Does the historical legendary Emperor Yao really exist?
Where did he live thousands of years ago?
What is the purpose of the huge stone pillar?
How did the ancient pottery temple people build and use it?
The capital of Di Yao
——Documentary excavations of the Tao Temple site
Chinese archaeology has gone through a hundred years, from scratch, from small to large, from weak to strong, from domestic to international, with comprehensive coverage of sea, land and air, and multidisciplinary progressing hand in hand.
Chinese archaeology has gone through a hundred years, from the Paleolithic age to the Neolithic Age, from the origin of rice chestnut to the agricultural revolution, from the settlement to the ancient country, from the Xia Shang Zhou Dynasty Project to the Chinese Civilization Exploration Project.
Chinese archaeology has gone through a hundred years, and we know more and more clearly where the Chinese nation came from and when the dawn of civilization will rise.
From the Central Plains to the frontier, from the continent to the ocean, up and down millions of years, across tens of thousands of miles, the hard work of generations of archaeologists, let us more clearly than any generation in history Chinese: Who are we? Where do we come from?
In 1921, the Swedish archaeologist Anderson organized a team to excavate the village of Yangshao in Shichi County, Henan Province, and soon a large number of exquisite faience pottery buried in the ground reappeared. This archaeological excavation in Yangshao Village has also become the beginning of modern Chinese archaeology, unveiling the prelude to a century of Chinese archaeology.
In 2001, led by the Research Center for Ancient Civilization of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Chinese Civilization Exploration Project was officially launched, with the purpose of revealing the origin and development of the Chinese nation's five-thousand-year civilization.
More than 5,000 years of continuous civilization history have created a broad and profound Chinese culture. From 5100 to 4500 years ago, the "Liangzhu Ancient Kingdom" that arose in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River is spectacular. As a representative of this region's entry into civilized society, we have seen the grand liangzhu ancient city.
In the Yellow River Basin, the ruins of the Tao Temple in southern Jinnan became the largest city site in the basin during the same period. The remaining road soil on the base site of the palace and the doorway silently conveys to people the footprints of the ancestors who lived in it. In The Sacred Wood of Shaanxi Province, thousands of miles away, the ruins of Shi'an built on a high mountain are magnificent. The tall imperial city platform tells the world about the authority and glory of the king in those years.
In 2021, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Chinese archaeology. In this special year, the column group of "Cultural Grand View Garden", which has been paying attention to Chinese archaeology, walked into the ruins of Tao Temple, one of the origins of Chinese civilization. According to the excavated artifacts, the upper age limit of the Tao Temple is 4300 years ago, which is very close to the Yao Shunyu era of ancient legends.
So, will this be the capital of one of the sages?
On a mound 20 kilometers from the city of Linfen in Shanxi Province, members of the Shanxi team from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences are constantly busy. Gao Jiangtao, deputy captain of the Shanxi team and leader of the archaeological team of the Tao Temple site, is observing every subtle discovery. In this small area under their feet, they have been working for more than three years.
The archaeologists gently pulled away the loess layer, revealing a white hardened ground, which Gao Jiangtao speculated was decorated with lime. The area where the ground is located is a single building relic of the palace with an area of more than 540 square meters. Will this be the palace of any king?
Wang Luxiang: This is the entrance to that great hall?
Gao Jiangtao: Yes, this is a large hall with more than 540 square meters.
Wang Luxiang: The circles drawn now are all pillar holes?
Gao Jiangtao: Yes, this pillar pit and pillar hole that remains.
Wang Luxiang: So this building should still face south?
Gao Jiangtao: Facing south.
Wang Luxiang: This place seems to have traces of fire?
Gao Jiangtao: Now we are in a lot of this pillar hole, that is, this hole in the pillar, of course, the pillar is gone, but there is a lot of this ash soil in the pillar hole, burning dirt blocks and other things, is this pillar burned? There is such a possibility.
Wang Luxiang: That is to say, a large wooden pillar was erected in this place, but now in the place where this pillar is erected, it can be clearly seen that there are burned, and even traces of charcoal. That is to say, this trace is the remnant of the burning of the palace pillar.
Gao Jiangtao: Very likely.
Wang Luxiang: Very likely, there will be a story.
Gao Jiangtao: As for why it was burned and how it was burned, it may be related to the abandonment of the palace. There are also some scholars who think that maybe this temple is no longer used, this pillar is taken away, and then this pillar pit is baked with dirt and other things, which is also a kind of statement, but I think it is also very reasonable for you to speculate on this.
Wang Luxiang: Yes, I would rather believe that this is the trace left after it is burned, that is, I don't know what kind of incident occurred at that time, right?
Gao Jiangtao: Yes, and some of the soil around this temple also sees such burnt soil traces.
Wheat is being harvested in the Jinnan region in June, and local farmers are busy in their fields. People living nearby are almost unknown, and the mound not far from them has made amazing discoveries. Because archaeologists have been stationed here for many years, the villagers have become accustomed to the presence of these people.
