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9 cultural relics, 9 stories, from the prosperous Han and Tang Empires to the distant Stone Age, from the source of the Yellow River to the mouth of the sea, outlining the trajectory of the development and evolution of the Yellow River civilization. Through these 9 cultural relics, you can touch the roots and soul of the Yellow River culture.
Synopsis
Originating in the Joguzongli Basin in the northern foothills of the Bayankara Mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Yellow River flows from trickle to rushing into the sea, flowing from west to east through nine provinces and regions of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong. This river of culture and civilization, after thousands of years or even tens of millions of years of historical accumulation, has become a symbol of the Chinese nation; its cultural spirit of perseverance, self-improvement, and harmony with all things has been integrated into the blood of the Chinese nation and has become an inexhaustible source of the spiritual river. 9 national treasure-level cultural relics, from 9 different provinces and regions along the route, they are excellent representatives of the Yellow River civilization, through their narration, try to reveal the connotation of the farming civilization, bronze civilization, Lile civilization and Silk Road civilization bred by the Yellow River culture.
About the Author
Zhang Deshui is the vice president and research librarian of Henan Museum, and the vice president of Henan Provincial Museum Society. He has published works such as "Central Plains Cultural Classics, Cultural Relics Classics and Ceramic Sculptures", "Ancient Ceramic Sculpture Art in Henan", and "Among Heaven and Earth - Cultural Concepts in songshan area".
Wu Wei is the director of the research department of Henan Museum, a research librarian, and the leader of academic technology in Henan Province. He has long been engaged in museology and archaeology research, and has published works such as "Research on model Ming ware from Han to Western Jin Dynasty in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River" and "Treasure of the Town Hall of Henan Museum".
Contents
Staggering And Kicking With Arms Song 1
- Majiayao cultural dance pattern faience pot
Portrait Life Lilly Huaxia 37
- Eastern Zhou embedded with a copper pot with a stripe of water and land attacks
A sense of simplicity Shows the heart of subtlety 75
— Dadiwan human head-shaped vessel mouth colored pottery vase
The Hu Xuan Dance has been passed down for generations 101
— Tang Dynasty stone carved Hu Xuan dance tomb door
Danqing painted the bend of the Yellow River hand in hand with the border pass for two thousand years 129
— And Lingle's new shop Zi Han tomb mural
The Camel Bell is leisurely The Silk Road stretches for 171
- Tang Dynasty Three Colored Camel Figurines
Hefen Proud Son has Feng Laiyi 201
— Western Zhou Jin Hou Bird Zun bronze
Forged into a vessel friendship more than a thousand years 227
- Yangshao culture faience pottery double pot
Advocating Black Shangli Civilization Dongyi 253
— Longshan culture eggshell black pottery cup
postscript
Preface
preface
Originating in the Yoguzonglie Basin in the northern foothills of the Bayankara Mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Yellow River flows from trickle to rushing into the sea, flowing from west to east through nine provinces and regions of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan and Shandong. The area she flows through spans the mainland, the second and third tiers of landforms, cut from the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau to the endless eastern plains; her formation stems from hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of geological formations, landforms, climate changes and hydrological changes, through the Indian Ocean plate and Eurasian continental plate collision, squeezing, the uplift of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the fusion of glaciers, and finally forming the second largest river in China.
The river flows and lives endlessly. What she presents to us is not only a magnificent landscape, a terrifying wonder of the ages, but more importantly, the profound culture and spirit she contains. This river of culture and civilization, after a long period of historical accumulation, has become a symbol of the Chinese nation; its cultural spirit of perseverance, self-improvement, and harmony with all things has been integrated into the blood of the Chinese nation and has become the inexhaustible source of the spiritual river.
