After the discovery of the ancient city of Liangzhu, because its scale is beyond the imagination of many people, it is understandable that any new scientific understanding or new thing will cause many different voices. The main ones who raised doubts were scholars from the Institute of History of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences and Zhejiang University, many of whom were highly respected predecessors.
In early January 2008, a month after the press conference on the discovery of the ancient city, Lin Huadong, director of the Institute of History of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences, questioned the ancient city of Liangzhu in the "News Supermarket" column of Zhejiang TV. At the end of January 2008, Lin Huadong published an article in "Observation and Reflection" with the title of "Liangzhu Discovered Is Not an Ancient City", pointing out eight doubts about the ancient city of Liangzhu, such as the evidence for judging the age of the city wall is not sufficient, why the city wall is so wide, why no city gate has been found, etc.
Luo Yimin, a researcher at the Institute of History who was in the same office as Lin Huadong, published a 15,000-word article entitled "Falsifying the 'Liangzhu Ancient City'" in the next issue of the journal "Observation and Reflection", directly denying the existence of the Liangzhu Ancient City. At that time, not long after the "Zhou Tiger" incident in Shaanxi, he believed that the ancient city of Liangzhu was a "Zhou Tiger", and put forward the thesis that "the city wall was only a dam after the Song Dynasty".
Luo Yimin has no background in archaeology, and many of his views on stratigraphy and chronology in his article are wrong. His suspicion began with a question about the way the wall pads were mined. He judged that the stone pads of the city wall were all artificially mined stones with edges and corners, and that there were no metal tools to dig in the Liangzhu period, and no traces of fire and water excitation were found to break the stones, so it could not be a project in the Liangzhu period. On the third day after the publication of his article, Mr. Yan Wenming of Peking University said that "the author lacks common sense" and that "there are many cases of stone mining in the Neolithic Age, and the author's idea of having this kind of thinking only proves that his archaeological knowledge is very lacking."
On the question of how the stone is mined, we later did a special project on the source of the stone pad, and although the motivation of the study was to carry out resource and engineering research, not to answer this question, the conclusion of the study is a good answer to this question. Because the most important thing is that the vast majority of these stones are collected loose stones, not mined by hand. Then there are some scholars who are engaged in sedimentology at Zhejiang University, saying that the soil is Q3 and Q4, and then tens of thousands of years, which cannot be 5,000 years. They don't know that this is actually the soil that was moved and piled up by hand, and the age of the natural formation of the soil and the age of the wall made of soil are two different concepts. After these people said it, we didn't pay much attention to it, and that's it.
Later, in March and April 2008, a newspaper reporter interviewed Mr. Chen Qiaoyi, a famous professor at Zhejiang University, and Mr. Chen Qiaoyi said: At the end of November last year, when the "Liangzhu Ancient City" was first reported, someone asked me to see it, but I didn't go. It's not that I don't have time to see it, it's that I don't want to go at all. Months have passed, and I am still angry that I can make such a rash conclusion on such a major topic. There is no need to look at how the city wall is built, judging by my common sense alone, this "Liangzhu Ancient City" cannot be established. It's a "pseudo-city." ...... Floods and salty tides were still a serious threat in the early days of Liangzhu, so Guqiu played an important role in the source of drinking water, the acquisition of charcoal, shelter from wind and cold in winter, and self-defense against the enemy. Therefore, the major archaeological discoveries in Liangzhu are all on small hills, such as the anti-mountain site, the Yaoshan site, the Mojiao Mountain site, and so on. But today this "Liangzhu Ancient City" is doubtful. The ancestors of the Yue people did enclose some small fields, but they were all small group behaviors, and the main purpose was to maintain fresh water and prevent salinization of the land.
At that time, it was not possible to have a large city wall for flood control and military purposes. Because Mr. Chen Qiaoyi is a well-known historical geographer, the leaders are more concerned about what he says. Then the report was seen in the province, and the provincial government asked the Cultural Relics Bureau to answer and write a report to the provincial government. That day, Director Bao Xianlun called Liu Bin to the office of the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, and found that the staff of Zhejiang Satellite TV were also waiting there, asking that there were so many questions, including Mr. Chen Qiaoyi, why didn't you come out and answer them positively.
