With the advancement of archaeology, more and more historical truths are gradually emerging, and there are even some that can "rewrite" history, especially for the archaeology of the distant Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties.
With the rise of modern archaeology in the past hundred years, many oracle bone inscriptions of divination and sacrifice of Shang kings have been discovered, which have revealed the existence of "human sacrifice".
The inevitability of the emergence of "human sacrifice".
At the beginning of the Xia Dynasty, this dynasty was not very interested in expanding outward, but at that time, due to their extremely limited understanding of natural science, people attributed a lot of things that could not be explained by experience to ghosts and gods, and the so-called sacrifices were the bridge of connection and communication in their minds.
There was a sacrifice in the Xia Dynasty, the phenomenon of "human sacrifice" was relatively rare, only the Erlitou archaeological area found this kind of phenomenon, and most of the other places were to use animals as a sacrifice tribute, and pigs were the most used.
The Shang Dynasty people were first merchants who did business, and these people traveled from south to north, dealing with different cultural tribes, and learning more about the outside world.
By chance, the clansmen who helped King Xia smelt bronze had contact with the Shang people, and after a long time, the merchants did not recognize the model of King Xia sitting on his laurels, so they overthrew the Xia Dynasty under the alliance.
The innate genes of doing business have led to their motivation for external expansion, with productivity developing, population increasing, and the speed of external expansion becoming faster and faster.
Whenever the war continued to a place, the generals of the Shang Dynasty would have a lot of prisoners, and under the ideology of the time, the people of other tribes who were subjugated were not enough to be called people, and it was completely "spoils of war", and in order to distinguish between "subjects" and "captives", "human sacrifice" gradually came into being.
For those things that cannot be explained empirically, the Shang Dynasty also believed that there were gods who were haunted, so they adopted the method of "human sacrifice" to "comfort the gods", so this behavior became a historical necessity.
Originally, human sacrifice was performed by killing captives, but as the Shang Dynasty expanded and the number of slaves increased, it became a regular ritual in which they sought the blessing of the heavens.
This is a typical idea of witchcraft, in divination, building foundations, ancestor sacrifices, sacrifices to heaven and earth, before the start of war, etc., the Shang Dynasty authorities believed that only through the ritual of killing, the soul and vitality of "human animals" dedicated to the gods or indescribable natural forces, can obtain real benefits and help.
At this time, there was another phenomenon that appeared in the Shang Dynasty: ethnic integration.
In the process of national integration, the advantages and disadvantages can be quickly realized, and the first question to be answered by those in power is: who is a friend and who is an enemy.
As a result, the dynasty gradually formed a religious culture to maintain self-identity under this concept, and the most convenient way to adopt "human sacrifice" was to pay tribute to non-Shang people.
In the thinking of the Shang people, everything in the world is determined by ghosts and gods, and the belief can also be inherited from later generations.
With the archaeological excavation and research of oracle bone inscriptions, more and more Shang concepts have also been discovered.
The Shang kings usually used oracle bone inscriptions to tell their fortunes, and later they even thought that even sleeping nightmares might be related to a certain god: could it be that they did not have a good relationship with a certain god?
Therefore, in order to improve the relationship with the gods, the king of Shang would divinate again to see how to sacrifice to the gods.
After Wu Ding's wife passed away, he used oracle bone inscription for divination, and he kept asking oracle bones for a message: Is the woman good to marry?
Through divination, he finally learned that the woman had married her father.
In the concept of Shang kings, everything in daily life is related to the arrangement of the heavens, and everything is controlled by the gods, but they prefer that the so-called gods are the dead Shang kings.
And the woman's death, in Wu Ding's eyes, was because a certain generation of Shang kings in the past fell in love with her and took her life.
In order to see how the woman ended up, Wu Ding learned through divination that the person who was good for the woman in the picture was Father B.
During the Shang Dynasty, there was a saying: The major affairs of the country are enshrined in Rong.
At that time, the dynasties were all produced after the strength of the tribe grew, so everyone would not understand the so-called dynastic order at all, and the implementation was still the same as the tribe: fighting wars and sacrifices.
The fighting between tribes was bloody, and there was no concept of multi-ethnic integration, and the best way to avoid the oppression of another tribe was to slaughter another tribe, so the killing at that time was very bloody and brutal.
After Pangeng moved to Yin, the "human sacrifice" also changed and turned to a new political center.
"Human sacrifice" has gradually become a religious form, and various tribes are learning the same, archaeology has also found that Shanxi, Hubei, Shaanxi and other places have had the phenomenon of "human sacrifice", these places are also under the rule of merchants.
The victims of human sacrifice are tragic, and few people die without suffering.
"Human Festival" Brutality
Some of the oracle bone inscriptions that have been explored discuss the specific number of "human sacrifices", and it can be verified that 13,000 people died from "human sacrifices", and the number was the largest during the period of King Wuding of Shang, reaching a staggering 9,000.
The more common ones are buried alive, burned, drowned, beheaded, etc., and in the era of the tyrant king, there were more cannon burners and pots.
The specific process of the so-called pot is recorded in the "Romance of the Gods".
One day, the king of the Xuan was drinking with Daji in Lutai, and the concubines of the six palaces were waiting under the deer platform, and the king ordered them all to take off their clothes and sing and dance, and only the king and Daji were laughing and laughing on the stage, but there were 72 people who were unwilling to be naked, and did not take off their clothes, hiding their faces and crying in the crowd.
