#头条创作挑战赛#
The Shang Dynasty existed for more than 500 years and created a splendid bronze culture, as well as oracle bone inscriptions. However, what did the people of the Shang Dynasty look like, do you want to know? Archaeologists also want to know.
What did the Shang Dynasty people look like?
When the oracle bones unearthed in Anyang were first brought to the academic world, many people wanted to ask: What kind of people carved these oracle bones? When the archaeological team arrived in Anyang and dug up the human bones, everyone thought, oh, maybe they carved the oracle bones.
But these people have no flesh and skin, they are just a bunch of skeletons, and you don't know what kind of human race those people are, so you have to study them.
This image reflects what early scholars imagined the Shang Dynasty people to look like.
This is Shang Tang, the founding king of the Shang Dynasty, and Shang Tang's image is to wear the hat of such an emperor. But this is the imagination of posterity, which is a bit ridiculous. The appearance of the real Shang Dynasty people needs to rely on archaeological excavations.
Or go back to the starting point of Chinese archaeology - the last capital of the Shang Dynasty - Anyang, Henan. A large number of human bones of the Shang Dynasty have been unearthed in this place, and part of it is the royal tomb area, where there is a royal tomb. If we are lucky enough to dig up a royal tomb, and then dig up the human bones in the royal tomb for analysis and measurement, we can know what the Shang king looked like, and that is the best.
△ Anyang, Henan
Unfortunately, all of these tombs were stolen, and none of them were spared.
△ Distribution map of tombs in the tomb area of Yinxu Wang, Anyang
The rest of these sacrificial pits were not made by the Shang Dynasty, they belonged to the Qiang people, or to other ethnic groups. I still don't know what the people of the Shang Dynasty look like.
What to do? The family cemetery of the Shang Dynasty.
There are many such cemeteries in Anyang, such as when we excavate a cornfield in Anyang, pull out the corn, pick 30 centimeters, 40 centimeters, and shovel it open, and there are rectangular traces on the ground, and those traces are the tombs of merchants. One of the characteristics of these cemeteries is that they are distributed in groups, and the families of the Shang Dynasty people are buried in this place, and these people represent the real Shang Dynasty people.
For example, although the human bones rotted after being dug up, some of its bones were often preserved. You can see his head, there's something holding it down, it's still preserved, his leg bones are still there.
This one, which I talked about in the last lesson, is the head of a soldier of the Shang Dynasty, and he also represents the people of the Shang Dynasty. All these human bones, if we measure them and restore them, we can probably know what the Shang Dynasty people looked like.
However, the most intuitive thing about the appearance of the Shang Dynasty people, I think it is really not bones, but some utensils made by the Shang Dynasty people - some pottery or jade that reflect the appearance of the Shang Dynasty people, and so on.
△ Character carvings unearthed from the tomb of the woman
Take this one, for example.
When we excavated in Anyang in 2003, we dug up such a small lump in a stratum, the size of a walnut. After cleaning it, a complete human head, this is not a skeleton. An avatar like this should be a portrayal of a person who is very familiar to the Shang Dynasty, or a portrayal of a race that is very familiar to himself.
When I was excavating for archaeology, I often met people who told me that people in the past were very high. I see that the bones you dug up are so tall. Actually, this is an illusion, because the bones we dig out are skinless and fleshless, and the feet are stretched, so you can visually see that the height of this person is from the top of the skull to the feet, but in fact the real height should be measured from the heels.
I used to measure the heels of many merchant tombs, and I measured them by gender, and I found that the height was interesting at that time.
Like this diagram, red represents males and green represents females. Where is the peak, you see, the largest population is around 160cm in the middle, which means that both men and women show the highest proportion at about 160cm.
However, the proportion of women under 160 cm is significantly higher than that of men, and the proportion of women above 160 cm is far lower than that of men. The maximum value of this X-axis is 172cm in this table, which means that there are not many men in the Shang Dynasty who exceed 170cm, and women who reach 170cm are already rare. This table reflects the fact that the Shang Dynasty was lower in height than it is today.
