#长文创作激励计划#
In 1953, in the "Erligang Ruins" in Zhengzhou, archaeological discoveries found a piece of cow ribs, on which were engraved with rows of text, indicating that there were oracle bone inscriptions beyond the Yin Ruins. At that time, the scholar Chen Mengjia believed that it was "Xi carving", a total of 10 characters, and the era may belong to the Yinxu period, that is, after 3,300 years ago.
However, after scientific dating, the Erligang site is much earlier than the Yin Ruins of Anyang, and the time is close to 1600 BC, which belongs to the site of the early Shang period. At the beginning of this century, the scholar Li Weiming interpreted the word "Bo", indicating that the Erligang ruins, which were part of the Zhengzhou Mall, were the early Bo capital of the Shang Dynasty.
In 1984, in an ash pit at the site of Xiangfen Tao Temple in Linfen, Shanxi, archaeology found Zhu Shubian pot, on which 2 characters (or 3 characters) were written, one of which was successfully interpreted as "Wen". Modern carbon-14 dating shows that the ash pit is less than 4,000 years old, that is, more than 3,900 years, in the Xia Dynasty.
The Erligang site is only a few decades away from the Xia Dynasty, and since there was a relatively mature script in the early Shang Dynasty, it is impossible for Xia Dynasty China to be without writing; The Zhushu of the Taosi site is more direct and is a textual evidence from the time of the Xia Dynasty. Obviously, the question is not whether the Xia Dynasty had writing, but whether the ruling ethnic groups of the Xia Dynasty had writing.
Judging from the current archaeological evidence, the capital of the late Xia Dynasty should be at the Erlitou site, so is there any writing at the Erlitou cultural site, including Erlitou?
In the general history of the world written by Western scholars, the first Chinese dynasty was the Shang Dynasty, and the hidden narrative behind it is undoubtedly that the Xia Dynasty did not exist. Among them, Western scholars believe that the Erlitou culture has not found writing so far, let alone the word "Xia" related to the Xia people, so the Erlitou site does not prove the existence of the Xia Dynasty.
The reasons for the West's rejection of the Xia Dynasty are not sufficient, but the West's conclusion that the Erlitou culture has no writing has now been overturned.
Tao Wen of Erlitou culture
Since the discovery of the Erlitou site, at least 50 pottery symbols have been unearthed at the site, and a total of 64 symbols have been unearthed in the entire Erlitou cultural site.
Du Jinpeng, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who participated in and presided over the excavation of the Erlitou site, pointed out that some inscriptions are used as markers, but some should indeed be early characters, respectively expressing numbers, plants, utensils, and natural scenes.
Also holding the same view as Du Jinpeng are Cai Yunzhang and others. The first inscription on the pottery in the second picture below, the inscription is unconventional, it must be intentionally engraved, Cai Yunzhang pointed out that it means "the minister's qu dregs", that is, the minister bends down to offer fine wine for the gods or kings to enjoy.
Among them, in the Baliqiao site, archaeology has found the same symbols as the two symbols on the left, and there are many similar symbols in the oracle bone inscription and the late Shang Dynasty Jin inscription. Therefore, these two symbols on Erlitou Taozun are not accidental, but words with special significance.
Li Weiming, a research librarian at the National Museum of China, pointed out that the pottery inscriptions of the Erlitou culture, "some of which can be traced back to the local Longshan culture and inherited by the Erligang culture, conform to the characteristics of the recording function of writing beyond time and space, and should belong to writing." ”
Of course, there are also some scholars who deny that the pottery inscriptions in the Erlitou cultural sites are words, believing that they are just meaningless inscriptions, and the ancients carved them casually.
But the question is, if all of them are really meaningless inscriptions, then why are they repeated in different sites, and have the same or similar glyphs to later oracle bone inscriptions? In the picture below, the pottery inscription of the Luoyang soaphorn tree site belonging to the Erlitou culture is believed by scholars to be the word "car".