Those people were also the palace maids beside the late Empress Jiang, and the king had long heard that these people were dissatisfied with killing Empress Jiang, and even wanted to find an opportunity to murder him.
When he looked closely, the 72 people really did not listen to the order, and it seemed that the rumors were basically true, so the king ordered them to be severely punished and killed as an example.
But the reason why King Su is the King of Zhou is because the way he tortures people is different from other people.
In the end, he ordered the craftsmen to dig a large pit in the ground with a radius of hundreds of steps, the depth of the pit was about 5 zhang, and threw snakes, scorpions, bees, and the like into the pit, and then threw all the 72 palace maids into it.
The palace maids could not climb up in the pit, and all kinds of wild beasts around them would also bite them, and for a time the wails under the pit were endless, and all the palace maids died under the torture.
One of the more famous punishments of the king is called the punishment of cannon branding.
According to the "Historical Records", there was a time when the king and Daji were playing in the woods, and it was the time of the showers, and a tree was struck by lightning and burst into flames.
Many of the ants on the tree could not stand the heat, so they fell from the trunk and happened to enter the fire.
On a whim, Daji thought that this method could also be used to torture the living, so there was the existence of cannon burning.
The king was responsible for the design and control of the torture equipment, and he asked the craftsmen to make the torture tools make the prisoners die slower and have more ornamental value, otherwise they would lose their meaning.
After the cannon is done, there are two main ways to torture the prisoners.
One is to let the prisoners walk barefoot over the red-hot copper pillars, unable to dodge in advance and retreat, and unable to survive or die.
The second is to tie the prisoners directly to a copper pillar and heat and burn them until they die, which is also extremely cruel.
Historically, Mei Bo was a very upright person, and when he saw that the king was lascivious all day long, he risked death several times to admonish him, and many ministers of the same dynasty also comforted: "You will be killed by the king sooner or later." ”
But Maeber retorted on the spot: "If everyone doesn't dare to speak out, then wouldn't we ministers be useless?" ”
At that time, Maeber was not only burned to death, but his body was also chopped into meat sauce by the king of Zhou, because of this incident, Maeber was also immortalized because of his loyalty and unyielding.
These two methods of torture unique to the reign of the Emperor were also used for "human sacrifice", which is enough to see the despair of the victims.
In fact, in addition to "human sacrifice", there was also a "human martyrdom" in the Shang Dynasty.
There is a difference between the fact that most of the victims of "human sacrifice" are converted slaves from prisoners of war, while the victims of "human martyrdom" are the wives and concubines and slaves of the deceased.
A few hundred meters to the east of the Yindu Palace, there is a merchant gathering area of the year.
In 1959, archaeologists discovered a very strange tomb, which was completely different from the normal Shang Dynasty tombs, because the inside of the tomb was a well-like pit, and there were no coffins in the pit, only 25 bodies were messily placed together.
The incident also alarmed Guo Moruo, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who speculated that "the owner of the tomb may have committed a crime during his lifetime and could not enjoy the normal burial rites, and in addition to the tomb owner, 24 slaves were martyred." ”
As archaeology progressed, the matter took a new turn.
During the second arrangement, the archaeologists found that the first excavation did not really go to the end, and there were still 29 bones in the second layer below.
In the third excavation in 1977, it was found that there was another layer below the second layer of bones, and the number of bones in the third layer was 73.
Combined with this information, archaeologists have roughly deduced that this is not a burial pit, but a sacrificial pit.
The bodies and heads were not face-up, and there were various indications that the killing was carried out outside the pit and then the dead were thrown into the pit.
There is also a person at the bottom of the pit who is responsible for adjusting the position of the body, so that the face cannot be facing upwards.
After the first round of killings, the organizers of the ceremony sprinkled some cinnabar into the pit, leaving traces of cinnabar on the bones, followed by filling in the earth.
After the filling, the second round of killings began, and among the remains of the second layer, archaeologists were able to clearly distinguish that there were five more children.
When it was done, the organizer sprinkled some cinnabar and covered it with a layer of small pebbles.
The third round of killings begins, and the process is similar to the previous one, with the deceased dying in different ways.
After all the killings are over, the last thing is the landfill project, and some bronzes are also put into the pit, combined with the steps of placing the corpses, sprinkling cinnabar, and breaking the pottery, which is enough to show that each step has a sense of ritual and a corresponding process.
Moreover, judging from the relics of the victims, many people carried goods and shells, which were also their own "burial goods", and this level of affluence was not considered slaves.
The richest of the dead carried an ivory stick and bronze ritual and weapons, but the murderers turned a blind eye to them, indicating that it was only the royal power that contributed to this: because in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, even the high-ranking nobles did not have the power to kill the lower nobles.
According to historical records such as the "Historical Records", the king of Zhou once executed the nine marquis, the marquis of E, the prince of Bigan and other merchant nobles, because in the eyes of the king of Shang, offering more "high" sacrifices to the gods was the worship of the gods.
This is how the aristocrats who make mistakes end up like this, not to mention the lowly slaves.
The phenomenon of "human sacrifice" was also spread in the subsequent Zhou Dynasty, and it was not significantly reduced until the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
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