Speaking of the history of the mainland, as we all know, China has a long history of 5,000 years, and 5,000 years ago, that is, the ancient era, belongs to the period of myths and legends, and at present, there are only some myths and stories as a basis in the ancient era, and there are no unearthed cultural relics as evidence.
Other countries in the world have always been very jealous of our China as an ancient cultural country, which has such a long history and has never stopped, and they have been doing two things all their lives, red eyes and doubts.
The first point they questioned was, is China really 5,000 years old?
Chinese historical civilization has always been called Chinese civilization, and Chinese civilization is the beginning of Chinese history.
Among them, "Xia", according to ancient books, existed from 2070 BC to 1600 BC, and from the perspective of time, this is a dynasty mentioned by other countries that we should show evidence of its existence, and it is also the perfect proof that the mainland really has a history of 5,000 years.
Leaving aside the desire to prove to the world that our history is indeed 5,000 years, this is also a knot of the mainland's generations of archaeologists, who also want to uncover this ancient mystery and let the beginning of the mainland's history and culture see the light again.
However, our archaeologists spent a long time and did not find this dynasty, which existed for more than 400 years, and our knowledge of the Xia Dynasty only exists in the written records of the Zhou Dynasty.
Could it be that the Xia Dynasty is really a legend and does not really exist at all?
Legend or truth
There is an oral story among the people of the mainland, called "Dayu Governs Water", in which Dayu, according to records, is the first monarch of the Xia Dynasty.
Before Dayu established the Xia Dynasty, he was a member of the Xia tribe, and the Xia tribe was a tribe formed by the intermarriage between the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and the subordinates of the Yan Emperor, and it was a tribe with orthodox blood, and Dayu was called the great-grandson of the Yellow Emperor by later generations.
But at that time, the tribes did not talk about orthodox blood relations, only about strength, and in order to compete for resources, they were always at war.
Emperor Shun of the Xia clan, as a brave and resourceful leader, led the clan to fight non-stop battles, and finally defeated many surrounding tribes, and the Xia tribe gained unprecedented growth.
At that time, the land of China was often flooded, because the tribes were established along the Yellow River, and when the flood came, the entire tribe would be destroyed.
As the most prestigious person in the tribe at that time, Dayu trusted him and relied on him, and he also felt that he had a great responsibility, so Dayu began to travel all over the world, wanting to find the reason for the frequent floods every year.
He learned from the experience of nine years of water treatment, and the flood is still rampant, and conducted field investigations, stepping all over the surrounding mountains and rivers, and even going out for three years.
It is said that once passing by the door of the house, he heard the cry of a baby in the house, it turned out that his wife gave him a son, he wanted to go in and see, but when he thought about his heavy responsibility to cure water, he left in tears.
In the end, Dayu did not disappoint the people, he surveyed the nearby terrain and found that the reason for the frequent floods was because the ancient road of the Yellow River was tortuous, the river was too turbulent, and it was easy to pile up and erupt floods at the bends.
He came up with the idea that floods should be blocked or not blocked, and it was not feasible to block the water for a long time to prevent flooding, and it was impossible to completely cure flooding.
After inspecting the terrain, he opened an opening eighty meters from the blockage, and the flood water diverted from the newly opened opening, and the people were never again disturbed by the flood.
His water treatment is thirteen years, but Dayu is familiar with the terrain and terrain in the process of water control in these thirteen years.
He also thoroughly investigated the situation in the world, so he divided the world into nine states, implemented a new policy, and established the country as "Xia".
Institutional innovation in the Xia Dynasty
The ancient era before the Xia was a tribal system, and the Xia Dynasty established by Later Dayu opened the first hereditary dynasty in Chinese history, and the subsequent generations lasted for nearly 5,000 years until the founding of New China.
After Dayu established the Xia Dynasty, he immediately thought that if he died, how to pass on the country he had worked hard to build, and the heir was particularly important at this time.
The tribal system was for the able, but at that time, Dayu's first target candidate Gaotao had died before Dayu, so Dayu's son Qi, who was very popular among the people, eventually complied with the will of the people and became the heir.
Since then, the dynasties have followed the hereditary system created by Xia, and the source of 5,000 years of Chinese history has begun to flow in the long river of history.
The Xia Dynasty has been established for more than 400 years, and has been in conflict with neighboring countries, and has hardly stopped for more than 400 years, and the population of the Xia Dynasty has been weakened, and the productivity has reached a critical point and is very weak.
And the last few kings were even more incompetent and inactive, and the king of the dead country was extremely cruel, wantonly killing loyal ministers, never asking questions about state affairs, coveting beauty, and did not have the appearance of a ruler.
But at this time, there was a neighboring country, the Shang Kingdom, and their rulers felt that the Xia Dynasty's strength was exhausted, so they worked hard to govern, trained the army, and actively engaged in friendly diplomacy with the surrounding neighbors, and finally raised troops, Xia broke the country, and the world was renamed Shang.
The search for the Xia Dynasty did not go well
This dynasty, which lasts for more than 400 years, should logically have a large number of cultural relics for us to study.
From the subsequent search process, only some sporadic suspicions of the appearance of Xia symbols, archaeologists found that the Xia Dynasty text is not the so-called "text" that we can interpret so far.
The oracle bone script that we currently have, the oldest written record in China, and the scattered symbols we found, are not a writing system, because they have not been able to decipher, and they cannot directly prove that it is the text of the Xia Dynasty.
