Yin Wu, the site of the capital city in the late Shang Dynasty, dates back about 3300 years. The Yinxu culture has three major elements: urban, written and bronze, and is a witness of the long history and splendid civilization of China.
As the most important carrier of civilization, the discovery of YH127 oracle bone cellar has greatly enriched the research content of oracle bone science and pushed the study of ancient writing to a peak.
The time was June 12, 1936, which was the 13th excavation of the Yin ruins, and when I saw that it was full of oracle bones, there was no place to step down, all oracle bones. At that time, Wang Xiang and Shi Zhangru were particularly excited, and in Wang Xiang's words: unearthed one after another, they were at a loss. This helplessness is a surprise, so to speak, ecstasy.
From 1928 to the outbreak of the War of Aggression against China in 1937, archaeologists conducted a total of 15 large-scale excavations of the Yin Ruins, and the discovery of YH127 oracle bone cellars was the largest excavation of oracle bones at one time, with a total of more than 17,000 oracle bones unearthed.
Because there were too many oracle bone pieces in this pit, and the weather at that time was June, it was hot, easy to rain, and another social security was not good, and there were often bandits. In this way, Shi Zhangru discussed with Wang Xiang and them, so he set a pit of oracle bones and earth with oracle bone pieces together, got a large wooden box, set them out, and then unearthed the whole and pulled them to Nanjing for careful cleaning.
In the process of transporting the oracle bone of YH127 to Nanjing, transportation has become a major problem.
The wisdom of the masses of the people is indeed infinite. There was a man named Li Shaoyu, he thought of a way, made a 64 people to carry, used 64 strong people like a palanquin, and forced it to Anyang Railway Station. The straight-line distance from Yinxu to Anyang Railway Station was less than 3 kilometers, but in the 30s, when there were few means of transportation, there were no trucks, ox carts and rolling logs, and the vibration was too strong. So this large sedan was carried for 2 days and 2 nights to the railway station.
The oracle bone pieces were in Nanjing at the time, and under the guidance of Dong Zuobin, it took eight months to strip, clean, stitch, number, and draw them, and more than 17,000 pieces were cleaned up. After the study of oracle bones, they are from the Wuding period, mainly recording including divination, including war, including sacrifice, and daily life, which can be said to be an archive of the Shang Dynasty, an archive of the Wuding period, and the content is very rich.
Before the fall of Nanjing in December 1937, before Dong Zuobin, Liang Siyong, Hu Houxuan and others glued, glued, and numbered it, they hastily packed the separated oracle bones into boxes and traveled to Changsha, Guilin, and then Kunming.
As the Academia Sinic moved to Taiwan, the pit of oracle bones was also transported to the National Museum of Taiwan.
YH127, since the excavation, after continuous handling, the division of the turtle plate is inevitable. However, through the conjugation and expansion of oracle bone research experts, they were compiled into a book, published and distributed, which provided extremely valuable materials for the study of oracle bone and Shang dynasty history.
YH127, this unprecedented oracle bone discovery, not only greatly increased the number of oracle bones, its rich content, expanded the vision of Yin Shang history research, but also allowed us to see the true works of the ancients more than 3,000 years ago.
Through the study of oracle bones, more than 4,000 characters were found, which very concentrated on showing that the oracle bone script at that time had also become a writing system. As an important carrier of culture. The Chinese characters from Oracle to the present day have been passed down in the same vein, so that our descendants can interpret it and know where our civilization came from and how it developed to the present, which is of great significance.
Note: Some of the pictures are from the Taiwan Institute of History and Language
Source丨 Yinxu Museum
(Source: Yin Wu Museum)