Heavy news came from the two sessions, and Sanxingdui once again found six sacrificial pits!
Academician Wang Wei, deputy to the National People's Congress and director of the History Department of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, introduced during this year's two sessions that the Sanxingdui site in Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, reported that six more sacrifice pits were found in the 1980s next to two sacrificial pits that unearthed large bronze figures and other exquisite cultural relics. The news was published on the China Social Science Network, entitled "Wang Wei, Deputy to the National People's Congress: Archaeology Integrates into Public Life, And Thick and Thin to Meet the Future."
Aerial view of sanxingdui ruins (Source: Sanxingdui Museum)
In 1986, two sacrificial pits at the Sanxingdui site were discovered, and the number and grade of cultural relics unearthed at that time were extremely amazing, and many of them filled the gap in archaeological discoveries in China and even the world, and indisputably became the largest in China or the world. For example, the world's earliest and tallest bronze god tree excavated from Pit No. 2 has a remnant of 396 centimeters. In 2002, the bronze was selected into the first batch of cultural relics in China that are prohibited from going abroad (border) for exhibition.
Sanxingdui No.1 Bronze Sacred Tree (Sanxingdui Museum Collection)
For another example, the golden staff unearthed from Sanxingdui is engraved with an extremely exquisite mermaid-bird combination pattern, and its residue is 142 centimeters long, which is the earliest golden staff found in the world's archaeology.
Sanxingdui golden staff and its ornaments (Sanxingdui Museum collection)
For another example, the bronze Da Li figure found in Sanxingdui is a human proportion height, weighing more than 180 kilograms, which is the world's largest and most complete bronze Da Li portrait, known as the "King of the World Bronze Statue".
Sanxingdui Bronze Da li figure (Sanxingdui Museum collection)
In addition, Sanxingdui has also unearthed the world's smallest bronze standing figure, China's largest jade zhang, the unique bronze altar, the longitudinal portrait of the world, the bronze dragon shaped vessel that is most godlike to the image of the Chinese dragon, the rare bronze shrine fragments, the mysterious bronze sun wheel, the exquisite gold mask bronze human head and a large number of heavyweight cultural relics, which are really dazzling and dizzying.
Sanxingdui Bronze Altar (Sanxingdui Museum Collection)
According to the dating results of the Carbon 14Thronic Laboratory of Peking University, the two sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui are dated about 1250 BC. During this period, the north was in the reign of The Shang King Wuding. According to the historical chronology of the first five emperors and the last three generations given in the "Records of History", in the past we often associated Sanxingdui with the ancient Shu kingdom. However, it is worth noting that there are a lot of contradictions between this chronological framework of the "Records of History" and the pre-Qin literature. Let's look at a few examples.
First, pre-Qin literature such as Mozi and Chinese often juxtaposed "Yu, Xia, Shang, and Zhou", and historians such as Professor Yang Xiangkui believe that there was a Yu Dynasty in Chinese history. Obviously, such a record is inconsistent with the system of the Chronicle of History.
Sanxingdui Dayuzhang (sanxingdui no. 2 pit excavation)
Second, according to the "Chinese Zhou Yuxia" record, from Houji to King Wen is fifteen generations, calculated by 25 years per generation, then fifteen generations are 370 years. According to the "Bamboo Book Chronicle", the Wu King Keshang was 1027 BC, which shows that Hou Ji lived around 1400 BC. Hou Ji and Dayu were contemporaneous figures, and the Xia Dynasty chronology deduced by the Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty Project according to the "Shi Ji" system began in 2070 BC, which obviously contradicted the historical system of the "Shi Ji" again.
Third, according to the Records of Mencius Teng Wen gongxia and Xunzi Confucian, Fei Lian was a minister of the Shang Dynasty. However, the record of "Mozi Cultivating Pillar" shows that Fei Lian and Xia Houqi were at the same time, which is also unexplained by the historical system of the "Historical Record".
Sanxingdui Longitudinal Portrait (Sanxingdui Museum Collection)
Fourth, The Qinghua Jian "Chu Ju" records that the ancestor of the Chu people, Ji Lian, took Pan Geng's granddaughter Yu Falcon as his wife, and his grandson was Yu Xiong. Mr. Li Xueqin pointed out that according to king Wu of Chu in "Chu Shijia", the bear is the teacher of King Wen, which is appropriate from the times. However, according to the historical system of the "Shi Ji", the Ji Lian era can not be later than the time of Yu Xia, which once again shows that there are problems in the chronological system of the "Shi Ji".
Fifth, the Departure from Sorrow and the Chu Ci Nine Chapters of Huaisha often place Yu after the soup, and Liu Xin of the Han Dynasty called the Classic of Mountains and Seas the book of the Yu Yi era, and the Classic of Mountains and Seas recorded the matter of becoming a tang and a summer. From this, it can be seen that Liu Xin did not think that Cheng Tang lived after Dayu, which is another place of contradiction with the "History" system.
