Where is the starting point of the five-thousand-year history of unbroken civilizations?

This article is transferred from: Zhengzhou Evening News

Sima Qian once wrote in the "Records of History": "The residences of the past three generations were all between Heluo. In the I Ching, the record of "the river is out of the map, the luo is out of the book, and the saint is the one" has been passed down to this day.

Where is the starting point of the five-thousand-year history of Chinese civilization? Many documents point it to the Heluo region. In Zhengzhou Gongyi Heluo Town, where the Yiluo Confluence flows into the Yellow River, there is a small village called "Double Locust Tree" that has been living on a high terrace on the south bank of the Yellow River, watching the flowers of the world blossom and fall.

On May 7, 2020, the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology announced the major archaeological achievements of the Duyi site in the ancient era of the Double Locust Tree: after on-site field investigation and discussion and demonstration by a number of well-known experts and scholars, it was believed that the Double Locust Tree Site was a Duyi site in the Ancient Kingdom Era around 5300 years ago, because it was located in the central area of Heluo, and experts suggested that it be named "Heluo Ancient Country". The site has been hailed by archaeologists as "the embryo of early Chinese civilization.".

On April 7 this year, the reporter once again walked into the ruins of the Gongyi double locust tree to unlock a splendid cultural code.

Zheng Bao all-media reporter Cheng Yan/Wen Xu Zongfu Li Xinhua/Photo

Here was the "embryo of early Chinese civilization"

Look at the great river and realize the vicissitudes of history. Through the clouds of history, people can vaguely see that in the area where the Yellow River meets the Luoshui River, the historical light of "the earliest China" is emitted.

The Site of the Double Locust Tree, a 5,300-year-old giant settlement site of the late Yangshao culture, is located on a high terrace on the south bank of the Yellow River, right on the town of Heluo, where the Iloilo Confluence flows into the Yellow River.

There are many "china's best": the exploration confirmed that the site area is 1.17 million square meters, and there are three large ring trenches in the middle and late stage of yangshao culture, and a wall with the earliest urn city structure; here is the earliest "palace" in China found so far, many courtyards are built on a large version of the rammed land foundation, the door steps, a door and three roads; there are 4 large public cemeteries with a total of more than 1,700 strictly planned, all the tombs are arranged in a row, and the rammed earth altar remains in the tomb area are the first to be found in the Yangshao cultural sites. Here also found the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" cultural relics made of 9 clay pots, the earliest silkworm ivory carvings that are importantly related to the origin of silk...

With many dazzling new discoveries, the site has been shortlisted for the "2020 National Top Ten Archaeological New Discoveries" and "Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries in a Hundred Years".

"A series of important archaeological discoveries at the site of the Double Locust Tree, especially its social development model and the ideological concepts it carries, present us with the atmosphere of the royal capital of the ancient kingdom era." The characteristics of the Big Dipper Nine Stars and many relics highlighting the etiquette and civilization have also been inherited and carried forward by the later Dynastic civilizations of Xia, Shang, Zhou and other dynasties, and the main root of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years is expected to be traced back to here. Talking about the significance of the archaeological discovery of the double locust tree site, Li Boqian, a professor at Peking University and chief scientist of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasty Project, said.

"The important archaeological discoveries at the site of the Double Locust Tree empirically confirm the representativeness and influence of the Heluo area in the golden stage of the origin of Chinese civilization around 5300 years ago, and fill the key materials of the key period and key area of the origin of Chinese civilization." Wang Wei, member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and chairman of the Chinese Archaeological Society, said that the site is the largest, the highest grade and the most obvious degree of social differentiation in the Yellow River Basin during the same period, and it is a very important material for us to study the civilization process of the Central Plains during the Yellow Emperor's era. The middle and late Civilization of yangshao culture centered on the site of the double locust tree can be called the "embryo of early Chinese civilization". Its discovery will surely help people continue to sort out the context of the development of Chinese civilization and fully highlight the profound heritage of Chinese culture.

Yan Wenming, a giant in the field of archaeology on the mainland and a professor at Peking University, also spoke highly of the site of the double locust tree, and wrote a poem "Praise of the Double Locust City" with a stroke of his pen: "Gongyi Double Locust Tree, there is a Yangshao City." For the sake of the dragon map, it is close to the big river... Spring silkworms spit silk diligently, and silk benefits wanfang. China creates civilization, the great scenery of Shenzhou! ”

The hidden cultural code of the "Big Dipper Nine Stars"

As the general person in charge of the excavation project of the Double Locust Tree Site and the chief expert of the Major Project of the National Social Science Fund of the "Collation and Comprehensive Research of archaeological data of the Double Locust Tree Site", Gu Wanfa, president of the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, has several family treasures for the "treasures" of the "Heluo Ancient Country", and what makes him most relish is the "Beidou Nine Stars" and "Silkworm Ivory Carving".