In addition to height, the Shang Dynasty people actually died at an early age and did not live long. We have done a lot of statistics, and the average age of death for men and women is about 35 years old. This statistics does not include children, because some children are killed at a very young age, and only the average age of adults who die normally, that is, about 35 years old.
Where did the Shang Dynasty people come from?
We have an understanding of the people of the Shang Dynasty: most of them are about 160cm tall, women are shorter than men, and the age of death is very early, about 35 years old. This group of people created oracle bones and cast beautiful bronzes. So in the land of China, where did they originate in the first place? This is also an issue that needs to be studied.
The people of the Shang Dynasty actually had a description of their origins, and there was a sentence in the "Book of Songs", called "The Heavenly Destiny Xuanniao, descended to give birth to Shang, and the house was full of land and mangmang". Merchants are given by Xuanniao, and with Xuanniao, there are merchants, which is said in the Book of Songs.
In the past, we all thought that this sentence in the "Book of Songs" was seconded by later generations, because the "Book of Songs" was something accumulated from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Spring and Autumn Period for hundreds of years, some chapters were from the Western Zhou Dynasty, some chapters were from the Spring and Autumn Period, and the earliest was from the Western Zhou Dynasty. We can speculate that the people of the Western Zhou Dynasty thought that "the Divine Destiny Xuanniao descended to give birth to business"?
Actually, this is a misunderstanding. The concept of "the Divine Destiny of the Divine Bird, descending to give birth to Shang" was in the minds of the people of the Shang Dynasty. Look at these words, these are all compiled from the Shang Dynasty texts.
The lower part of the first character is similar to this part of the second and third characters, which is the character "Hai", and once the word "Hai" appears, a "bird" appears on it. That's true of all four words.
The oracle bone inscription tells us that "Hai" is the ancestor of the Shang Dynasty, and the ancestors of the Shang Dynasty had a bird as soon as they appeared. The four words on the far right, on the left is a bird above the word "Hai", and the three words on the right are "King Gaozu", which together is "King Hai".
These words are the words of the Shang Dynasty, and the Shang Dynasty people thought that as soon as Wang Hai came out, a bird was needed on it, so it was not possible to understand that the concept of "Heavenly Destiny Xuanniao, descending to give birth to Shang" was not attached to the Western Zhou Dynasty, but was in the minds of the Shang Dynasty people themselves. This is such a speculation about their own origin by the Shang Dynasty.
But for us today, it doesn't reflect the problem, it's just a legend. Where did the Shang Dynasty people come from, we can't tell now, the Xuanniao flies everywhere, and we don't know which region it is.
Where did the Shang Dynasty people come from? In fact, archaeologists have been studying this for many years.
There is a theory in archaeology that in addition to human bones, there are many artifacts that have been excavated, and these artifacts are combined together, and we call it culture. The origin of culture is actually related to the origin of people. For example, if I dig up a bunch of things, they must be from a certain group, and these things represent a certain group.
Therefore, in archaeological research, this is a very important premise for studying the origin of the Shang people, that is, in the case of no human bones, or in the case of insufficient human bones, we push the source of people through the source of culture, or the source of the people.
In fact, before the study of the origin of the Shang people by this method, when there was no archaeology in the past, it did not mean that this work should not be done, for example, historians used the method of checking documents to investigate the origin of the merchants, which we call the document method.
Can the literature tell us where the Shang Dynasty people originated? Actually, there are clues.
Sima Qian's "Records of the Historian of Yin Benji" mentions the location of the Shang people, and most of its sources come from the "Zuo Chuan", for example, "Zuo Chuan: The First Year of the Zhao Dynasty" mentions that "the Later Emperor Bu Zang, moved to Shangqiu" (阏博: the distant ancestor of the merchants). The place name appeared: Shangqiu.
"Zuo Biography • The Ninth Year of Xianggong" also mentions "Yan Boju Shangqiu".
"The Biography of the Seventeenth Year of Zhao Gong" also mentions that "the capital of the Song Dynasty is indeed the homeland of Zhaoming and Xiangtu".
Du Pre said it more clearly - Du Pre was a scholar in the Western Jin Dynasty, and he said that "Shangqiu is Suiyang of the Liang Kingdom, and there are three names and one place of Yun Song, Shang and Shangqiu".