Sanxingdui Dragon Pillar (Sanxingdui Museum Collection)
Sixth, tianwen's narrative sequence of a large number of historical events is different from that of "Historia". For example, "Heavenly Question" says: "Tang Mou Yi Brigade, why is it thick?" What is the way to take the boat? The first two sentences here are talking about the merchant ancestor Chengtang, but the last two sentences are talking about the Shaoxingguo of the Xia Dynasty, indicating that the historical chronology known to Qu Yuan is also different from the chronological context of Sima Qian's "Records of History".
Seventh, the "Bamboo Book Chronicle" cited in The "Zuo Chuan Hou Preface" and the "Book of Jin" volume 51 both state that the chronicle began in the Xia Dynasty, but the "History of the Wei Shijia" collection of explanations and quotations and Words of Yu said that the "Bamboo Book Chronicle" began with the Yellow Emperor. This shows that the Summer of the Bamboo Book Chronicle begins with the Yellow Emperor, which is obviously different from the beginning of the "Records of History" with Dayu as the Beginning.
Eighth, the Bamboo Book Chronicle also says that the Xia Dynasty accumulated more than the Yin Dynasty. However, the Bamboo Book Chronicle also says that the year from Yu to Jie is 471 and from Tang to Yu is 496, which once again shows that the summer of the Bamboo Book Chronicle did not begin with Dayu.
Fragments of Sanxingdui Shrine (Sanxingdui Museum Collection)
Ninth, according to the "History" Of History, the Xia and Shang Dynasties were destroyed by Chengtang, and the Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasty Project set the year of Chengtang Kexia as 1600 BC. However, Prince Jin of the Chinese Zhou Yuxia said: "Although there is a decline in Xia, Qi and Qi are still there." Although this statement "declined", it is not said that "although it died", it can be seen that in the Spring and Autumn Period, there was still summer, but it did not perish, which is again the place where the historical system of the "Historical Record" is difficult to explain.
Tenth, the "Book of Yue Extinction" records that the Yue people were the first kings of the Dayu period, and there were more than a thousand years between WuYu and Gou Jian. The old title of the Book of Yue Zhi was written by Zi Gong or Wu Zixu, and Yu Jiaxi's Dialectic of the Outline of the Four Libraries affirms that the book is the book of the Warring States Soldiers. Gou Jian lived in the late Spring and Autumn Period, which dates back more than a thousand years, about the fifteenth century BC, and it is obvious that the records of the Book of Yue Jie are also contradictory to the historical chronology of the Records of History.
Bronze head with gold mask (collection of Sanxingdui Museum)
Eleventh, according to Sima Qian's self-account, the historical system of the first five emperors and the last three generations of the "Records of History" is derived from the "Five Emperors" and "Imperial System" compiled by Confucianism. The Five Emperors here refer to the Yellow Emperor, Emperor Huan, Zhao, Yao, and Shun. However, according to the study of Sima Zhen, a commentator in the Records of History, Kong Anguo's Preface to the Book of Shang, Emperor Fumian's Century of Emperors, and Sun's Commentary on the Shiben all regard the Yellow Emperor as one of the Three Emperors, not as one of the Five Emperors. In addition, the Twelve Ages of Lü's Spring and Autumn, the Li ji And Yue Ling, the Huainan Zi Shi Ze Xun, and the Astronomical Training all regard the Five Emperors as the five emperors of Taihao, Yandi, Huangdi, Shaohao, and Zhao, and Zheng Xuan, the great Confucian of the Eastern Han Dynasty, who commented on the Zhonghou, the Yellow Emperor, Shao hao, Zhao, Yao, and Shun, which shows that the system of five emperors recorded in the Records of history was not universally recognized by pre-Qin scholars or even Han dynasty scholars.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that it is doubtful whether the relative historical chronological framework of the "Records of History" from the Five Emperors to the Xia and Shang Dynasties is actually questionable. In the process of studying the history of the pre-Qin Dynasty, the author put forward a series of views such as the three sections of xia, the two sections of shang, and the parallel of xia and shang and zhou, and on the basis of these views, a new set of historical chronological framework was initially formed. According to this new historical framework, the author regards Sanxingdui as one of the three paragraphs of the Xia Dynasty.
Sanxingdui bronze bird statue (Sanxingdui Museum collection)
We know that in ancient Chinese legends, the Shushan clan, who was married to the Yellow Emperor, lived in the Sichuan region, and the legendary Five Emperors were also born in Shudi, and the ancestor of the Xia Dynasty, Dayu, was also born in Shudi. At the same time, the bronze sacred tree unearthed at Sanxingdui has allowed some scholars to associate the sacred tree with the sacred tree recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, and the "Muzheng" inscription unearthed near Sanxingdui has also made the Houzhu Restoration Event recorded in the "Zuo Zhuan" loom.
If the idea that the Xia and Shang dynasties once existed side by side can be established, then we have reason to believe that the ancient Chinese legends of the Shushan clan, the Huan Dynasty, the Dayu and the Xia Dynasty are closely related to Sanxingdui. The two sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui that were previously discovered have shocked the world, so what national treasures will be unearthed from the next six sacrificial pits? We'll see.
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