The Yellow River culture has a long history. As early as the distant Stone Age, the Yellow River Basin was the main historical stage for the activities of china's ancient ancestors and the main birthplace of early Chinese cultural forms. In the Paleolithic Era, the Yellow River Basin appeared the early Homo sapiens of Xihoudu Ape Man and Xiangfending Village in Ruicheng, Shanxi, the Lantian Ape Man and the Great Li Ape Man in Shaanxi, the "Hetao Man" in Ordos Sara Wusu in Inner Mongolia, the Late Homo sapiens in Dagou Bay in Wushen Banner, the "Luan Chuan Man" in Sunjiadong in Luanchuan, Henan, the "Xuchang Man" in Xuchang Lingjing, and so on. Among them, the Xihoudu ape man living on the bank of the Yellow River, which is 1.8 million years old, is the earliest ape man found in the mainland. Subsequently, the Lantian apes 1 million years ago and the 300,000-year-old Dali apes fished and hunted on the banks of the Yellow River and multiplied; 70,000 years ago, the early Homo sapiens in Xiangfending Village, Shanxi, and the late Homo sapiens in Dagou Bay, Wushen banner, Inner Mongolia, 30,000 years ago, played the prelude to the ancient Yellow River civilization.
Entering the Neolithic Age, in the upper, middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, the sons and daughters of the Yellow River, nourished by the water of the Yellow River, stepped out of obscurity and marched toward civilization. Located in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, the Hehuang area between the three rivers of the Yellow River, the Huangshui River and the Datong River entered the Majiayao cultural period around 6,000 years ago. On the terraces on both sides of the river, there are long-term ancestors who are mainly based on the primitive farming economy, who are known for producing faience pottery, and their unique pottery shapes, exquisite patterns, and elaborate ornaments fully demonstrate the amazing artistic aesthetics and expression of the ancestors. In the Ledu Liuwan Cemetery alone, more than 17,000 pieces of faience pottery have been unearthed, which is known as the "Kingdom of Faience Pottery". From 4000 to 3600 years ago, the Hehuang area entered the Qi family culture period. The emergence of red bronze and bronze ware shows that people at that time have recognized the properties of metals, marking a new leap in the level of productivity and announcing that history has entered the Bronze Age. The Lajia ruins in Qinghai Minhe Guanting Town, known as the "Pompeii of the East", show us a huge settlement or ancient city-state scene destroyed by earthquakes or flood disasters, which is an important empirical evidence of the suffering and struggle of the sons and daughters of the Yellow River. Located in the "several" bays of the Yellow River, the Hetao area, surrounded by rivers on three sides, covers parts of the Yinchuan Plain, the Ordos Plateau and the Loess Plateau, bringing together the inland farming culture and the desert grassland civilization, and integrating them into one, cultivating the distinctive characteristics and personality of hetao culture, one of the Yellow River cultures. As early as the eastern section of the Yin Mountains 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, a Neolithic culture named after the "Yumin culture" has emerged. In the vast area from Daqingshan in the north, from The North to the North Shaanxi, from the Helan Mountains in the west to the Daihai Sea in the east, a series of early, middle and late Yangshao culture remains dating back 7000-5000 years have been found; 5000-4000 years ago, on both sides of the river flowing east and south of the Yellow River and northern Shaanxi, there are densely distributed Longshan cultural remains, especially the Shenmu Shijia site in northern Shaanxi, which is a super-large central settlement in the Hetao area from the late Longshan to the early Xia Dynasty. The ancient city found consists of three basically complete and relatively independent stone walls of the Imperial City Terrace, the Inner City and the Outer City. Outside the city distributed a number of artificially built "outpost" type of architectural remains, the total area of more than 4 million square meters, the city wall has similar to the descendants of the urn city, horse noodles, corner towers and other defensive facilities, the ancient city is the imperial city platform that has the nature of the early "palace city", dozens of animal face stone carvings were found at the bottom of the stone wall inside the imperial city, and a large number of exquisite jade objects were unearthed, which show the ancient city of Shiya around the two thousand years BC beyond people's imagination of the degree of civilization, but also provides a new research data for the origin of Chinese civilization. This paper provides empirical evidence for the study of two-way, multiple and frequent technical exchanges and cultural interaction between northern China and Eurasian grasslands in the Neolithic period. The Central Plains, located in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, entered the Neolithic Age around 10,000 years ago. The Dadiwan culture, which is mainly distributed in the Weihe River Plain and Guanzhong Basin, has found cultivated millet, primitive buildings and early faience pottery from 8000 to 7000 years ago, representing