In the past two years, I have accompanied friends from other places or alone to walk into the Shenmu Museum several times, and have been exhibiting in this elegant and sacred palace of culture and art, and receiving cultural baptism and civilization education. I have a soft spot for these antique treasures, because I studied history at the Provincial College of Education. I remember that at that time, the school organized us to teach on the spot, and visited the Banpo Ruins, the Terracotta Warriors, the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor, the Famen Temple and other world-famous historical relics. On Sundays and holidays, I used a tourist map and a tourist brochure to visit all the places of interest in Xi'an and its surroundings. In particular, the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum is adjacent to the school, and after it was completed and opened, I went there when I had time, and in the face of a dazzling array of treasures, I met with cultural relics in the museum, looked at the narrative of cultural relics, and had a dialogue with the ancients, so as to obtain information, recognize history, inspire inspiration, and inherit genes.
Shenmu is famous and rich because of coal, but coal is not renewable and cannot be reused. The cultural relics, relics, and relics that are also excavated from the ground not only have historical, artistic, and scientific value, but also are regional bloodline and spiritual resources, which can also be used sustainably. The Shenmu Museum has a collection of more than 10,000 pieces, including 89 pieces in 76 groups of national first-class cultural relics. There are a variety of private museums, including Baoyuan Museum, Linzhou Museum, Dongshan Yangcheng Museum, Railing Fort Museum, Caiyuangou Folk Museum, Yanhuang Cailin Museum, Yongye Museum, Jinjie Red Memory Museum, etc., plus many folk collectors, in Shenmu, formed a museum system with the city museum as the main body and the private museum as the supplement, with diversified categories and diversified patterns.
"Museums should not be the graves of things, but the cradles of ideas. "How to make these cultural heritages "live"? better look back at the way we came, reflect on the original intention, correct the goal, choose the right path, I don't take the liberty to take you into the Shenmu Museum, only to see a cultural relic and an exhibition room, with a view, to seek advice from the Fang family.
There is a cultural relic in Shenmu, found by a strange coincidence, and has become a national treasure, that is, the eagle's beak Jinrui beast, which is a national first-class cultural relic, and is now collected in the Shaanxi Provincial History Museum, which is the treasure of the town hall.
Interestingly, Jinrui Beast turned out to be a "national treasure kicked out of the hooves of a cow". It was the 10th day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar in 1957, there was a farmer named Wang Genfa in Gaotu Village, Dabaodang Nalin, who herded cattle for the team. While passing by a sand dune, he suddenly found a copper hedgehog-like thing behind the cow's hoof, and he picked it up and put it in his pocket, and took it home, where he was worried all night. The next day, he told his father Wang Shengren about the "baby bump" he picked up. The father and son were overjoyed, and went to the place where they found the treasure yesterday and dug up many objects such as silver tigers, silver deer, corals, pearls, etc. Happiness is always short-lived, because you can't keep the good. Soon, the news that the father and son had dug up antiques spread quickly in the village and around, and the Yaozhen District Government and the Shenmu County Government sent cadres to inspect and hand over all these antiques to Shenmu County. Such a discovery attracted the attention of archaeologists, and then the ancient tombs of the Huns were discovered, and this precious artifact was unearthed - the eagle-billed golden beast.
There are four main considerations for appreciating a cultural relic:
One look at the artistic value. This is the most intuitive embodiment of the value of a cultural relic itself. Jinrui is 11.5 centimeters high, 11 centimeters long, and weighs 160 grams, which is the size of a palm. It resembles a sheep, its mouth is like an eagle, its horns are like a deer, its tail is like a scorpion, its head is clustered with a pair of horns like cirrus clouds, the lines are extremely exquisite and smooth, at the same time there are 16 small birds on its head, the scorpion-shaped tail is also the appearance of a small bird, the small Jinrui beast hides 17 small birds, the body is also engraved with cloud patterns, the shape is peculiar, the production is exquisite, and it reflects the extremely high level of craftsmanship.
Second, look at the historical value. This is the intrinsic value of cultural relics, and it carries a wealth of historical information. According to expert research, this Jinrui beast is the remains of the Xiongnu nation during the Warring States Period, more than 2,300 years ago. According to the 12 small holes on the base, archaeologists believe that it is an ornament on the top of the crown of the Xiongnu, and the small holes are used to fix the crown with silk threads. The golden beast is worn on the head, magical and mighty, and is a symbol of identity, status, and power.
Third, look at cultural values. A cultural relic can reflect the production and life, aesthetic taste and belief pursuit of people at that time. In ancient China, all ethnic groups were popular in the worship of animals, some worshiped birds, some worshiped fish, and used these animals as family emblems, logos or totems. Jinrui beast is a copy and recreation of the grassland living animals, the Huns live by water and grass, to grazing, hunting for a living, they have a love of worship for animals. Many wild beasts live in dense forests and grasses, and it can be seen that the Mu Us Desert at that time was rich in aquatic plants and beautiful ecology.
Fourth, look at the value of technology. Each piece of cultural relics records the progress of human technology. Jinrui beast set forging, hammering, welding and other advanced technology in one, complex shape, exquisite design, representing the highest level of development of the nomadic metal casting industry at that time, but also a rare Xiongnu art treasure.