These documents all point to Shangqiu. If according to the literature law, the origin of the Shang people must be in the eastern part of Henan, the Shangqiu area, so Wang Guowei said, "The Song Dynasty is called Shangqiu, and the name of the South of the Song Dynasty is Yinxu, and the Shang is in the Song Dynasty."
What he meant was that the Song Dynasty - a historical background is needed here, how did the Song Kingdom come about? After the Western Zhou Dynasty destroyed the Shang Dynasty, it was divided, and when it was divided, the people of the Shang Dynasty were moved to the eastern part of Henan and named the Song Dynasty. Wang Guowei said that if according to the literature, the Song Kingdom was in Shangqiu, why did he move to Shangqiu, because this is his homeland.
In this way, it is clear in the literature that the Shangqiu area is the hometown of the Shang Dynasty. Here, the red dot is here.
But then there was a very interesting phenomenon, the idea that the merchants originated from Shangqiu, which seems to be very clear in the literature, is not supported by archaeology, because archaeology uses the so-called cultural law.
The workflow of the cultural law is as follows: Anyang Yinxu is not the last capital of the Shang Dynasty, and all the cultural relics from Yinxu are the representatives of the Shang Dynasty culture. On this basis, push forward, push to the Shang Dynasty earlier than it - before the Shang Dynasty moved to Anyang Yinxu, it was still in another place, for example, in Zhengzhou, then the Yinxu culture inherited the Shang culture of Zhengzhou.
At this time, when this set of culture was summarized and traced, this set of culture was not chased to Shangqiu, but to the south of Hebei. Okay, that's a contradiction to the literature.
There is a place in the south of Hebei called Ci County, and there is a site in Ci County called Xia Qiyuan, and a bunch of cultural relics were dug up in that place, so a concept appeared later: Xia Qiyuan culture. It is the continuation of Shang culture, and these things may be the things of merchants, or the things of merchants' ancestors.
If we call the archaeological culture after the founding of the Shang Dynasty Shang culture, the culture before the founding of the People's Republic of China can be called the pre-Shang culture. That is to say, the Xia Qiyuan culture represents the pre-Shang culture, and the pre-Shang culture is not in Shangqiu, but in the south of Hebei, which is contradictory.
So where is the former residence of the Shang Dynasty people, and where is the origin of the Shang people? So far, there is no solution, archaeology and history are fighting.
Archaeology starts from archaeological materials, the materials of Yinxu in Anyang, the archaeological materials of the early shopping malls in Zhengzhou - Zhengzhou is the previous stage of Yinxu, it is the early Shang Dynasty, they built the city.
We lined up the pottery to compile the year, and finally proposed that the Shang culture or pre-Shang culture earlier than Zhengzhou was in the southern part of Hebei.
We know what the merchants looked like, how tall they were, and how old they were, but we don't know where the Shang people originated, and that's the next step in archaeological research. Is there any hope? I think there's hope. The method in the future should be to do the methods of literature, archaeology and culture, in fact, there is another one, human bones should be valued, and human bones have a chance. I'll tell you a story.
The discovery of the capital of the Song Kingdom in eastern Henan
In order to combine the methods of documentation with the methods of archaeology, Zhang Guangzhi formed an archaeological team. Mr. Chang Guangzhi is a well-known archaeologist who was born in Taiwan and later taught at Harvard University in the United States.
Zhang Guangzhi believes that the literature says that the origin of the Shang Dynasty people is correct in the Shangqiu area, and he has this belief, and what he has to do is to find archaeological evidence. If cultural relics can be found in the Shangqiu area, and it can be proved that Shangqiu culture is connected to Anyang and Zhengzhou, then he has succeeded.
Therefore, Zhang Guangzhi set up an archaeological team in the early 90s, commonly known as the Shangqiu archaeological team, in fact, to find the origin of the Shang people. This is the basic member of the archaeological team, and in the middle is Mr. Zhang Guangzhi, who stood on the side like a fool at that time.
