A cultural wonder on the Loess Plateau
"Where am I from and where am I going?" In the long history, the most concerned by human beings is the ancient topic of origin and destination. Since the Paleolithic Age, the Weihe River, as one of the most important tributaries of the Yellow River, has bred the Weihe River Basin culture, which has also provided irreplaceable nutrition for the development of the Yellow River culture and the Chinese national culture. So, what kind of ancient civilization did the ancestors of the Huaxia ethnic group create here?
Today, let's start with Shaodian Village, a remote mountain village in the eastern part of Qin'an County, Gansu Province. Due to the dangerous mountain roads and inconvenient transportation, few people came to Shaodian Village in the past, and people here rarely went out, and they all grew grain for a living for generations. If there is anything special about this place, it is that there is a small river flowing from east to west on the edge of the village, the Qingshui River. It was such a remote and quiet mountain village that suddenly became lively in the late 1970s.
In the mountain village, there are several people who resemble "cargo men" every three to five minutes, but the strange thing is that the goods carried by these people are not the needles and threads that people often use, but some heavy bowls and pans. These people do not shout and drink and do not sell, and some people take money to buy or sell, only to exchange for the broken clay pots that are idle behind the houses in front of the villagers' windows.
Three-legged pottery
Villager Zhang Delu is worried about the broken pottery vase he has picked up. People in the village think that the underground things belong to the underground artifacts, which is unlucky, and many people either smash it or throw it away after encountering it. So when he heard that someone was going to buy a broken clay vase, Zhang Delu readily agreed. What he did not know was that the real identity of the "cargo man" in the eyes of the villagers was a staff member of the Gansu Provincial Cultural Relics Management Committee. What he did not expect was that the broken pottery vase he had inadvertently picked up had unveiled the veil of 8,000 years of civilization.
It turned out that Shaodian Village was the site of the Dadiwan ruins. The site is roughly divided into five periods of yangshao culture, early, middle and late Yangshao culture and Changshan lower culture, which has been rated by scholars as "one of the hundred major archaeological discoveries in China in the twentieth century". The latest excavation results in 2006 show that the history of human activities at the Dadiwan site has been pushed forward from 8,000 years ago to 60,000 years ago.
In the Ruins of Dadiwan, there are many agricultural production tools such as stone axes, stone knives, and pottery knives, and the large number of large pottery urns, cylinders, pots and other storage vessels reflects the fact that the economic form at that time belonged to the settled type of agriculture. It is worth mentioning that the people of Dadiwan knew about flood control and flood control as early as 8,000 years ago, and already have flood control and drainage facilities.
Faience pottery is the most prominent feature of The Land Bay culture. More than 200 pieces of faience pottery, such as three-legged bowls unearthed by the Dadiwan Phase I culture, are the earliest batch of faience pottery found in the mainland so far. This batch of purple and red color pottery, although the pattern is not very complete, but it pushed the manufacturing time of Chinese faience pottery up to 1,000 years.
Faience pottery vase in the shape of a human head
More than a dozen painted symbols have also been found on the pottery excavated in the first phase of Dadiwan, including cross shapes, arrows, wavy patterns and so on. Although the significance of these mysterious symbols has not yet been deciphered, experts believe that this may be the earliest prototype of Chinese characters.
The Dadiwan site has an early cultural origin, a long time span, rich connotation, obvious characteristics and well-preserved, and is known as "a cultural miracle on the Loess Plateau".
The quietly flowing Qingshui River wordlessly tells the yearning and unremitting pursuit of the ancestors of Dadiwan for a better life, and witnesses their arduous journey out of obscurity to meet civilization. With the continuous archaeological discovery of the Dadiwan site, it will provide reliable specimens and important values for people to understand the evolution of Neolithic culture and civilization in the Yellow River Basin and explore the origin of Chinese civilization.
Anchor 丨 Yang Jing
Audit 丨 Chen Rui
Producer 丨Fan Yizi
Copywriting, responsible editor 丨 Yang Jing
Art design 丨 Yang Hua Zhao Mo
Audio 丨 Zhang Yufeng
Proofreading 丨 Luo Jingyue
Reference 丨《Exploration of The Ruins of Dadi Bay》
"DadiWan, Exploring the Origin of Chinese Civilization"
Produced by The New Media Center of China Water Conservancy Newspaper (Film and Television Production and Broadcasting Center).
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