Cultural relics are the carrier of history and culture, a kind of materialized culture, and the archaeological excavation of cultural relics has only completed half of the task, of course, it is the most basic task. For the cultural relics displayed in the museum, we also need to carefully interpret and excavate the information contained in them. Without the last half of the work, the value of the artifact cannot be fully realized.
Steve Brusart, an American paleontologist, said, "If you're looking for a place to immerse yourself in the amazing prehistoric world, dinosaur halls are the best place to go, and there's no better place in the world." "There is a dinosaur exhibition hall in the Shenmu Museum, and we traveled through time and space today, got close to nature, and went there to find something to see.
Aspect 1: Shenmu discovered "China's first dinosaur footprint". As early as 1929, paleontologists discovered China's first fossilized dinosaur footprints at the foot of Shenmu East Mountain. In the summer of 2009, another accidental traffic accident caused 221 dinosaur footprints to be found in Qiujinggou Village, Railing Fort. Longzui is the local quarrying place for repairing the kiln wall, a sheep dealer's agricultural tricycle unfortunately fell in the ditch, the villagers stood on the ridge to rescue, everyone inadvertently found that there were different shades of "savage footprints" on the stone plate, and then reported to the township, the county, the county and township organized personnel to protect the scene, and then the provincial and municipal experts investigated the site and determined that it was a dinosaur footprint fossil, and these footprints were formed at least 150 million years ago. Soon, a boulder that fell from a cliff in Lijia Nanwa Village also had similar footprints, and these footprint fossils were earlier than those in Qiujinggou Village, about 200 million years ago. The footprint is about 42 centimeters long and 22 centimeters wide. Experts speculate that the dinosaur was 1.3 meters tall at the hip and nearly 10 meters long. On September 25, 2010, Li Jianjun, a researcher and doctor at the Beijing Museum of Natural History, went to Shenmu to see the fossil dinosaur footprints and happily inscribed: "Shenmu is a holy place for studying dinosaur footprints." He said that Shenmu dinosaurs have rich footprints, and some characteristics are unique in the world, which is a great wealth of Shenmu. These two fossils have been collected in the dinosaur exhibition hall of the Shenmu Museum. Paleontologists see these footprints, and paleontologists describe them as dinosaurs walking on land, making loud noises, while weak mammals, lizards, frogs, and other non-dinosaur creatures tremble in fear.
Aspect 2: Dinosaurs have dominated the earth for 160 million years. Dinosaurs appeared on the earth about 220 million years ago, and reached their peak in the Jurassic (200 million years ago ~ 145 million years ago). They have long necks that provide access to abundant food, efficient lungs that draw in enough oxygen to power the metabolism of their massive bodies, airbag systems that reduce bone weight and cool the body to allow them to run around, and large bellies that cause small earthquakes with every step...... In the dinosaur exhibition hall of the Shenmu Museum, there is a restoration scene of electric simulation of dinosaur survival, and the head and tail of the dinosaur are swinging, and making a shocking roar, which is really immersive and feast the eyes.
Aspect 3: The mystery of the extinction of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs disappeared from the earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, and scientists have been studying the cause of their extinction since 1980, but it has not yet been revealed. In the dinosaur exhibition hall of the Shenmu Museum, ten conjectures about the extinction of dinosaurs are listed, the most recognized of which is the theory that asteroids hit the earth. I checked the information and found that the impact was in the area of today's Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and the speed of the impact was 100 times faster than that of a jet, and the impact was equivalent to the energy produced by the explosion of 1 billion atomic bombs. Some people use their artistic imagination to describe what happened that day: the surface of the earth became a trampoline, the largest and heaviest dinosaurs were thrown up and down, the forest was burning, and wildfires swept the land. When the shaking stopped, the dinosaur carcasses were scattered all over the riverbank, which directly led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and other animals and plants were also devastated.
Aspect 4: The formation of Shenmu Jurassic coal. The discovery of dinosaur footprint fossils confirms that Shenmu was once a world of reptiles and the kingdom of the dinosaur family, and it also shows that the Shenmu was lush in vegetation and fertile in water and grass at that time. Those leafy forests, tens of millions of years later, with the movement of the earth's crust, the ground sinks, a large number of trees are buried in the ground, which is covered with thick crustal weathering, the underground trees and the air for a long time, under high temperature and high pressure, after a series of physical and chemical changes, the formation of black combustible fossils, this is the formation of Shenmu coal.
The rise and fall of dinosaurs is an incredible story, the land they once walked on is right under our feet, and their fossils are now embedded in the rocks. The extinction of the dinosaurs has taught us that even the most powerful animals are incomparably small and vulnerable to nature.
The exhibition hall of the eagle-billed golden beast and dinosaur that I introduced above is a corner of the theme sculpture and exhibition hall of the Shenmu Museum. As a cultural square and urban living room in the new era, museums should be visited by each of us, and even repeatedly. On the one hand, it allows the public to carry out cultural tuition, and on the other hand, allows museums to interact with tourism to promote the development of cultural and tourism economy. In March 2022, Jia Zhangke, a deputy to the National People's Congress, suggested: "The inclusion of historical and cultural heritage and museums in the compulsory education teaching system is very meaningful for improving the quality of the people, especially the recognition, learning and inheritance of Chinese culture." "Shenmu Museum was officially opened to the public free of charge in July 2012, and has received nearly 800,000 visitors in the past ten years.