"Archaeology is a verifiable thing, we have done so many dissections, we have been digging for two years, and it is finally 100% sure that it will be published," Liu said. We held a nationwide debate meeting. But the TV station wanted us to come to the ring, in order to see the excitement and attract attention. In the end, someone will be held accountable, so if Lin Huadong or Chen Qiaoyi is concerned, they must say that it is false, and your TV station will ask us to be interviewed like this, but I will not accept it! If we want to be interviewed, you need to find a notary office and set up a fair platform, and we can hold any form of argumentation meeting, and if it is proved in the end that they are deliberately spreading rumors, then it is a matter of academic ethics, and we must be held responsible. If you are willing to use this platform, I will accept your interview, and if you don't use this platform, I will not accept your interview. Later, the TV station didn't dare to get it.
Liu Bin explained to the Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics: "We have held a demonstration meeting, and archaeology can't be a joke, right? The four city walls have been dissected and drilled in the whole place, and it is 100%, right? So like Mr. Chen Qiaoyi, who has not been here, he has come to a conclusion, first of all, I think this is a matter of scientific attitude, right? You said that this plain is low, and it will be affected by the salty tide, but there are now more than 200 ruins in the Liangzhu Plain, and these cemeteries cannot be in the sea, right? Is this attitude scientific for being too confident in one's own academics and drawing conclusions without ever being there? and some other people, I think, deliberately rub off on hot spots to find faults, and this kind of person has academic ethics problems. ”
So in the end, the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau also made a report to the provincial government, and the Liangzhu Management Committee came forward to give a positive answer in the media. The first is to emphasize the credibility of the age: in a total of six sites on the four sides of the city wall, after excavation, without exception, all found the accumulation of inclined Liangzhu strata that stacked the city wall, which proves that the age of the city wall is earlier than the late Liangzhu period. Second, in response to Lin Huadong and Luo Yimin, two scholars, proposed that the soil on the ancient city wall was likely to be a "secondary accumulation" formed by the "digging to heap" or "flood alluvium" of later generations in the Ming Dynasty, indicating the extensive distribution of strata and their accumulation facies, which fully demonstrated its "originality". Compared with the government department, the excavators of the archaeological institute are obviously relatively calm. After making a simple statement in the media in the name of the unit, he ignored it, but went into the warehouse to sort out the relics, and wrote an archaeological brief as soon as possible, which was published in the 7th issue of Archaeology magazine in 2008 with the title of "Excavation of Liangzhu Ancient City Ruins in Yuhang District, Hangzhou in 2006-2007".
The presentation details the stratigraphic relationships and typical excavations at each anatomical point. From our point of view, this briefing is enough to answer all kinds of doubts about the ancient city in the society. Shortly after the report was published, carbon-14 dating data from several sites at the site also came out. Not surprisingly, they all fell in the late stage of Liangzhu culture, which confirmed our previous judgment. Surprisingly, after the report was published, the voices of skepticism continued unabated. In December 2008, the Institute of History of the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences held a meeting in the name of the International Liangzhu Research Center and organized a number of people to write critical articles. After the meeting, a large copy of the internal materials was printed, and Liu Bin also saw it.
Lin Huadong also wrote an article questioning the strata stacked at the foot of the slope as secondary accumulations. The so-called secondary accumulation refers to the accumulation of early ruins in the late period due to natural erosion or human transportation and other reasons, and it contains relics such as early pottery shards, but in essence, it is a late accumulation. In fact, the secondary accumulation will inevitably lead to the reversal and confusion of the overlapping relationship of early and late relics. The easiest way to solve this doubt is to go out of the study and come to the warehouse of the Liangzhu Management Office to take a look at the tens of thousands of pottery shards arranged on the ground at various dissecting points, to see if there are any relics of the late period mixed in them, and to see if the chronological order of the various layers of pottery shards from early to late is reversed. We believe that as long as you have the basic knowledge of archaeology and come to the site to see it, you can naturally draw conclusions.
Mr. Lin Huadong graduated from Xiamen University with a major in archaeology, and has worked in our archaeological institute for many years. According to his own account, he has been to the ancient city excavation site three times, but has never contacted us, which is something that makes us wonder. Later, I learned that he asked Fei Guoping, the director of the Liangzhu Management Office, to drive him to the construction site. Generally, when we visit an archaeological site, we always have to contact the excavation leader, look at the excavated pottery shards, and listen to the excavator talk about the strata, Mr. Lin Huadong and Liu Bin are very familiar. I heard that he had been to the construction site several times and did not contact Liu Bin. It's confusing. Therefore, his conclusions and inferences must be carried with a lot of personal preconceived prejudices.
Source: "How We Found Liangzhu: An Archaeological Oral History of Liangzhu", edited by Wang Ningyuan, Zhejiang University Press