From the early 90s to the late 90s, our archaeological team worked in the Shangqiu area in eastern Henan every year, just to find the origin of the Shang people. When I was young, my children were in Beijing, and I couldn't take care of this, so I ran in the wild every day.
What is the main scope of our work? It is in the area of Zhecheng and Yucheng in Shangqiu, Henan Province. It's hard to work in this place, it's so easy to find the origin of the Shang people, and this place happens to be a yellow flood.
I have a friend who did a doctoral dissertation and he studied the geomorphological changes in the entire Shangqiu region. This picture was made by him.
His research is like this, you look at this picture, this place is the Luzhong Mountains, the Shandong Peninsula, and this place is the Taihang Mountains. The Yellow River flows out of the west, and after it arrives in Zhengzhou, its course changes constantly. Historically, during the Shang Dynasty, the Yellow River flowed northward, passing a little east of present-day Anyang and flowing north into the Bohai Sea.
Later, it was constantly diverted to bring a lot of siltation to the Shangqiu area, and the whole underground was silted down, and Kaifeng in the Song Dynasty was silted down. After the Song Dynasty, there were many floods in all years, including the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, including the Ming Dynasty, and there were very, very large waters, which flooded the entire eastern Henan region. Therefore, it is not easy to find early pottery in eastern Henan.
Zhang Guangzhi had already suffered from Parkinson's syndrome at that time, and he came to Beijing tremblingly, and then to Shangqiu. Strictly speaking, he can't do field archaeological work anymore, and he takes a shovel in the field and scrapes the strata tremblingly—it's just a pleasure, old man.
This plan for eastern Henan has been done for ten years, of which the archaeological excavations have been done for three quarters, and I have participated in them all. After archaeological excavations, we pulled out a cultural sequence in eastern Henan, which was established with our own materials.
Yangshao Culture (Mazhuang Ruins)
Longshan Culture (Lizhuang Ruins)
Yueshi culture (continued to the early Shang period)
Middle and late Shang culture
The earliest was Yangshao culture, and we dug up a site called Mazhuang Ruins. After the disappearance of Yangshao culture, the next thing is Longshan culture, and there is also a very thick accumulation of Longshan culture in that place, and we dug up a site called Lizhuang site.
Further down, we are looking forward to the accumulation of culture equivalent to the Xia culture period - if Zhang Guangzhi believes that Shangqiu is the origin of the Shang ancestors, it should be equivalent to the pre-Shang culture of the Xia Dynasty, right? No.
After the Longshan culture, it was called the Yueshi culture. The Yueshi culture is completely different from the culture we summarized from Anyang to Zhengzhou Mall just now, and the pottery is different, so there is no proof that this set of culture comes from Shangqiu.
So is the project a complete failure? Not really. Because this project has a completely unintended result.
When I was in college, I studied archaeology in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, that is, in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, and I saw that the capitals of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were found, the former city of Zheng State was in Xinzheng, Yi County was the Yanxia capital of Yan State, the capital of Zhao State was in Handan, the capital of Qi State was in Linzi, and the former city of Lu State was in Qufu, but there was only one capital of a big country that was not found - Song State.
The Song Kingdom is related to business. It is said in the literature that after the Zhou people defeated the Shang Dynasty, they actually sealed the descendants of the Shang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty. That is to say, put the people of the Shang Dynasty in the eastern Henan region to keep the fire, because that is its ancestral origin.
If the continuation of the Shang Ritual is correct, then it is possible to find the relics of the Song Kingdom. The Song Kingdom is a country, and it has cities. As a result, I didn't expect that our plan for eastern Henan would actually find the hometown capital of the Song Kingdom.
The Song State is very powerful, according to one of the sayings, it is one of the five hegemons of the Spring and Autumn Period, and Song Xianggong is very good at fighting, the so-called "don't capture Ermao, don't get seriously injured". What do you mean? I want to talk about benevolence and righteousness when I fight, the enemy crossed the river, I didn't line up, I didn't fight with you, I didn't fight with you if I didn't set up a good position, I didn't fight righteousness when I beat me, although he was defeated in the end, but he was a teacher of benevolence and righteousness.
Song Xianggong should have been in the Shangqiu area back then. So where is this city? Is this city really when it was sealed at the beginning of the week? This is critical.
