△ Guiyang County Qianjiaping white pottery site
Ouyang day and night
Since Pangu opened the world, the landscapes and rivers of Guiyang in the northern foothills of Qitianling have been lying here in the unchanged form of prehistory, and the changes in the landscape above it, the evolution and reproduction of birds and beasts, the lushness and withering of grass and trees, especially the changes of prehistoric humans and the endless generations of geng, are living and prospering along the distribution of the Lingling river system.
In the transformation of time and space, a unique lake Xiangze country is formed, just like the poetry cloud: "The air swallows the clouds and dreams, and the waves shake yueyang city." "Emperor Yan Shennong cultivated Qitian, personally tasted hundreds of herbs to cultivate rice and grass, Emperor Shun's southern tour Qu Yuan's exile, and General Fu Bo's army marched south to Han Chushi County." Wu Dao came south, it was originally a vein of Lianxi, the great river went east, nothing more than the aftermath of xiangshui", "to receive the qi of the dragon and tiger in the deep mountains of Xiang Daze, the heart of the sage of the Xuezong Zou LuLimen Yilu Road. "Zhili Guiyang Zhou" records more than 2,000 years of Guiyang sparsely and loudly, but the context is not unclear, and no one can come up with evidence to refute the views inside.
The word "zhili" is clear at a glance, and the places with such a title, from ancient times to the present, from the Shang capital Dayi to the border of counties and counties, how many can be counted in the world?
The title of "directly subordinate to Guiyang Prefecture" can more or less make today's Guiyang people feel a little proud and proud. What kind of wisdom, diligence and sweat did the ancestors living in Guiyang rely on to create what kind of human surprises and achievements, so that the emperors who were far away in the deep palace waved the imperial pen, added the national seal, and gave the name "Zhili Prefecture"?
△ Cultural relics excavated from the Qianjiaping white pottery site in Guiyang County
Flipping through "Zhili GuiyangZhou" with this question, I have had a bitter doubt for many years, how the land under my feet has such a thick and profound humanistic weight, which can be described as "I don't know the true face of Lushan Mountain, only because I am in this mountain." "Until the large-scale excavation of prehistoric white pottery cultural relics in Qianjiaping, due to the fact that the water of the Lingling River soaked the site nearly two-thirds of the time of the year, and the cultural relics site has not yet been fully excavated, the archaeological report cannot be issued, but the preliminary test results show that this batch of cultural relics is at least 7,000 years old, which arouses my great interest."
We may wish to look at ancient and modern Chinese and foreign historical texts, myths and legends, and the results of scientific investigations. The well-known "Thousand Character Text" in China begins with "the heavens and the earth are yellow, the universe is flooded", and many people understand this passage as the color of the sky is black, the color of the earth is yellow, and the origin of the world is in a state of chaos and hongmeng. In fact, "flood" is the original meaning of flood and flood, and "flood" is the meaning of desolation and depression caused by flood and flood. The inability to examine the chronology of these intangible cultural records and prehistoric civilizations from these non-empty intangible cultural records has also caused the hidden countless white pottery under Guiyang Qianjiaping.
In the sky of history, there is an extremely obvious skyline dividing line. The absence of a record of writing as a medium and the spread of culture must have been mysterious, presumably exhausting the minds of the ancients and the highest level of expression of productivity at that time. Perhaps the prehistoric ancients did not have the desire and desire of so-called cultural inheritance, the skills of handicraft industry are the product of words and deeds, there is no concept and procedure of industrial production, but under the strict requirements of a workshop and a master, the powerful workshop is stored in a natural stone cave or artificially excavated hole after producing a large number of pottery devices.
A deadly flood caused the area or area to be washed away or annihilated, and the pottery that had no material life but was engraved with cultural and spiritual ideas, together with the mountains and rivers on the pottery itself, the sun and the moon, the beasts and spirits, the shape of all things and the heart of grass and trees, were buried by flash floods and silt into the sand of history. The dust is buried in the wind, frost, snow and rain of the years, buried in the sand mill of the water. After Pangu, no one knows.