"Here unearthed the remains of the 'Big Dipper Nine Stars' simulated by 9 clay pots." On the afternoon of April 7, Wang Xu, the executive leader of the excavation project at the site of the Shuang locust tree site, pointed to the remains buried under the F12 of the largest house, telling reporters that this was a relic of nine clay pots placed in the shape of the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" in the sky, and its main body was buried on the porch of the largest house in the central site area.

The reporter saw at the scene that some of these clay pots have very clear edges, and some are mostly buried under the soil, and archaeologists use red cloth belts to string together the shapes formed by the jars, and mark them with the names of stars such as "Tianquan", "Yuheng" and "Kaiyang", which conspicuously show the shape of the "Big Dipper Nine Stars". At the upper end of the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" relic, near the north pole of the "center of heaven" in the ancient sayings, there is also a complete skeleton of an elk heading south and facing the doorway.

Looking up at the distant starry sky, the ancestors of the double locust tree wrote magical astrological symbols on the banks of the great river with their superb imagination.

As we all know, the Big Dipper as an imperial symbol is the core of the Chinese nation's political and etiquette concept of "heaven and man induction". Combined with the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" pattern and the ruins of the Dome-shaped Temple of Heaven previously found in the Qingtai site, Gu Wanfa believes that this discovery shows that the "Big Dipper" worship more than 5,000 years ago was one of the highest beliefs of the ancestors of Yangshao at that time.

Some experts believe that the "Beidou Ruins" have special humanistic connotations and political and ceremonial functions, indicating that the people of The Central Plains at that time already had a relatively mature "celestial concept of timing" to observe the solar terms and guide agriculture. This is an early representative of the ancient Chinese civilization attaching great importance to the characteristics of inheriting the destiny of heaven, and it is also an important archaeological evidence that the Chinese nation attaches great importance to the central thinking.

Standing at the entrance of the central residential area, Wang Xu also told reporters that the layout of the front hall and the back of the ruins coincided with the layout and design of the capital city of later China, and the earliest prototype of China's urn city appeared. In the southern part of the settlement area, two walls of more than 370 meters long and the northern inner trench form a half-moon structure of more than 18,000 square meters, and the shape of the two ends of the wall in the southern section is regarded by experts as the prototype of the earliest urn city in China. The nine clay pots in the shape of the Big Dipper are located just before this urn, and the concept of political etiquette represented is self-evident.

The grand architectural scale, rigorous and orderly layout of the "Heluo Ancient Kingdom", the social development model and the ideological concepts carried by it present the atmosphere of the royal capital in the ancient kingdom era. The association between the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" and "the first in the world" and other phenomena that highlight the etiquette and civilization were inherited by the civilizations of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties in later generations, and the main root of Chinese civilization became clearer.

"The geographical location and era of the ancient country of Heluo are too important, after the confluence of the Iloilo flows into the Yellow River, the scene and connotation presented by the site are in line with the record of the I Ching' 'the river is out of the map, Luo is out of the book, and the saint is the sage'." Li Boqian believes that it is not excluded that the site of the double locust tree was the capital of the Yellow Emperor's era, at least in the early Stage of China's gestation.

The long "Silk Road" behind the ivory silkworm

At the site of the double locust tree, a national treasure-level cultural relic has been found - the earliest silkworm carving artwork of the era currently discovered in China. It is 6.4 cm long, less than 1 cm wide and 0.1 cm thick, carved from the fangs of a wild boar, like a silkworm spitting silk.

At the site of the discovery of this ivory silkworm, there stands a striking sign with its pictures and text description printed on it. Wang Xu told reporters that this ivory carved silkworm is exquisitely carved, exquisite, the combination of gastropods, chest feet and head is clear, and the modern silkworm is very similar, while the back is raised, the head is cocked, and the shape of the silkworm spit silk or about to spit silk is highly compatible.

Gu Wanfa believes that the discovery of the ivory silkworm is of great significance, because the original intention of the excavation of the double locust tree site was to find the source of silk. Together with the earliest silk objects unearthed from contemporaneous sites such as the Qingtai Site, they confirm that the ancestors of the middle reaches of the Yellow River already raised silkworm reeling more than 5,000 years ago.

On April 25, 2018, Zhou Yang, deputy director of the China Silk Museum and director of the key scientific research base of the State Administration of Textile and Cultural Relics Protection, led the team to the Shuang locust tree site for the first time to investigate the excavation of urn coffins. "It coincided with my birthday and my first visit to the double locust tree site, and when I saw this exquisite ivory silkworm, I thought that the double locust tree site would definitely find silk." After 4 years, Zhou Yang still clearly remembers this "amazing glimpse".

