Video loading...
One day about 5,300 years ago, at the confluence of the Iloilo River into the Yellow River, a fat silkworm was spitting silk, and the ancestor Xu was touched to carefully carve this moment on the tooth of the beast.
5300 years later, archaeologists shoveled away the dust of history with their hands, and the ivory carved silkworm "broke through the ground" at the site of the double locust tree in Zhengzhou. It is the earliest silkworm carving artwork of the era discovered in China so far, and has important research value for exploring the "origin of Chinese silk".
On September 1st, the 9th China Museum and Related Products and Technology Expo opened in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and the digital collection of ivory carving silkworm cultural relics was simultaneously released online. Once again, the crowd turned their attention to this national treasure-level cultural relic.
This is a ivory silkworm excavated from the site of the double locust tree in Zhengzhou, Henan (file photo) (courtesy of Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
This silkworm carved from the fangs of a wild boar is 6.4 cm long, less than 1 cm wide and 0.1 cm thick. Its shape is very similar to that of modern silkworms, with a raised back, a head and tail, and a taut "C" shape, as if it is about to spit silk or is spitting silk.
"The material of the fangs of wild boar is basically transparent, which is in line with the characteristics of the transparent body of the silkworm in the silk vomiting stage; On one side of the ivory carving silkworm is the original surface of the tooth, which is because the silkworm body in the silk spit stage will be yellow. Gu Wanfa, president of the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, believes that the ingenuity of the ivory carving silkworm process can be seen from the selection of materials.
Why is a small ivory silkworm so important?
China was the first country in the world to domesticate silkworms and weave silk. As early as the era of the Yellow Emperor, the story of the "silkworm of the ancestors" was handed down; Around the time of the Warring States period, the ancient Greeks had called China the "Land of Silk"; In the Han Dynasty, with the opening and prosperity of the Silk Road, silk became one of the symbols of Chinese civilization and spread to all parts of the world.
The history of Chinese civilization has always been inseparable from silkworms and silk. The exploration and research on the origin and development process of Chinese sericulture and silk is also a key topic for exploring the source of Chinese civilization.
In 1926, Li Ji, the "father of archaeology" in China, excavated half a silkworm cocoon at the site of Xiyin Village in Shanxi. Since then, several generations of Chinese archaeologists have persisted in "searching for silk", and have found a wealth of archaeological empirical materials related to silkworms and silk in many prehistoric sites on the mainland:
At the site of Shuangdun in Bengbu, Anhui Province, the bottom of the bowl, more than 7,000 years ago, is depicted with realistic images of silkworm spit silk knots; At the site of Shicun village in Xia County, Shanxi, a stone carved silkworm pupae more than 6,000 years ago was excavated; In the urn coffin of the Xingyang Wanggou site in Henan, there are silk fabrics found more than 5,000 years ago, including one piece of luo fabric identified by experts as "Ayala Silk Satin", which is also the earliest silk object found in the world so far...
This is a carbonized silk fabric excavated from the Site of Xingyang Wanggou in Xingyang, Henan (file photo) (courtesy of Zhengzhou Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics)
"But there are still key questions to be clarified: Are these silkworms wild or domesticated?" Did ancient ancestors make large-scale use of silk? It has always been a difficult puzzle. Gu Wanfa said.
The discovery of the ivory silkworm at the site of the double locust tree has solved the above "puzzle".
"It is extremely important to identify this silkworm through the silk gesture, which means that it is not a general expression of the ancients for the species or a simple pet performance, indicating that the ancients in the Central Plains had mastered the technology of silkworm reeling at that time." Gu Wanfa said.
"A typical feature of Chinese civilization is the Nongsang civilization and the Silk Civilization. The agriculture of the representative cultures of china's Neolithic period is relatively developed, but around 5300 years ago, except for the ruins of the double locust tree in the 'Heluo Ancient Country', there are no exact discoveries related to the silkworm textile industry in other parts of the country. Li Boqian, a professor at Peking University and chief scientist of the Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty Project, said.
This is a comparison between the ivory carving silkworm and the modern silkworm excavated from the double locust tree site (file photo) (courtesy of Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology)
The ivory carving silkworms and a large number of crops at the site of the double locust tree, together with the yangshao period agriculture and silk objects found in the nearby Qingtai, Wanggou and other sites, fully prove that around 5300 years ago, a relatively complete nongsang civilization had been formed in the Central Plains.
Li Boqian bluntly said that the central settlement group of the Yellow River Basin, led by the site of the double locust tree, is the earliest representative of the era in the history of the development of China's Nongsang civilization.
Nowadays, in the exhibition hall of the Archaeological Museum of Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, there are constantly audiences who come to see the style of ivory carving silkworms. This lifelike "carved silkworm" tells the life of the ancestors more than 5,000 years ago about the "Yellow River, Shi Nongsang"...
Text reporters: Gui Juan, Yuan Yueming
Video reporter: Ren Zhuoru