△ Cultural relics excavated from the Qianjiaping white pottery site in Guiyang County
The sun and moon shine through the autumn, everything is as silent as ever, and everything is as alive as promised. This is the gift of the earth, this is the tolerance of the earth. There is no greedy corrosion and exploitation, no possessive desire ablation and whale swallowing, the right terrain and just the right coverage inadvertently become the proper care, the essence of the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon, the wind and frost are difficult to soak, and all things are not damaged! The brewing of ingenious craftsmanship is like a baby of history, the precious existence lives with time, and shines with the sun and the moon, it is a stubborn existence, it is the normal state of hidden subliminality, and it is the tenacity of the undercurrent.
From 10,000 to 7,000 years ago, it is a transitional period between the Neolithic and Paleolithic periods. At this stage, the prehistoric civilizations in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were developing independently, but also showed close ties. Compared with the Central Plains, where the Chinese nation began to flourish, in addition to the common rice farming as the economic basis, the formation of rice farming areas side by side with the Yellow River Basin, there are also many similarities in white pottery craftsmanship, utensil styles, ornamentation and other aspects. Moreover, in the southern regions where the natural conditions are relatively superior, Wufu Minyin is more prominent and dominant, especially when fishing and hunting are enough to have no worries about food and clothing, people naturally do not need to spend effort to domesticate wild animals and cultivate rice. When bamboo at their fingertips can be used as containers and weapons, people naturally do not have to spend effort to improve the manufacture of various production and living tools.
The excavation of qianjiaping white pottery just proves that the ancestors of Guiyang were not willing to accept the ease of the status quo from the prehistory, had the courage to break through the stubbornness and stereotypes, were good at innovation, and were willing to create a new life.
Most of the white pottery unearthed in Qianjiaping has ornaments, and this prehistoric white pottery ornament is the most artistic talent and artistic talent of human beings at that time, and it is also the person with the highest artistic feelings. Make some very warm symbols on the utensils that can best express their emotions and thoughts, perhaps the development and production of art, the origin is not a long process, or the production of art and the evolution and development of human nature are essentially consistent, are the essence of humanity, and the pace of human origin is generally consistent.
The history of human evolution hundreds of thousands of years ago is the history of artistic development for hundreds of thousands of years, so the history recorded in writing is irrelevant in measuring and measuring the evolution of human nature, which eliminates the doubts of modern people to question whether human nature is difficult to make a big breakthrough in the process of civilization for thousands of years. In other words, the origin of art has reached a certain glory long before the history of mankind.
Although prehistoric human beings did not have regular civilization symbols or ways of remembering, the emotions and ideas to be expressed must also be rich and broad. They have faith, joy and sorrow, the same from the prehistoric human race, the joy and sorrow, life and death, from the rise and fall of flowers and grasses from nature, the fall of leaves and yellow leaves, from the insects and fish in the animal kingdom, birds of prey, the unconsciousness and helplessness of natural selection, the ability to escape from the rapidly changing flash floods, the panic and uneasiness of lightning and thunder, the doubts and ignorance of magma eruptions, the instinctive preference for the beauty of grasses, the spontaneous love and comfort of mountains and rivers, It is also a kind of happiness or ignorance of living in the present.
In the face of the sudden collapse of a companion painful and mysterious, in the face of a disaster suddenly and instinctively fleeing, and rushing to the beginning of another disaster. They really can't find a place to live in peace for a while, and the external elements needed to become human choices are sometimes many, and more than now we often forget.
Don't forget, the universe has not yet found a second planet similar to our earth with water, air, mountains, rivers, seas, plains, and plateaus, with little difference between hot and cold temperatures, rich colors, and a wide variety of categories. Mankind has lived here for generations, in this critical and cramped living environment, facing illness, death, hunger, natural disasters, for weak human beings, are all threats, killing and engulfing.
From the long-term historical time and space comparison and observation, the living environment of the ancients is not much worse than ours, although the material civilization of contemporary society is highly developed, but in the face of volcanic eruptions, overnight torrential flash floods and mudslides and extreme climates, can contemporary human beings get rid of it?
The United States is still the hardest hit area of the global epidemic, Canada is still killing countless people in the summer, which one, which region is much stronger than the ancients? It can be said that in the face of nature, the length of human history, the level of civilization, the development of science and technology, etc. have nothing to do with it, and the ability of nature to overthrow and destroy everything is enough to show that it is entirely possible that we are in the fourth glacial century.