On July 8 of the same year, the team cleaned up the urn coffins excavated from the double locust tree site, extracted seven urn coffin soil samples, and then used the silk artifact micro-trace detection technology based on immunological principles to analyze the soil samples, but no signal of silk residue was detected.

Yesterday, in an interview with reporters, Zhou Yang analyzed that the reason why silk residues were not detected at that time was two reasons: one is that the silk originally existed in the urn coffin; the silk that originally existed in the second urn coffin has been seriously degraded in the long-term burial process, coupled with the long time of excavation and long-term exposure at the site site, the residue composition has been lower than the lower limit of detection.

With a persistent "dream of finding silk", the research team has been in close contact with the archaeological excavators of the Double Locust Tree site ever since. On July 17, 2020, as the archaeological excavation process of the Double Locust Tree site continued to advance, the team once again rushed to the scene to collect and test the three newly excavated urn coffin soil samples. Happily, this time a silk residue signal was detected in the W125 urn coffin.

"Coupled with the discovery of silk objects at the Sites of Xingyang Qingtai and Wanggou in the same period, it fully shows that the ancestors of the Central Plains during the Yangshao culture period were already engaged in silkworm reeling and weaving." Zhou Yang analyzed in depth that from the Yangshao era to the time of Yin Zhou, the image of silkworms has fully matured in cultural relics. The jade silkworms unearthed in the Yin Dynasty and the silkworm patterns on bronzes indicate that the silkworms of the Yin Shang period are almost exactly the same as those of modern silkworms. The discovery of the ivory silkworm shows that the residents of the Yellow River Basin at that time had completed the domestication of wild silkworms and had the ability to raise silkworms and reel. Coupled with the silk residues found at the shuanghuashu site, as well as the silk objects excavated from the Qingtai site and the Wanggou site, it fully shows that in the middle and late Yangshao culture, the silkworm breeding technology and textile industry in the Yellow River Basin have reached a certain scale, which has laid a material foundation for the origin and development of ancient Chinese civilization.

"In the past, it was difficult to detect the material of textile fibers in carbonized and mud-washed textiles and residues. With the continuous optimization and improvement of silk micro-trace detection technology based on immunological principles, it is possible to carry out more extensive extraction and detection in the Yangshao cultural settlement group in Zhengzhou, and we will explore the more ancient silk and continuously push the origin of silk to the depths of history. Zhou Yang told reporters with confidence.

Let the "bright moon of the ancient country" shine on the present

How to display the rich cultural relics of the "Heluo Ancient Country"? How to make the "bright moon of the ancient country" shine on today's people?

On April 7, when the reporter was interviewing at the Gongyi Double Locust Tree Site, he happened to meet several staff members of the Gongyi Smart City Experience Center who came to collect the graphic information of the Double Locust Tree Site. "At present, the Gongyi Smart City Experience Center is stepping up the exhibition, and we are ready to set up a special hall to display the history and culture of heluo ancient country, so that more people can recognize the 'source of Chinese civilization and the soul of the Yellow River culture'." The staff of the center told reporters.

According to Zhang Hejun, director of the Cultural Heritage Protection and Utilization Division of the Zhengzhou Municipal Bureau of Cultural Heritage, at present, the Gongyi Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports has entrusted a professional team to carry out the preparation of the "Double Locust Tree Site Protection Master Plan" and the "Double Locust Tree Archaeological Site Park Planning". After preliminary design, shuanghuashu archaeological site park plans to carry out the construction of site museum, site protection display and utilization area, tourist service facilities, site and surrounding environment improvement and upgrading.

Zhu Xingli, director of the Gongyi Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, Television, Tourism and Sports, told reporters that the city is continuing to promote the Chinese civilization source exploration project and the "archaeological China" major research project in the Yellow River Basin - the archaeological excavation and research display of the Double Locust Tree Site, and plans to build the Double Locust Tree Site Archaeological and Cultural Park, and strive to build it into a national-level identification site for the yellow river historical and cultural display.

"In order to fully highlight the spiritual characteristics and era values contained in the Yellow River culture and deepen the research on the core position of Zhengzhou in the origin of Chinese civilization, our Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology is continuing to strengthen the systematic archaeological excavation and scientific research work of the Double Locust Tree Site." Gu Wanfa told reporters.

The thick "Heluo Ancient Country" has begun to bloom, and the brilliant historical starry sky will never end. We look forward to more historical and cultural codes being unveiled from this vast yellow land.