Looking at the world, there are no surprises, black swan events often occur, is it an accident? It is also inevitable. Both statements are correct, for a person a small probability event at a certain moment is an accident, but for the long river of history, this small probability event will definitely happen, but it may happen to passers-by, it may also be other people, which is the inevitability of the occurrence of events.
Although it is a small probability event, but often some small probability events to promote the development of history, there is an article on the Internet once analyzed, Pan Jinlian opened the window to affect and hinder China's development for two hundred years. It's a joke, but a nail in a horse's hoof can change the outcome of a war, and a North American butterfly flapping its wings can cause a tsunami in the Atlantic.
Such an incident has also occurred in the mainland archaeology community, an old man in the field "convenient", even pulled out two "world firsts".
1. Accidents
Many years ago, no one would have thought that Gansu Tianshui Fangmatan could break the world record and win two world firsts in a row. Some people once joked that it was the "world's first" pulled out by the old man. The old man was a worker who worked in the forest for many years, and one day he went into the forest to work, and after a while, because of a sudden stomachache, he did not bring a hand paper, so he looked around for "paper" that could be used.
He found some "paper" on the ground nearby, and when he was ready to use it, he found that the "paper" in his hand was actually different, these papers were worn and yellow, but there were many unseen bends on it, I don't know whether it was text or something.
There is a Chinese proverb that "there is an old man like an old treasure in the family" that is really not bad at all, and this old man who does not know a few big characters realizes that this may not be ordinary paper, and may contain other secrets. He carefully put away the "paper" and took it to the county cultural relics management office and handed it to experts for appraisal. After expert appraisal, the county cultural relics bureau gave the old man a reward.
After expert identification and analysis, these papers are actually from the late Qin dynasty to the early Western Han Dynasty, which indicates that the place where the paper was found may be an ancient tomb group. Gansu Tianshui FangmaTan was once a place where the Qin people grazed their cattle for the Zhou Dynasty Tianzi, and the ancient Qin people walked out of here, if so, the development of underground tombs is of great significance to fill the research work of political economy and culture in the pre-Qin period.
So the relevant state departments quickly carried out the search for the ancient tomb, they were in a mountain pass in the forest of The Horse Beach, the staff found the entrance to an ancient tomb, unfortunately there were already traces of thieves. So it was sealed off and then excavated protectively, but the tomb had already been looted by tomb robbers, and everyone present hated and regretted it. Fortunately, although the cultural relics have been seriously damaged, there are still a large number of precious cultural relics.
Second, the world's first paper
After the excavation of the ancient tomb, the relics of the thousand-year-old collection have been brought back to light, the most precious of which is its paper. These papers were originally placed on the chest of the tomb owner and folded well, but due to their age, moldy after moisture, mottled and old, the color of the excavation was yellow, and now gradually faded into a yellow light gray, the paper is thin and flat and soft, and the toughness has decreased, resulting in incomplete preservation. At present, only irregular fragments remain, the largest of which is about 5.6 * 2.6 centimeters, which is really regrettable.
Since the ancient book deeds, most of them have been woven with bamboo jane, and those who use silk are called paper. Silk is expensive, mostly used for princes and nobles, while bamboo is cheap, mostly used in ordinary people's homes, but it is too heavy, and the book is worn with rope, and it is not easy to preserve the rope for a long time. So it was not convenient for people to use, until the advent of paper, which solved these problems.
Prior to this, the earliest paper recognized by the mainland came from the Eastern Han Dynasty, which was the widely circulated story of Cai Lun's papermaking. Legend has it that Cai Lun made paper out of bark, hemp heads, rags, and discarded fishing nets. After the Han and Emperor Yuanxing played the emperor in the first year, he was appreciated, and the official government vigorously promoted the Cai Lun paper, "from the beginning of the world, there is no need to use it."
However, Cai Lun only improved the papermaking process, producing a more delicate and smooth paper, and the quality has been greatly improved. In fact, as early as Cai Lun's previous historical books, there are also some records about paper.