It can be inferred from this that a contemporary discovery of the appearance of white pottery patterns in Qianjiaping, Guiyang, Hunan Province, is by no means a simple accidental factor, but in fact, it is everywhere the expression and existence of the culture of that time: the cycle of the sun, moon and stars, the blossoming of flowers and thanks year after year, the wind and rain and thunder, the cycle of the four seasons, the tide rising and falling, in terms of the earth, the water, soil, mountains, birds, animals, insects and fish, everything is in the reincarnation and repetition of the world. This is the playing of the laws of nature, it is not a simple copy, the mechanism and mystery of nature are all in the change of flowers and leaves, the alternation of yin and yang, lurking in the mysteries of the world. They do not easily show the world the code and principles, recall our early twentieth century Einstein's mass energy agenda △ E = △ mc2 to open the power and energy of God's wrath, unveiling this magic box is how terrible and calamous! Affirm that nature has many unraveled mechanisms that both benefit and destroy humanity.
Many of the natural phenomena that cannot be explained by the existing level of cognition in contemporary times are not the result of the gods, but the low-end and limited cognition of contemporary human beings, the poverty of imagination, the rigidity of logic caused by the stubbornness of cognitive closure, the extreme lack of understanding of the mechanism of content contained in nature, the lack of understanding of the laws of natural operation, the panic and blind obedience and prayer of the accidental appearance and origin of individual cases, and the simply boil down to the activities and performances of the gods. This kind of blind worship and mysterious fear is also very simple to dissolve, as simple as waiting on the knees and worshipping with ten or three pillars of incense with both hands together, dissolving the piety and sacredness of religion, the false madness and curse of chanting words in the mouth, and the pilgrimage and wish of making up for words with hands and feet and body language.
Although in our view today, it is just a simple picture, a less exquisitely made ceramic statue, or a woodcut sculpture, or Buddha or Tao, Jesus and the mountain god, Bodhisattva and Rulai, Arhat and Vajra, Lei Gong and Electric Mother, and everything else is the embodiment of the gods, and in ancient times without too many words and civilization symbols, everything was the imagination and concoction of human beings, the revelation of nature and the imagination of interpersonal communication.
The Creator manipulates man, that is, in this accumulated repetition, he slowly summarizes in the form of labor in practice, and the discovery of individuals to the large-scale production of laws, from simple to complex, from unintentional to deliberate sustenance, to implicitly embodying a certain pending emotion, popularizing from personal will to the common wish of the world, this is the function of artistic symbols. The craft industry that arose from this should be the earliest occupation of all art categories with a category of agricultural production and labor.
△ Cultural relics excavated from the Qianjiaping white pottery site in Guiyang County
The white pottery ornaments of Qianjiaping are essentially prehistoric human beings who spread the materialized shapes of artistic thinking in the earth and all things, and they use heaven and earth as the theme and nature as a sample to simulate, imagine, describe or recreate.
The ornamentation of prehistoric white pottery in Hunan is not so much a product of a specific environment as an pictorial expression of the spiritual consciousness of the ancients. The ornamentation of white pottery is obviously not a simple decorative art, it should have symbolic significance, and what it conveys should be faith and feelings. The white pottery ornamentation takes the theme of heaven and earth and all things as the theme, and the purpose of all things can be communicated.
Carefully observe the content of the prehistoric white pottery ornamental images in Hunan, mostly based on the vast world of nature: from the perspective of animals, there are birds, animals, fish and insects; From the plant point of view, there are leaves and flowers; From the heavens, there are sun, moon, stars, wind and rain clouds; From the perspective of the earth, there are water, soil, mountains and rivers. All this seems to be in the expression of white pottery images. Perhaps, in the spiritual world of people at that time, people could be isomorphic with heaven and earth, and their ideological level did not seem to be separated from the multi-god worship of all things and spirits.
Throughout the period of about 6,000 years ago and before, the cultures of various regions of China have their own spiritual and cultural traditions, which can be roughly reflected in the relevant pottery images of the time, which are either painted or engraved and stamped. In the final analysis, there is a north-south binary: in the north, most of the gods worship flowers, plants, fish and insects, and in the south, most of them are sun, moon, birds and beasts. Therefore, in the southern Yangtze River Basin, the sun, birds and animal faces are often advocated, and the Northern Yellow River Basin is favored for fish, insects and flowers.