the civilization contribution of the Chinese ancestors in the Yellow River Basin; and the Pei Ligang culture distributed on both sides of the Yellow River in Henan, in 9000-7000 years ago, also has the primitive agriculture and animal husbandry of millet cultivation and rice cultivation, as well as settled house buildings, and uses carved turtle shells, ringing stones, bone flutes, ivory carved plates, cattle bone forks, Turquoise and other religious and artistic tools already have a rich spiritual world beyond our imagination. Dating back 7,000-5,000 years, in the middle reaches of the Yellow River is the domination of Yangshao culture. With western Henan, southern Jin, and eastern Shaanxi as the center, from the Eastern Henan Plain in the east, to the Ganqing region in the west, to the north and south of the Yin Mountains in the north, and to the Jianghan region in the south, this vast area has become the world of Yangshao culture. Archaeological work in Banpo Ruins, Jiangzhai Ruins, Yangguanzhai Ruins, Miaodigou Ruins, Xipo Ruins, Shuanghuashu Ruins, Dahe Village Ruins and other places has unveiled the mystery of this world. The central settlement surrounded by multiple ring trenches, the settlement structure with the central square, large houses, public cemeteries, etc. as the main composition, the mature and ceremonial faience pottery, the improvement of the production tools based on farming, and the differentiation between the rich and the poor shown by the burial products of the tomb seem to make us feel the footsteps of civilization. In the past four or five thousand years, in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and its tributaries, archaeology has found that the Ancient Cities of the Longshan Era, such as the Xiangfen Tao Temple in Shanxi, the Wangchenggang in Dengfeng, the Ancient City Of Xinmi in Henan, the Pingliangtai in Huaiyang, etc., the towering rammed city walls, the large buildings in the city, and the ceremonial utensils and combinations of different textures indicate the coming of an era of civilization. Located in the lower reaches of the Yellow River, the Haidai region, starting from the Houli culture dating back to about 8500-7500 years ago, has gone through the Beixin culture, Dawenkou culture, Longshan culture, Yueshi culture, from the ancient wilderness to the settled agriculture, from rough stone tools to exquisite jade, from simple rough pottery to exquisite eggshell black pottery, the cultural development genealogy is clear, becoming an important source of the Yellow River civilization.
Entering the era of civilization, the Yellow River Basin centered on the Central Plains has unfolded a magnificent history of civilization development. The advantages of the natural environment and cultural development made the Luoyang Basin and guanzhong plain the ruling center of the Xia, Shang and Three Dynasties during the kingdom's civilization period. In particular, the Heluo area, centered on Luoyang, has become the "residence of three generations". The splendid bronze civilization, the complete ceremonial music system, and the far-reaching Yuandian culture formed here have laid and formed the foundation and backbone of the Yellow River civilization and even the Chinese civilization. In the Ganqing area in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, bronzes have appeared around 4,000 years ago and play an important role in the development of bronze civilization. During the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, with the establishment of the central position of the Central Plains, the Ganqing region absorbed a large number of cultural factors from the Central Plains in cultural exchange and integration, as well as cultural factors from the Eurasian grasslands and the grasslands in northern China, forming a cultural form in which multiple cultures coexisted, which became an important empirical evidence of the inclusiveness and diversity of the Yellow River culture. The Dongyi culture in the lower reaches of the Yellow River gradually merged with the Xia, Shang, and Zhou cultures during the three generations period, and eventually merged into the main body of Chinese culture. In particular, the Qilu culture formed by the combination of Central Plains culture and Dongyi culture after the Western Zhou Dynasty has become one of the important representatives of the Yellow River culture. Beginning with the Qin and Han dynasties, Chinese history entered the imperial era. In the general pattern of the development of Chinese culture, the Yellow River culture has gone through unification and brief division, ups and downs, and has moved forward in the exchange and collision with the Yangtze River civilization, grassland civilization, marine civilization, Western culture and other civilizations. The Yellow River culture, with the powerful power of spring wind and rain and silent moisturizing, realizes the integration with multiculturalism, and can eventually be passed on and continued. It is precisely because of this that on both sides of the Yellow River and in every piece of land she flows through, she has left a wealth of cultural relics and monuments, which has become a valuable wealth for future generations to remember the great spirit and creation of the ancestors and stimulate the self-confidence of national culture.
