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In the 1950s, the discovery of the Shi'a site caused widespread debate in the academic community, and at first experts thought it was the site of the Great Wall, but with the continuous deepening of archaeological excavations, experts were surprised to find that this was actually a Neolithic ancient city site, dating back about 4,000 years, earlier than the Xia Dynasty ruins of the Shanxi Tao Temple not far from it. By the late 1970s, experts had figured out the planar structure of the ruins of the ancient city of Shiya, the earliest of which was established as the Imperial City Terrace, that is, a sacrificial highland, and then built an inner city around the Imperial City Terrace, mainly as a residential area at that time, with an area of about 2 million square meters, and finally built an outer city outside the inner city, mainly playing a defensive role, covering an area of more than 4 million square meters. It can be seen that the planning science of the ancient city of Shi'a has great research value.
It is worth mentioning that in 2012, the ruins of the ancient city of Shiya were also selected as the "World's Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries", so it also allowed Shi'an to go overseas and become a topic that historians cannot avoid when studying ancient culture. Although the ruins of the ancient city of Shiya are huge, 80% of the important ruins are in the inner city, such as the ruins of houses, workshop ruins and some sacrificial pits, etc., and the core of the inner city is undoubtedly the highland mentioned above - the Imperial City Terrace. In 2016, archaeologists systematically excavated the Imperial City Terrace and found that its structure was extremely complex, not only with squares, piers and doorways, but also traces of pyramids on the Imperial City Platform, which was about 15 meters high, which surprised experts.
On the east side of the entrance of the Imperial City Terrace and the south side of the square, experts have unearthed some stone fans, of which there are more than 20 well-preserved pieces, such as the Ao Han Ring First Sword Stone Fan, which is about 35 cm long and about 15 cm long, and also engraved with a "" type pattern, the blade is about 18 cm long and slightly curved. In addition, experts also produced several bronze knives made of stone fans, which indicate that the ancestors of Shi'an at that time had entered the early Bronze Age, and even some experts speculated that the bronze civilization of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties originated from Shi'an. However, as more and more stone models and bronze knives have been unearthed from shiya, the problems discovered by experts have become more and more complex, the main one of which is the "five mysteries".
Mystery 1: Why are there no bronze workshops?
In the process of excavating the inner city, experts found a large number of house ruins and some handicraft workshops, such as workshops for making jade, pottery and bone ware, as well as textile workshops and winemaking workshops, but they have not found workshops for making bronzes, so experts wonder why there are no related workshops since bronze knives have been found. Could it be that the bronze knives of shiya were obtained elsewhere?
Mystery Two: What is the technique of demoulding bronzes?
Experts found the stone model of the bronze knife and speculated that it was cast by melting the copper into a liquid and then pouring it into the stone fan to cool. Although this process is very simple, the problem is that the metal liquid will stick to the stone fan after pouring it into the stone fan, and how to remove the bronze after it is formed is a difficult problem, that is, how to release the mold. In this regard, experts have also tried many times, but each time they have not succeeded.
Mystery three: bronze ware needs a complete production process, but the bronze production process of the Shi'an people is always a mystery, and if you want to reveal the secret, you must have specific cultural relics, only by studying cultural relics can you restore the process of its production.
Mystery Four: Where did the ore of the Shi'an people come from?
As we all know, the two main materials of cast bronze are copper and tin, which come from the corresponding ore refining and processing. Experts say there are no copper mines in the Shi'an area, unless they go all the way north to Inner Mongolia or southwest to Yunnan, but these places all meet for thousands of kilometers, and it is impossible to transport such a long distance according to the level of productivity at that time, so experts cannot know where the copper ore came from.
Mystery Five: Can the Shiya people cast large bronzes?
Judging from the bronzes that have been unearthed so far, they are basically knives, and perhaps knives are the most useful things in their lives. Archaeologists say that since the Shiya people have mastered the way bronzes are made, can they make large bronzes? For example, bronze pots and dings, as well as bronze basins, etc., although no large bronzes have been found in the Shi'an site, but it cannot be fully explained that they cannot be manufactured, after all, only a part of the Shi'an site has been excavated, and perhaps there are still bronze utensils buried in other soil layers.
Resources:
"Shi'an Kingdom" by Yang Rui, Publisher: Shaanxi People's Publishing House Co., Ltd
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's