In the late Neolithic period, the situation was very different, in the Liangzhu and Longshan periods, the multi-god worship gradually dissipated, the worship of the gods had a tendency to be monolithic, and the north-south duality also began to converge. As a result, fish and insects and animal faces began to combine and evolve into dragons, birds evolved into phoenixes, flowers and plants evolved into peonies or rose petals, and sun, moon, heaven, earth, and clouds evolved into the five elements of yin and yang. These most basic Chinese cosmologies can be found in the ancient Neolithic culture and have many similarities with the pictorial meanings expressed by prehistoric white pottery. Although we are still unable to reconstruct this ancient knowledge system, more and more archaeological materials show that the ornamentation of prehistoric white pottery in Hunan is not so much a product of a specific environment as an pictorial expression of the spiritual consciousness of the ancients.
In prehistoric societies, in addition to ancestor worship, the worship of gods was a common practice, and it may have appeared very early. At that time, human beings may have a heartfelt yearning and longing for the miraculous scenes of the natural world such as the sun, the universe, mountains, and rivers. Among them, the worship of the sun is a typical example. This is related to the mysterious fantasy of human beings observing the sun rising and setting in the sky for a long time and the understanding that the sun is related to the growth of all things, reflecting human reverence and hope for the sun, which should be the result of the enthusiastic worship of the sun by human beings at that time. Perhaps, in the spiritual world of people at that time, people could be isomorphic with heaven and earth, and its ideological level did not seem to be separated from the multi-god worship of all things and spirits.
Although today's people cannot know when prehistoric human worship of gods began, nor do they know what types of gods were worshipped by prehistoric humans, let alone reproduce the process of their deduction like modern three-dimensional computer technology.
△ Cultural relics excavated from the Qianjiaping white pottery site in Guiyang County
On the one hand, the various exquisite and eerie theme images on the surface of Qianjiaping pottery represent the artistic composition and exquisite techniques under the aesthetic vision of people at that time, and on the other hand, they reflect the psychological activities and ideological consciousness of people at that time from the spiritual level, so they have a deeper social function, and the latter may be of greater significance. From the analysis of various archaeological materials, it is generally known that at least six or seven thousand years ago, the various gods that could be worshipped should have appeared universally among different tribes.
A large number of birds and beasts found on the surface of Guiyang Qianjiaping pottery, as well as the sun, octagonal, landscape, trees and other themes, are obviously the result of people's worship of these objects, or can be called "gods", but also enough to prove the smallness of individuals in the early human beings and helplessness in front of nature, can only fantasize about a large number of images of sacred birds and sacred beasts, which can be described as a model of prehistoric birds and beasts. These may be imaginary or real divine beasts, which abound in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and the one-eyed fangs and large-mouthed horned monsters are everywhere!
Qianjiaping white pottery has many sacred birds as figurative images, which are relatively easy to identify. However, there are also simplified forms, some only see the eyes, some only see the wings. A small number of forms of abstraction are even more difficult to identify. The word "bird" was first found in the Shang Dynasty oracle bones, generally as the beak, crown, head, body, feather, tail, foot shape, its original meaning is a long-tailed bird, and later extended to "phoenix".
Strictly speaking, the image of the sacred bird found at the Qianjiaping site is the imagination of ancient humans in the south, which is quite different from the jade phoenix pattern found at the Luojiabailing site of the Shijiahe culture in the north and the Yin Xu Women's Good (M5). The jade phoenix excavated from the Luojiabailing site is c-shaped, and the jade phoenix unearthed from the tomb of the lady of the stock market is slender and slender, and it is in a bird that looks back and wants to fly, which is very different from the long-crowned hook beak and the winged flying sacred bird seen in Qianjiaping.
In the Neolithic era, bird-shaped motifs were first found in many places, including faience pottery at the bottom of the temple and bone carvings in Hemudu, which were gradually replaced by jade phoenixes. There is no written historical space, time has a huge elasticity, ten thousand years of time and space is often compressed on a piece of pottery that has not changed for ten thousand years, the huge gaps and lacks, posterity can not make up and examine, but the change of the process is certainly very wonderful and rich, the traces of change are little by little reflected in these white pottery buried by the earth for tens of thousands of years.