On September 18, 2019, the General Secretary presided over a symposium on ecological protection and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin in Henan, emphasizing that "the Yellow River culture is an important part of Chinese civilization and the root and soul of the Chinese nation". It is necessary to promote the systematic protection of the cultural heritage of the Yellow River, deeply excavate the value of the times contained in the Yellow River culture, tell the "Yellow River Story", continue the historical context, strengthen cultural self-confidence, and gather spiritual strength for the realization of the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. In response to the call of the General Secretary, in December 2019, the Yellow River Basin Museum Alliance was jointly initiated by the Henan Museum, jointly initiated by the Qinghai Provincial Museum, the Sichuan Museum, the Gansu Provincial Museum, the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region Museum, the Inner Mongolia Museum, the Shaanxi History Museum, the Shanxi Museum, the Henan Museum and the Shandong Museum, and was jointly initiated by 45 museums (institutes) in 9 provinces and regions along the Yellow River. The main work of the alliance is to carry out cooperation and exchanges in exhibitions, cultural relics protection, scientific research, personnel training and other aspects among the river basin museums, aiming to promote and implement the protection, inheritance and promotion of the Yellow River culture with practical actions, and consciously become the leader and promoter of the Yellow River cultural protection, the praiser and practitioner of the yellow river culture dissemination, and the witness and participant of the prosperity of the Yellow River culture. The book "Yellow River Civilization in National Treasures" is one of the results of the cooperation.
In the development of the Yellow River culture for thousands of years, the achievements of civilization are vast and brilliant. The 9 national treasure-level cultural relics we have captured here are from 9 different provinces and regions along the Yellow River, and they are excellent representatives of the Yellow River civilization. Through their narration, we try to open the curtain on the farming civilization, bronze civilization, lile civilization and Silk Road civilization contained in the Yellow River culture. The dancing pattern pottery pots excavated from the Zongri site in Tongde County, Qinghai Province, with their exquisite shapes and the rhythm of singing and dancing, let us vaguely see the harmonious and natural living conditions and optimistic spiritual outlook of the ancient ancestors at the source of the river. The human head-shaped kou colored pottery vase collected by the Gansu Provincial Museum combines faience pottery, sculpture and modeling, condensing the aesthetic taste of the ancestors and its rich cultural connotation, as if telling us an ancient story that happened on the bank of the Yellow River. The faience double pot excavated from the site of Dahe Village in Zhengzhou, with its unique shape and simple and smooth painted lines, shows the advanced level of pottery making of the ancient ancestors on the banks of the great river more than 5,000 years ago. They cultivate and harvest in the yellow soil during the day, hunt and fish by the mountains and wild waters, look up at the stars at night, form alliances or hold major ceremonial activities, raise pots to drink, embrace the feelings of nature, heroic temperament, unremitting spirit of innovation, has long been injected into the blood of the children of the Yellow River. The eggshell black pottery cup treasured by the Shandong Museum was excavated from the Longshan Cultural Site of Yaoguanzhuang, Weifang, Shandong. Its characteristics of "thin as paper, hard as porcelain, bright as a mirror, and black as lacquer" are still difficult to surpass, creating a miracle of the times and being called the works of ancient pottery in Haidai area. The wisdom and excellence of the ancient Dongyi people in the lower reaches of the Yellow River are condensed on one instrument, which carries the innocent faith and pursuit and yearning for a better life of the ancient Dongyi people who revere birds and blackness, and is also a symbol of the progress of the cultural civilization of Qilu in the East. The bird statues excavated from the Jinhou Cemetery in Beizhao Village, Quwo County, Shanxi Province, the phoenix head of Shangang, the round eyes of the gaze, the upright high crown, the elephant trunk-shaped tail with the inner curl, and the gorgeous cloud pattern, feather pattern and other decorative patterns, show superb bronze casting skills, which is an outstanding representative of the bronze civilization in the Yellow River Basin, and is also a connector for the origin of Zhou culture and Jin culture, and a symbol of the splendid civilization in the Yellow River Basin during the two-week period. The copper pot with embedded Yanle water and land attack pattern excavated from the Chengdu Plain is not only a representative of the Bashu culture, but also a historical witness to the cultural exchanges between Sichuan and the