The Shangqiu area is silted and difficult to find. To what extent? If you look at this picture, the ground was underground 3,000 years ago. On the left is a long section, how many meters from top to bottom, usually ten meters. That is, the accumulation of ten meters, all of which is later. We can still dig up porcelain pieces from the Ming and Qing dynasties at a distance of ten meters, and the real Shang Dynasty things are buried below ten meters.
You can't find it below ten meters, how can you find such a big city below ten meters?
But please note that in fact, the city is a very large area, let's say how many square kilometers. But the city wall is a very large object, dozens of meters wide and more than ten meters high, then it is possible that the city is buried under the ground, if the city wall does not fall, it will be pestled to the ground today.
This brings an opportunity for our work, we may first discover the city wall, and then we will talk about the things in the city below ten meters, so it is possible to find the city wall.
But it's not so easy to find the city wall, in the wild, in the vast, how to find it?
Later, I really found it. This is the plan of the city wall, there are a few squares, you have to see it, it is the parallelogram, that is the capital of the Song Dynasty, it is likely to be the capital of the Song Dynasty, that is, in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, the descendant of the Shang Dynasty, Weizi sealed this place (Weizi: the eldest brother of the king of Shang).
How did you find this city? Actually, it was quite accidental. As I said earlier, when this wall was relatively tall and did not fall, it could have been pestled on the ground today, but it was actually difficult for you to find it because of the repeated cultivation of the ground by human beings on the ground and the fact that the ground became a plain.
We used a lot of methods, the first to use magnetometers, resistance meters, all over the world, but due to various interference, it didn't work at all. Later, I bought a device specifically from Canada, and at that time China was not as technologically advanced as it is today. We spent 600,000 yuan to buy a Canadian radar, called a penetrating radar, but it didn't work for a quarter.
How did you find it in the end? We have a very important archaeological team member, that is, the archaeologist I just mentioned about doing the Shangqiu landform, his name is Jing Zhichun. Jing Zhichun had a background in geology and later switched to archaeology.
He knew that when the ancients built the city wall on the ground, they dug up the soil of the year, that is, the soil below 10 meters, and built the city wall after digging, and later it was only said that the water brought the silt down from the upstream and covered it.
But do you notice, the soil in the flow zone is layered, it is either sand or mud, and the structure of the city wall that was originally dug up by hand is different, and there may be something special in the soil, especially in North China, it often contains something called material stone. The stone is a kind of calcium in the soil, which accumulates to a certain place through coagulation and forms a hard pimple.
So Jing Zhichun said to a few assistants he brought, we may not be able to find anything else, there is only one hope, that is, to find the old soil, the old soil has a characteristic, it is likely that there will be a stone, you find the stone and tell me immediately. His archaeological team remembered this sentence.
One day they were working, like in this picture, in a wheat field or in the woods. One of the mechanics said no, I had an upset stomach and I had to go to the bathroom. There were no huts nearby, so he went to a wheat field to go to the toilet.
As a result, I didn't bring any paper. At that time, the habit of the peasants, just take a lump of soil can wipe the buttocks, after a touch, rub, pimples, rubbing, rubbing, how to be so awkward, a look, a piece of stone. He immediately put on his pants and shouted: Dr. Jing, Dr. Jing, I have found the material stone.
You know, this is a very important phenomenon, and finding the stone means finding the ancient soil, and finding the ancient soil means having the opportunity to find an important archaeological phenomenon at that time.
Sure enough, he drilled in the same place where he went to the toilet. "Pop" to fight, the soil shovel is raised, the old soil, and then hit and beat, and the soil on the side is completely different, and the result is later confirmed that this is a city wall.
In fact, the city wall is regular, and as soon as you drill from this starting point, you will drill out the entire city wall. This is a cross-sectional view of the city wall excavated in that year.
This is the rammed earth block of the city wall. Holding in his hand was a densely smashed old earth, very hard, not at all like the accumulation of strata washed by the current, so that the city was discovered.