The specific image of the white pottery divine beast unearthed in Qianjiaping can no longer be verified. However, the fierce-looking divine face is a common appearance of the divine beasts in artistic expression, including Liangzhu jade, Shang zhou bronzes, Hanji talc masks, and the "stall noodles" that are still popular in the Wuling Mountains.
From the observation of the divine beasts found in Qianjiaping, the composition of the animal face has been relatively complete, and there is a fixed form, such as teeth with teeth out, and some have round eyes and long tongues, and the vicious state is frightening. However, some are simplified to the point of leaving only a mouth with teeth, which should be a simplified figure of the prehistoric people making mythical beasts. It does not represent a head face of the Divine Beast, but represents the essence of the Divine Beast with the head face. That is to say, the head face is only a symbol of the complete form of the divine beast, and it is a simple shape, which is somewhat similar to the later Liangzhu culture divine human beast face. The difference is that the divine beast and fangs of qianjiaping simplification still exist, while the most classic simplification of Liangqian only leaves a pair of eyes of the god. The former highlights the vicious state of the healing tooth, while the latter pays more attention to the eyes of the gods.
Because prehistoric humans adhered to the concept of animism, the gods worshipped by people must also be diverse, and the worship process was extremely complicated. In this process, once some common animals are deified, they naturally enter the category of human worship. These animals range from birds and beasts to imaginary dragons, winds, or monsters. In the spiritual world of the ancient ancestors, man could communicate with all things in heaven and earth. If it is understood from the level of ideological development, it has not yet departed from the primitive stage of animistic polytheism or the prevalence of witchcraft.
Although we are still unable to reconstruct this ancient knowledge system, more and more archaeological discoveries prove that Mr. Su Chengqi's proposal that Chinese culture and Chinese civilization have more than one million years of cultural roots, tens of thousands of years of civilization, 5,000 years of ancient countries, and 2000 years of Chinese unification has become a reality, and to fill and enrich the contents of this civilization framework, it requires the incomprehensible efforts of our archaeologists.
Hunan as the birthplace of prehistoric white pottery, there are many archaeological sites, excavations of the remains are also extremely rich, prehistoric white pottery as an important part of the prehistoric culture, should try to publish archaeological results.
△ Cultural relics excavated from the Qianjiaping white pottery site in Guiyang County
In view of the importance and representativeness of the white pottery excavated at the Qianjiaping site, before the archaeological results report was published, the white pottery excavated from the site and other pottery specimens co-existing with it and decorated with typical ornaments were selected as a result that can be shared by the industry and the public, but the world has a decent account for this sensational archaeological excavation, which is a return to the love and attention of the archaeological community and public opinion. In the future, with the completion of the complete archaeological report of the second phase of excavations at the site, we are looking forward to more complete and complete excavations.
Archaeological findings prove that Mr. Su Bingqi's cultural roots on Chinese culture and Chinese civilization are more than one million years old, with tens of thousands of years of civilization starting and 5,000 years of civilization recorded. Professor Su also has a fresh point of view, that is, the origin of Chinese civilization in the southern region, and it is a "star-like distribution", which is entirely possible to create today's Guiyang with the historical background of the ancient country.
Guiyang from the era of written records to the Western Han Dynasty more than 2200 years ago, so far the continuous history has become a representative of a corner of China, with prehistoric pottery intermittent or scattered, intentionally and wordlessly telling the light of ancient civilization and the height of human wisdom before, the ancient relics of the Wuling region together with the reserves of this land, adding thickness and prestige to the constantly excavated ChuNan culture, riding on the east wind of the Huxiang cultural vein and showing it one by one in front of contemporary people in the form of entities.
The cultural representation of the Shonan region in Gujun Guiyang is not a lie, of course, to fill and enrich the content of this huge context framework, it will require the unremitting efforts of countless archaeologists.
Why did the qianjiaping aborigines in ancient times choose the sun, moon, birds and beasts as the main idols of the collective worship of the residents of the headquarters? We look around at the qianjiaping ruins today, only to see that the mountains are surrounded by here, although the turbulence of the river has been swallowed up by the Ouyang Hai Dam, but the geographical location of this place is relatively closed, that is, when this place is used as the main section of waterway traffic, the transformation of the vicissitudes of the sea and the mulberry field has also buried this place beyond recognition! Therefore, Qianjiaping will give birth to a mysterious culture with strong regional characteristics.