This stalemate continued until the excavation of the Erlitou culture, the site of Erlitou is about three square kilometers, where some palaces and tombs have been found, like a relatively well-preserved urban ruin.
The next focus is to determine whether this is the Xia Dynasty ruins, but unfortunately, through the identification of our archaeologists, some of the text symbols in the Erlitou ruins cannot be deciphered, so I don't know what is recorded.
More importantly, the era in which this relic was detected is very different from the existence of the Xia Dynasty recorded in the Shang Dynasty, and the civilization of this relic only existed for more than two hundred years, but the Xia Dynasty should have existed for more than four hundred years.
Neither from the text nor the ruins can be completely the direct evidence of the existence of the Xia Dynasty, but sometimes, archaeology also requires a great element of luck.
The Xia Dynasty has experienced 5,000 years of vicissitudes since its establishment, and the natural geological disasters and war damage experienced during this period are very common things.
It is indeed very difficult to really survive a complete ancient city of the Xia Dynasty.
Netizens broke the truth in one word
At that time, when the Erlitou culture appeared, many history buffs were paying close attention to the real-time situation on the Internet, and after the results came out, everyone also launched a fierce discussion.
Some of them said that the Xia Dynasty did not exist at all, die hard! There are also netizens who fiercely refute. But what one of the netizens said is worth pondering, he said: The existence of the Xia Dynasty is undoubted, but those inconsistencies and records cannot coincide, will it be because of the limitations of the records at that time?
This argument was thrown, and even many archaeologists began to think, did they go in the wrong direction in the first place? For example, the Erlitou site, the biggest problem is that it cannot match the records of Guozao, but are we too trusting Guozao?
A dynasty's country is basically infallible, which is fine, but sometimes it is not necessarily a mistake that causes discrepancies.
Is it possible that the timing of the Shang Dynasty more than 4,000 years ago is different from what we are now? The timekeeping method is artificially created, and if the period is a little different, it is not impossible to accumulate in thousands of years, two hundred years less.
However, in the historical records of the mainland, there is no mention of the relevant questions about the way time is recorded, so this assumption is put in question marks for the time being?
There is also a more reliable possibility, that is, moving the capital.
The capital in ancient times was different from today, and frequent relocation was a frequent occurrence at that time, either because the war devastated the capital, or because of natural disasters, or more likely because of the perennial war of the Xia Dynasty at that time.
If a defeat had lost the city, it would not have been impossible for the king to lead his people to flee to other places in order to escape for his life.
This statement has also been recorded in historical documents, and among the various historical events recorded in the Oracle and Zhou Dynasties, the Xia Dynasty moved the capital very frequently.
Not only the Xia Dynasty, but also the Shang and Zhou Dynasties often moved the capital, which shows that before Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms, there were wars everywhere, and moving the capital as a king was as simple as moving.
If the Xia Dynasty really moved the capital, then the Erlitou culture could be right, existed in Erlitou for more than two hundred years, moved the capital to other places, a total of more than four hundred years, but unfortunately, no ancient ruins about the Xia Dynasty were found to support this statement.
Later, archaeologists successively dug up the Yangshao culture, Longshan culture, etc., but they were eventually overturned one by one because there was no direct evidence.
The key point is in time, the early Shang culture and the late Xia period are likely to overlap, but it is because there are too few relevant researchable relics to determine who is the first and who is the second, and then it is impossible to determine who is the early Shang culture and who is the Xia culture.
Some netizens asked, why must the Xia Dynasty be a dynasty? Can't it be a general reference to the time title of a group of princely states at that time?
First of all, it is true that the Xia Dynasty at that time did not have a very clear system of unified central management, and it can only be said that the Xia Kingdom was a princely state with the largest land area and the strongest national strength among the princely states at that time.
Xia, as the eldest brother, is responsible for mediating the conquests of the surrounding princely states, but there is no management, and in the many small vassal states around him, the Erlitou culture may be a small vassal state that has only existed for more than two hundred years.
Netizens have different opinions, but archaeology needs solid direct evidence, and many claims can only be called speculation.
end
The "Yuwang Stele" in Hunan Province has some tadpole texts from the Xia Dynasty, and also records some Xia history.
However, these scattered evidence is not enough to form a chain of evidence to directly support the existence, and the final argument still depends on excavating the remains.
It may even be that netizens say that the Xia Dynasty is not a dynasty at all, but the code name of an era, and after the establishment of the Shang Dynasty, the more than four hundred years of princes fighting for hegemony are collectively called the Xia Dynasty.
The reason why we can't find the Xia Dynasty with all our national efforts, to be precise, should not be able to find the complete Xia Dynasty, but it is also because no closer evidence has been found, and the doubts of the clowns in European countries cannot dispel our sense of self-Chinese.
No matter what dynasty it is, no matter what differences in history and legends, what remains unchanged is our pride and firmness in our 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization.
Sometimes archaeology also requires a little luck, and our current cities have built a lot of construction and destroyed a lot of local culture.
Many houses were excavated to bones, utensils, etc., afraid that the ruins would cause their projects to stop, so they deliberately concealed the report, so that many ancient civilizations were forever sealed in reinforced concrete.
Although we have not been able to reach a definitive conclusion so far, it has become a long way to find definitive evidence of the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
But we all believe that after the unremitting efforts of generations of archaeologists, one day the culture of the Xia Dynasty will surely surface and be seen again.
Readers have any different views on whether the Xia Dynasty really existed in Chinese history, welcome to discuss in the message area!