"The shock brought to us by the tomb of King Wu is difficult to express in words, just as far as the construction of the tomb is concerned, we feel that it is incredible, and many mysteries have yet to be solved. "Experts who have investigated the archaeological work of the Wuwangdun tomb will almost always make a similar exclamation the moment they see the excavation site of its No. 1 tomb.
▲At the excavation site of the No. 1 tomb of Wuwangdun, people standing around look very small
It is reported that the No. 1 tomb of Wuwangdun is the main tomb of the cemetery, which is located in the center of the cemetery, and is a "A" shaped vertical pit tomb with sealed soil. The sealing mound is in the shape of a covered bucket as a whole, with a total area of about 12,000 square meters. The soil quality of the sealed soil is five-flower soil, and the overall construction process is a combination of ramming and stacking. A total of 443 coffin covers were extracted from Tomb No. 1, with a total weight of about 153 tons.
▲The huge coffin roof cover needs to be lifted by a crane (data picture)
Standing in front of such a large tomb, looking down and looking down, the legs of people who are afraid of heights will tremble involuntarily. "Since the beginning of the sealing of the soil, we have dug more than 30 meters, which is equivalent to the height of a 10-story building, which shows how complicated the construction process of this tomb is, and it can be said that it is not a waste of financial and material resources. A few days ago, Gong Xicheng, the leader of the archaeological excavation project of Wuwangdun Tomb, who was interviewed by Huaihe Morning Post and Huainan Net, sighed, "We are now in the fifth year, and I think the ancients should have spent no less time digging it than us." The archaeological team also discussed the difficulty of excavation based on the amount of earthwork and the excavation. For example, from the top of the tomb to fill the soil layer by layer of ramming, the ramming surface is very smooth, the ramming nest is very clear, this link alone will take a huge amount of time. ”
▲Fill rammed layer and rammed nest part (data picture)
Experts pointed out that the place where the tomb of Wuwang is located belongs to the weak expansive soil, this kind of soil is not good if it is dry, it is not good if it is wet, it will crack soon after it is dry, and it will become soft immediately after seeing the water is wet, and it will collapse soon.
"There are many mysteries that we can't solve at present, for example, to do such a large area of excavation, and dig so deep, it should not be able to be completed in a short time, it should not have the mechanical and industrial conditions like we have now, to build such a large span of the roof to shelter from the wind and rain, what to do when it rains? how can it keep it from collapsing when it rains? Gong Xicheng said that there is a special team studying this question, and whether it can find a reasonable answer still needs to be verified.
Huainan Daily all-media reporter Su Guoyi photo report