In addition, the natural environment here has not been excellent for a long time, agriculture started late or could not be developed, and the residents of this area for a long time have used primitive hunting methods such as gathering, fishing and hunting as the main way to obtain food, which is very different from the residents of the Dongting Lake Plain who reliably grow grain and raise livestock for a living.
The theory of social evolution tells us that in the long evolution, through the collection of wild fruit trees, fishing and hunting wild animals full of hardships and dangerous activities, gradually familiar with the natural environment, observe the law of seasonal changes, master the growth seasons and growth laws of animals and plants in nature, human beings eat and drink Lasa meat and vegetarian collocation, hot and cold raw and cooked, the relationship between the four hours and the survival of animals and plants, experience the change of day and night cold and summer, and slowly record the relationship between the circadian rhythm of the four seasons of the year and the sun, thus slowly producing awe and expectation for the sun. Until a little later in the year, twenty-four solar terms and so on.
At the same time, in the process of fighting against nature or transforming nature, the ancestors were often helpless or afraid of mystery due to lack of cognition or shallowness. Therefore, it is often easy to slip into the worship and prayer of ignorance, to deify and personify some of the most normal natural phenomena and objects that seem today, or to place the worship, fear, or gratitude, and worship of certain natural phenomena on some kind of gods who ask questions about the heavens and the earth, and at the level of human body, mind, and life and death crisis, in this level man produces the worship and refuge of supernatural beings, which is a complete surrender and obedience.
The worship of the gods is the embodiment of a concept or thought of human beings in production and life, which has similarities with primitive religions, and is aimed at the animism and immortality of the soul. The reason why Qianjiaping will find so many images of sacred birds, sacred beasts, the sun and the sacred mountain should be the result of the tribe's regular worship of gods.
Looking for mysterious symbols or anthropomorphizing a natural landscape, such as stalagmite pillars or naturally born gods with the appearance of mountain gods, the reverence of worship is born. Without the phenomena of nature, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, storms, the world is just flowers, sunshine and spring wind, and the emergence of religion is unimaginable.
While human beings are still creeping under the obscenity of nature, the crisis caused by the forces of nature in human life has become a hotbed of religious production. Of course, with various sound and light color patterns as a model, dialogue with all things in heaven and earth.
Using the most concise strokes and limited color paint, or line drawing, yin carving, or a large piece of deep, taking imagery, shape, color, form, expression, allegory, wish, meaning, sustenance, is the extension and solidification of emotions, is the continuation of the concept and the inheritance of praise between generations, there is no regret of not expressing in place, there is no worry about losing generations. All things have spirits, wood and grass have sex, they are the communication of ten thousand mouths, they can carry the activities of interest, they are the essence of the different forms of the soul, and the creation of heaven and earth has its own way and becomes its own truth.
There is Buddha-nature refuge, there is simplicity of the dao, there is enlightenment and cheerfulness, there is the grandeur of the view, it is the most primitive appearance and narration of ideology, it is the contradiction between the invisible country and the tangible shackles, it is not completely coupled and mapped, and the sea in the chest and the mountains, rivers and seas of the earth are very different.
The richness of the pottery category and the concise expression of imagery are so disproportionate, but they are so complementary, the kind of complementary existence and symbiosis, the crystallization of the wisdom of ancient human beings.
Although the understanding of natural phenomena by human beings at that time was seriously fashionable, animism is still the supernatural understanding of metaphysical idealists. Even today, in the face of a large number of highly skilled prehistoric white pottery, incomprehensible blind spots and the existence of the reality in front of us, we have to be far-fetched and pretentious, put aside academic posture and arrogance, and collapse in a cycle of thinking that cannot be completely devoid of logic and evidence.
The white pottery unearthed in Qianjiaping was painted with the sun and moon, birds and beasts as gods and idols worshipped at that time, and has become a spontaneous primitive religion. This is both a historical phenomenon and a social phenomenon, it must be popular in the population at that time, no one wants to decipher the reasons and secrets, always take it for granted from generation to generation, so the worship and belief psychology of the crowd is also one of the necessary factors for the emergence of religion.
The excavation of Qianjiaping white pottery inadvertently found the most authentic remains for the investigation of the ancient religious origins of the mainland!