#文章首发挑战赛#
Two days ago, I wrote an article about the seal of the Han Dynasty, which caused many comments from netizens, and many netizens mentioned the problem of "Baqiao paper", so I will talk about it today.
Fragments of Baqiao paper
The origin of Baqiao paper
In 1957, a Han Dynasty tomb was excavated at a construction site in the Baqiao area of Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, China, and a three-string button bronze mirror was found in the tomb, and hemp fibers lined under the mirror were removed. These flocs are beige in color, with a total of 88 pieces of different sizes, the largest of which is about 100 c㎡, the smallest is about 12 c㎡, and the thickness is about 0.14 mm.
Soon after the tomb was discovered, experts declared the floc to be paper and named it Baqiao paper, also known as hemp fiber paper. This overturned the record of Cai Lun's papermaking in the Eastern Han Dynasty on the mainland, and advanced the manufacture and use of paper by 200 years. It shocked the world and was considered the oldest paper in the world at the time.
Fragments of Baqiao paper
oppugn
Because the characterization was too hasty, it was quickly questioned by many relevant scholars, and the main doubts existed in the following aspects:
First, there is no written record related to the tomb owner unearthed in the Baqiao Tomb, most of the tomb shape has been completely destroyed during the construction, and many artifacts have been pushed together by bulldozers to move their original positions, so it is not scientific to judge the age only by the type of the artifact.
Second, it is said that when the "Baqiao paper" was collected, it had been thrown into a clay pot by the workers, and the discoverer used two pieces of glass to stretch and flatten the hemp wool. As a cultural relic, it has changed its excavation location and character many times, and its collection method is also unscientific.
Thirdly, paper is defined as one-sided just because of the fact that "scattered fibers are messily intertwined, and there are no regular warp and weft lines".
Fourth, at that time, a small number of samples of "Baqiao paper" were sent to the raw materials to identify hemp wool instead of silk wool, which was defined as "Western Han hemp paper", which was an unscientific method of qualitative based on raw materials alone.
The flocculent fibers in the same direction were unearthed under the remnants of the surface of the bronze mirror of the Han tomb, and were artificially wetted, uncovered, and flattened between two pieces of glass when they were found
identification
Later, in order to learn more about the specific situation of "Baqiao Paper", experts went to the excavation site to conduct research, and observed all the samples collected by the two museums with microscopes in the Chinese History Museum and the Shaanxi Museum respectively.
It has been found by modern detection technology that the structure of "Baqiao paper" is relaxed, the uniformity is not good, there is no papermaking curtain, the fibers are arranged in a directional manner, the fiber bundles are more, and most of the fibers are simply close together, and there is no hydrogen bond bonding.
That is to say, these paper-like materials are not sheared by the papermaking process, there is no pulping, there is no suspension before papermaking, there is no forming process, so it is not paper, but some fiber clusters with hemp as the main body, which are used for the padding under the copper mirror.
Solid microscopy and scanning electron microscope showed that the fibers of "Baqiao Paper" were very long, the texture was relaxed, and the fibers were disordered and leaning together, without broomization. Indicates that it is a mess
"Baqiao paper" is wrongly characterized as paper, which is the result of the joint action of many aspects in a special historical period.
However, the concept and name of "Baqiao Paper" is paper has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, although it has been corrected for decades, many people still quote "Baqiao Paper" when talking about papermaking, and even in some literature and books still retain this erroneous view.
I hope we can look at the "Baqiao paper" correctly and scientifically, as for whether the Western Han Dynasty already has plant fiber paper, it remains to be corroborated by more archaeological material discoveries.
Follow me and interpret history from an archaeological perspective with you!
(Some of the pictures are from the Internet, if there is any infringement, it will be deleted)