture.

At present, the total amount of bronzes unearthed is estimated to be 8 to 10 tons, which requires about 100 tons of copper ore to refine, but the Guanghan where the Sanxingdui site is located, is located in the Chengdu Plain, and the water can be seen by digging a meter of ground, and there is no ore at all.

In addition, the production of bronze is a huge project, requiring a large number of labor, and the productivity at that time did not match, while the process of making bronze, the need to make mold molding, to excavate the number of bronzes, the need for about 2,000 sets of molds, but in the previous archaeology, so far no trace of the mold has been found.

The "local manufacturing theory" of the Shu ancestors was denied, and the manufacturing time was also questionable. So, will the bronzes unearthed in the third phase be directly transported into Sichuan by a branch of the Shang tribe at that time?

The Ancestors of China all began with a common ancestral ethnic group, but settled in various places with different migration routes. Among them, the Xia tribe established the Xia Dynasty and became the "leading big brother" of other tribes, but it practiced the "tribal alliance system", and each tribe was actually a relatively independent Fang state, each with its own totem and customs.

It is generally believed that the Shang tribe is a sacred bird worship, and there is a "Heavenly Destiny Xuan Bird, descending to give birth to the Shang" in the Book of Poetry, in fact, the sacred bird is one of the totems of the Xia tribe. The Shang clan's move was only a pretext to reduce resistance, win the support of other tribes, and replace the Xia Dynasty, exaggerating their own legitimacy and becoming famous. The Divine Turtle is the totem that ranks first in the Shang clan.

About 8,000 years ago, one of the Shang tribes came to the Wuyang area of Henan, and then reached the Shangqiu and took the river through Henan as a place to live, because the ancient productive forces were backward, and the survival of human beings was inseparable from water, so they chose to live near the water. However, water refers to "kan" in the I Ching, which means trap and danger, and it means that the ancients had difficulty grasping the rise and fall of the river, and they were often affected by floods.

In daily life, the ancients observed that the turtle had a kind of skill, and it could properly nest every year and build it on the highest flood line of the year in advance, so as to avoid flooding. According to this, the Shang clan believed that the turtle was very spiritual and had magical abilities given by the heavens, and then extended it, believing that the turtle could predict the future and be lucky and bad, so the turtle was used as the first totem of the tribe.

When the Shang clan established the Shang Dynasty, the turtle also changed from the totem of the tribe to the totem of the country, and appeared on the bronze ware of the Shang Dynasty, but no traces of the "turtle" totem were found on the bronze vessels excavated from Sanxingdui.

According to archaeological results, the remains of the activities of the Xia and Shang tribes have been found in Shandong, which is the result of climate change leading to the southward migration. Prior to this, the Shang tribe originated in the northeast of the mainland and had the characteristics of wide coverage; the Xia tribe lived in the Kunlun Mountains.

With the climate change, the living environment is getting worse and worse, and the Xia tribe gradually moves south, leaving many "traces" along the way: Lanzhou now has a river called "XiaHe"; and Xiayi, which was built near Lanzhou, is called "Great Xia"; the province adjacent to Lanzhou is called "Ningxia". At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, the Dangxiang people established the Western Xia regime, which was named after their own position as a reference when the Song people revised history; the Dangxiang people themselves called "Great Xia" because they considered themselves to be descendants of the Xia tribe.

The Xia tribe that has lived here for a long time has left many legends and historical records, and is also considered to be the culture of the Xia tribe. The first is the Kunlun myth, such as the Kwa Father Day by Day, the Houyi Shooting Sun, the Pangu Kaitian, etc., followed by the Xia tribe worship of the sun god, the god bird, the dragon and other totems.

Candle Dragon: Among the bronzes excavated from Sanxingdui, the most characteristic is the "Longitudinal Man", which should refer to the god "Candle Dragon" in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, which belongs to one of the Kunlun myths.

The Classic of Mountains and Seas records the Candle Dragon: There is a god, a human face and a snake body is red, and the straight eyes are riding... It is called candle dragon.

"Straight eye" means that the eyes are erect; Guo Pu of the Jin Dynasty annotated "straight eyes" as "vertical eyes", which may also be the source of the name "vertical eyes".

After the shooting sun: There were 9 bronze birds when the Tongtian Tree was unearthed, and during the on-site investigation, there should be 1 more at the top, a total of 10, and the bronze bird can be transformed into the sun. It reflects precisely the prelude to the story of the Post-Shooting Sun.

More powerfully, the full set of bronzes unearthed from Sanxingdui coincides with the ceremonial vessels used during the sacrifices of the Xia Dynasty.

In summary, during the Xia Dynasty, the development of bronze ware has reached a very high height; the bronze artifacts unearthed from Sanxingdui may have been carried into the river by one of the Xia tribes, and then evacuated out of emergency; before the evacuation, this batch of precious sacrificial ritual vessels was buried on the spot, which can also explain why the Sanxingdui Ivy Civilization was broken.