Yellow River Basin and the cultural output of the Yellow River Basin to the Sichuan region. In particular, the documentary portrait pattern on the pot is a figurative expression of the Central Plains cultural etiquette, cultural customs, and social life. The murals of the Han tombs in Inner Mongolia and Linger Xindianzi, with their many pictures, rich contents, and many banners, are currently the national Han Dynasty mural tombs, which vividly reflect the class relations, ethnic relations and social life in the multi-ethnic residential areas in the north of the mainland during the Eastern Han Dynasty, show the close interaction between the nomadic civilization of the Mongolian plateau and the farming civilization of the Central Plains, the frequent exchanges between eastern and western cultures, and are a vivid model reflecting the spirit of the Yellow River culture. The stone carved HuXuan Dance Tomb Gate excavated from the Liangtang Tomb Group in Yanchi County, Ningxia, depicts two swirling and churning dancers on it. Hu Xuan dancers from Central Asia brought the music, dance and other cultures of Central Asia into the Northwestern Sai ningxia region and spread to the Central Plains and other regions, witnessing the exchange and mutual learning between the Yellow River cultural development and Central Asian culture, the epitome of the development process of the Chinese nation's pluralism and integration, and showing the inclusiveness of the Yellow River culture and the open-mindedness and boldness of the Yellow River culture. The three-colored camel figurines of the Tang Tomb in Zhongbao Village, a western suburb of Xi'an, are recognized as one of the many cultural relics that reproduce the cultural exchanges of the Silk Road in the Tang Dynasty today. The camel band composed of 7 musicians and 1 singer, Hu Han, who rushed on the desert road and shuttled through the bustling cities of Chang'an and Luoyang, representing a group of three-dimensional sculptures of Chinese and foreign lower-class people from different regions, different nationalities, different skin colors and different occupations jointly written to express the cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries on the Silk Road. The splendid three-colored camels and the carrying are the open and inclusive atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty, a high degree of cultural self-confidence, and a high summary of the cultural spirit of the Yellow River.
The development of civilization up and down the Yellow River for thousands of years is deeply rooted in the foundation of farming culture, and one of the main characteristics of the Yellow River civilization is agricultural civilization. The Yellow River, this gift from nature to the Chinese nation, along her coast and in the area through which it flows, has had a primitive agriculture as early as seven or eight thousand years ago, has begun to cultivate the history of millet, millet and rice, through the Stone, Bronze and Iron Age, the factors of agricultural civilization penetrate into all aspects of political, economic, cultural, ideological and other aspects of social life, constituting an important cultural gene of Chinese civilization, therefore, the Yellow River civilization has the legitimacy and root characteristics of culture. Behind the exquisite pottery and bronze ware, it is inseparable from the bloom of the light of agricultural civilization. At the same time, the Yellow River civilization is in the same vein and develops continuously. Whether in the upper reaches or in the middle and lower reaches of the region, cultural genealogies are self-contained and eventually converge into a long historical river that will never dry up. The exchange and absorption of upper, middle, and lower reaches of culture, the integration and confluence of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River civilization, the collision of the Yellow River civilization and the grassland civilization, the mutual learning between the Yellow River civilization and the civilizations of Central Asia and West Asia, and so on, have cultivated the broad mind of the Yellow River civilization. She blends the outside and swallows everything to form an inclusive open system. Innovation is the eternal theme that runs through the development process of the Yellow River culture. In the harmonious coexistence with nature and the long-term practice of production and life, the ancestors of the Yellow River Basin have gradually formed a great spirit of courage to explore and constantly innovate. They have solidified this spirit into exquisite works of art, which will be passed on for generations.
9 cultural relics, 9 stories, from the prosperous Han and Tang Empires to the distant Stone Age, from the source of the Yellow River to the mouth of the sea, we try to outline the trajectory of the development and evolution of the Yellow River civilization, but in any case, this can only be the tip of the iceberg. The breadth and profundity of the Yellow River civilization requires us to write from generation to generation. However, through these 9 cultural relics, it seems that we have touched the roots and soul of the Yellow River culture.