Another breakthrough has been made in research
We all know that there were oracle bone inscriptions in the Shang Dynasty, but what is less known is that there are also oracle bone inscriptions in a broad sense in the Erlitou cultural sites. In the Erlitou cultural sites such as Yanshi Erlitou, Mixian Huangzhai, Mianchi Zhengyao, Fangcheng Baliqiao, etc., archaeology has found some carvings of cattle, sheep and pig bones, a total of 5 pieces of no less than 9 characters.
The above-mentioned scholar Li Weiming pointed out: "The inscription is mostly two-character, and there are three characters. It is inherited from the Shang Dynasty oracle bone inscription in terms of material, burning, use of hieroglyphs, or the formation of epigram inscriptions from pictographs. Therefore, the nature of the bone inscription of the Erlitou culture belongs to the oracle bone script. ”
Among them, the Huangzhai ruins located in Xinmi, Zhengzhou, Henan Province, belong to the Erlitou cultural site, and a piece of divination bone with burning has been unearthed, and two micro-carved characters are engraved on it. Because the text is too small, it has been ignored for a long time, and it was discovered by the scholar Li Weiming a few years ago, and the details of the text are shown in the picture above.
Li Weiming's interpretation of this is: the upper part of the word on the left is a running animal, and the lower part is the two vertical of the inner figure, or the sharp pile in the pit, so it may be a trap for hunting; The upper part of the word on the right (see Figure 1 below) is the eye, and the lower part is again (that is, the right hand, there is this character in the oracle bone inscription), and the glyph after the subordination is shown in the second figure below, which can be subordinated to the word "Xia".
Regardless of whether Li Weiming's decipherment is accurate or not, it can be seen from the above picture that these are two ideographs composed of hieroglyphs, especially the upper and lower parts of the second character, which are the basic hieroglyphs in the oracle bone inscription, and are the radicals of many characters so far, the upper part of which has also appeared in the Jiahu site. Therefore, the inscription on this piece of bone at the Huangzhai site is undoubtedly the Xia Dynasty script, and the oracle bone inscription of later generations is inherited from the lineage.
It should be noted that, according to the current general view, the Xia capital before Erlitou was at the Xinmi Xinqi site in Zhengzhou, which is not far from the Huangzhai site, so the Huangzhai site is not an ordinary Erlitou cultural site, and it is very likely that it is a branch of the Xia Dynasty royal family. In fact, even if it is not a branch of the royal family, because of its proximity to Erlitou and its location in Wangji, the status of the Huangzhai site in the Xia Dynasty will not be low.
In short, if the Tao inscription is not a text, it may be arguable for one or two, but to say that the bones on the bones of the Huangzhai site are not the Xia Dynasty script, this may be a deliberate misinterpretation or inherent bias.
Finally, there are three other points worth mentioning about the topic of this article:
First of all, since there were already written characters in the Xia Dynasty, why were few oracle bone inscriptions unearthed in the Xia Dynasty? In fact, unlike the West, which is mature and peak when debuted, China often has an evolutionary process, and the Xia Dynasty's culture of carving words on bone blocks may have just started, and there must be corresponding technical conditions for carving words on bone blocks, and the Shang Dynasty reached the peak of oracle bone inscriptions after having these conditions.
Secondly, in addition to Tao inscriptions and oracle bone inscriptions, what other carriers did the Xia Dynasty write have? The Shang Dynasty oracle bone inscriptions indicate that the Shang Dynasty used simple scripts on a daily basis, and the oracle bone inscriptions belonged to contracts with ghosts and gods, which needed to be preserved for a long time, so they were engraved on the bones. The Xia Dynasty was the same, and it should also use simple scripts in daily life. Because of this, the history of the Xia Dynasty or earlier Five Emperors can be passed down.
Third, Chinese characters are different from Western alphabets, and Western scholars have made "misjudgments" that there was no writing in the Xia Dynasty, and even that there was no writing before the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty, which can actually be understood to some extent. But it is difficult to understand that some domestic scholars, in the face of the fact of the Xia Dynasty's writing, have always stubbornly insisted that "the Xia Dynasty has no writing", and even "the Xia Dynasty has no writing", and they really don't understand what to want!
Resources:
"Guangming Network - The History of the Dynasty Capital Hidden in One Word"
"China News Weekly - The Mystery of the Xia Dynasty May Be Here" and so on