So what era is this city? After excavation, it has been confirmed that this city has been repaired several times, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty has been repaired, and the Han Dynasty has also been repaired, but the bottom layer is really the Western Zhou Dynasty, that is to say, it is not the Song Dynasty.
Let's think about it, if this city belongs to the Song Kingdom, and then it is a pair with the literature, there is hope, right? Shangqiu is the source of the Shang Dynasty, so it is possible to establish it.
But, obediently, the pottery is not right - you are from the Yueshi culture here, and the one from the Xianshang culture is over there.
What if I can't do it? So there can only be one explanation, which is Zhang Guangzhi's explanation: he said that there were two groups of people in the Shang Dynasty, one was nobles, the so-called conquerors, and these people may be people from the Yueshi culture. And those pottery, altars and jars, that are the people who are ruled, they probably came from the south of Hebei, so these are two groups of people. Therefore, the question of the origin of the entire Shang people, after such archaeological excavations, has come to such a conclusion.
This is a report on the archaeology of eastern Henan that we just published this year, mainly written by me and Jing Zhichun, in fact, it was published more than two months ago, so today's talk about this can be said to be a freshly baked scientific research result.
The human bones are really showing the light of day
But in fact, I think that on this basis, there is actually some work to be done, and it is still necessary to consider human bones. Since we know that there are bones of the Shang Dynasty in Anyang Yinxu, we know that the early shopping mall in Zhengzhou is the early Shang Dynasty, and there are also bones. In fact, the same race, it always has some characteristics that are similar, for example, we can use DNA methods, we can use paleopathological methods to trace various traces of these people's bones.
In other words, through this method, the methods of human bones, documents, and archaeological culture are all combined, and there is hope if it is not done well.
In addition to human bones, there is another method, which is the pottery method. Because the cultural law we just talked about, saying that the appearance of pottery is not like it, but in fact, the shape of the object is not enough to explain the problem, for example, a person in a certain place, he can learn from the appearance of the people in that place to make an object, and it does not necessarily mean that your culture comes from there.
Therefore, it is necessary to combine some other methods, such as the pottery slicing method, that is, after classifying the pottery from the form, it is necessary to look at the structure of it, and also to see whether the soil in the artifact is local. Assuming that the soil is not local, but from somewhere else, it may have been brought by someone from that place. Because in ancient times, unlike now, there was a high-speed railway, it was very difficult for him to move it, he was carrying pots and jars, and the pottery had to follow him, so it was possible to bring the pottery.
If you use this method to combine the pottery that can be seen in Zhengzhou Mall, other cultural relics, and human bones, including human bones in Anyang and Zhengzhou, to do a comprehensive study and make a package, there is hope for it.
This is a photo of the early years of the Zhengzhou Mall city wall, which is still on the ground.
And what's interesting is that the human bones are really showing the light of day. Because in Hebi, Henan, due to the south-to-north water diversion, the water from the Danjiangkou should be transferred to Beijing for us to drink, and this channel flowed through a wheat field when it passed through Hebi, and a number of tombs were found in this wheat field.
△ Schematic diagram of the location of the tomb of Liu Zhuang in Hebi
This tomb unearthed such a mustache (left), which is a typical Shang culture thing. Then such a piece of Yue was unearthed, which is a stone Yue, which happens to be equivalent to what we call the Erlitou culture, that is, the stage of Xia culture.
This proves that the age of these things is similar to that of the Xia Dynasty, that is, it happens to be earlier than the Shang Dynasty.
Therefore, from the perspective of archaeology and culture, this batch of materials, pottery, and stone tools is just equivalent to the pre-Shang stage, and it is connected with the Shang culture.
And it had human bones, and a tomb was unearthed, and there were people in the tomb, and these bones were taken home.
What we need now is to organize a project, do a scientific research problem, and if we don't do it well, we will know where the Shang Dynasty people came from, and finally solve this problem.
Of course, this work has not been done yet, and it will continue, so what I am talking about today is a subject that has been going on for many years, almost more than a century or several centuries, and there is no truth today.
This article is the fourth in a series of lectures by Tang Jigen, a professor at Southern University of Science and Technology and the former leader of the Yinxu archaeological team, "The Shang Dynasty under the Luoyang Shovel".