For example, Yuan Jiao,(Tang) wrote the "Three Auxiliary Old Things" that when Liu Zhao, the prince of Wei, went to see Emperor Wu, he "covered his nose with paper", and Emperor Wu of Han was furious. Another example is the "Book of Han and the Biography of Empress Zhao", which records an object called "Hehe", that is, "thin paper also" (later called silk cotton paper). There is also a record in the "Later Han Shu Jia Kui Biography" that Jia Kui selected twenty people to teach the "Zuo Shi Biography" and "gave Jane, and the paper scripture was passed on one pass".
Although there are records, the Chinese archaeological community has not found corresponding cultural relics to corroborate, so the credibility is debatable. According to the detection and analysis of experts, the age of the tomb in Gansu Tianshui Fangmatan is the Western Han Dynasty, and after testing the excavated paper, it was also found that compared with the paper made by Cai Lun in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the birth of Fangmatan paper was hundreds of years earlier.
Although the contents of the paper cannot be restored, the paper surface is smooth and flat, the paper is thin and soft but has a certain toughness, the structure is very tight, the surface has fine fiber slag, and the fiber arrangement is messy.
Compared to today's paper, the edges of the fragments are hairy and irregular. After research, it was learned that the manufacturing process has undergone cutting, pounding, pulping, precipitation, filtration, extrusion and equal processes. The raw material for papermaking is hemp, which belongs to the early hemp paper.
The emergence of Fangmatan paper directly advanced China's papermaking technology by hundreds of years, breaking the world record that CaiLun Paper has been holding, becoming the well-deserved world first, and Western countries can only look back on it.
Third, the world's first map
In addition to creating the world's earliest paper record, it also created another world record, that is, the earliest physical map. Although the paper is yellow, mottled and fragmented, from the content drawn on this paper, there is a record of geographical information about mountains, rivers, cliffs and roads, which is a physical map.
According to various documents and written records, the map may have appeared during the Zhou Dynasty, but there is no physical evidence to support it, it can only be speculation. The advent of the physical map of Gansu Tianshui Fangmatan was after the appearance of the Mawangdui map, which pushed forward the appearance of the physical map of the mainland for more than 100 years, about 2,300 years ago, which filled the gap in the physical map of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
The ancient map recognized by the world is the map in Ptolemy's book Geography in the second century AD, and Ptolemy was the first person to show the relationship between the positions of continents and oceans and regions on the sphere with longitude and latitude. Ptolemy wrote the ancient Greek geography "Geography", which is of epoch-making significance.
In it, he determined the location of the prime meridian and determined about a few thousand place names based on the framework of warp and latitude. Many charts and maps of ancient times were well combined by Ptolemy using the cartographic rules of the time.
The map of Fangmatan adopts a set of cartographic rules, and the representation method of geographical elements such as water systems, settlements, cliffs, landforms, passes, temples and other geographical elements in the map has become a model of cartography in later generations, and cartographic ideas are basically in line with modern cartographic thought. In the art of cartography, the creation of joint diagrams and closed mountain curves is a major invention, because it has a projection concept, similar to the drawing method of contour lines, which is very advanced.
Although both were advanced, Ptolemy's cartography was five centuries later than the Map of FangmaTan. Therefore, at present, the world's first ancient map is the map of Fangma Beach.
brief summary:
These two world firsts are of great significance, which shows that in ancient Chinese society, the ancestors of the Chinese nation once created many cultures that can be called world miracles, and also let us understand a lot of historical truths in archaeological research, although it is only a piece of paper, it is a microcosm of the society at that time, and it is the embodiment of the basic science of society.
It can be seen from this that the mainland had a world-leading economy and military in the pre-Qin period. This is the crystallization of the wisdom of the working people of the Chinese nation, which greatly embodies the superiority of the Chinese nation and increases the sense of self-identity and national self-confidence of the current Chinese people.
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