How the Tao temple people of thousands of years ago worked here is now unimaginable. But in the palace area of the site, some traces related to food crops can still help people outline the scene of life in that year.
Seeing these latest discoveries, while marveling at the wisdom of the ancients, the question arises: Who built these houses and lived here? Where have the people living here gone?
This area that is being excavated is known as the site of a tao temple because it is located in Linfen's TaoSi Township, and has been discovered as early as the 1950s, and it has been more than 40 years since the official excavations to this day.
Wang Luxiang: The archaeological site of Tao Temple can be said to be very famous in the archaeological circles in China and even in the world, because it is an important site for the source exploration project of Chinese civilization. So, when did the archaeological work on the Tao Temple site begin?
Gao Jiangtao: If we want to start from the discovery, it is 1958, and the real excavation, that is, our scientific sense of excavation, began in 1978. A large number of cemeteries were excavated, and then it caused a sensation in the entire archaeological community, including the historical community, of course.
The end of the 1970s was an important stage in the spurt of the development of Chinese archaeology, and many excavation projects that had been interrupted for many years were frequently reported. The excavation of the Tao Temple site also has good news. After cleaning up a medium-sized tomb, a batch of painted pottery was found, and even unprecedented artifacts, lacquered woodware, were unearthed. Subsequently, jade and stone tools were also constantly discovered.
Wang Luxiang: So now from the perspective of archaeological excavations, it seems that among the excavated cultural relics, many of them can be attributed to yes, as far as the liturgical music system has been established, right? You have found a lot of musical instruments, and you have also found a lot of ceremonial instruments, especially some jade tools, many of which are ceremonial instruments.
Gao Jiangtao: We have also been thinking about this question, let's say that what are the important qualities or characteristics or characteristics of Chinese civilization? I think one of the important things is that we say that we are a ceremonial civilization, we are a state of etiquette, a state of etiquette that often hangs on our lips, we are a ceremonial society, which is an important feature of our thousands of years, an important feature of our Chinese nation, we also found this place of Tao Temple, of course, after so many years of research, especially the study of its early tombs, we gradually found that this Tao Temple culture or this society at that time, This ritual rule, or the ritual rule society or the ritual music civilization, has been initially formed in this place. For example, it has appeared a lot of ceremonial vessels, there are this faience ceremonial vessel, there are jade ceremonial vessels, and these musical instruments, which can be called ceremonial vessels, and even do not rule out the appearance at that time, because the Tao Temple has now appeared seven bronze vessels, and it is a container that clearly shows copper. Bronze may also have become a ceremonial vessel.
Wang Luxiang: You say for example, that brass bell.
Gao Jiangtao: Brass bell.
Wang Luxiang: And that one is like a gear pattern.
Gao Jiangtao: Gear-shaped device. In fact, the appearance of ceremonial instruments is not yet, we dare not say that it has entered a society of etiquette, but we can see that it has a kind of regulation, that is, for this hierarchical order, etiquette is actually a regulation for an order, it has appeared regulation.
In the late 1970s, the Shanxi team of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences found two remains of residential sites and cemeteries in succession within the site of Linfen Tao Temple in Shanxi, and soon there were archaeological discoveries that shocked the world. More than 1300 tombs have been cleaned up, especially the size of several large tombs, which are fully comparable to some of the large tombs of the princely rank in later historical periods.
Gao Jiangtao: Inside this tomb, there are musical instruments that we just mentioned, the musical instruments are mainly these three categories, one is the shrew drum, the long strip drum, the shrew drum is the shrew of the dragon, the drum of the crocodile Pimon, the drum of the shrew, and the other is this stone chime, which is the chime we have today, and this chime that was formed later.
Wang Luxiang: The bigger one is called the special chime, right?
Gao Jiangtao: Special chi, that is, a special chi, relatively large this kind. Another earth drum, or pottery drum, is pottery. The order in which these five tombs were buried must have preceded and followed, but the number of these three things is fixed, that is, a pair of drums, two drums, a pair, it appears in pairs, a pair of drums and then a stone drum with an earth drum. The second is that the combination is fixed, and these three combinations are combined and fixed.
Fixed quantity Combination fixed
There is also its position, which is fixed in the tomb.
Wang Luxiang: Where is the body of the owner of the tomb?
Gao Jiangtao: This upper right side of the body.
Wang Luxiang: Upper right side.
Gao Jiangtao: The upper right side is a little higher.
Wang Luxiang: A little higher, here.
Gao Jiangtao: Its placement is fixed, which is obviously the first regulation, and the sense of ceremony, it is the appearance of the ceremonial system.
Wang Luxiang: It is what level of treatment to enjoy.
This is the instrument shrew drum found in the tomb. Ancient texts record that this instrument was created by the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, the Dragon, from the skin of the Yangtze crocodile. In the face of these astonishing discoveries, scholars have made associations, arguing that the Tao Temple site is not an ordinary settlement, it may have become a mature country.
There are more than one king-level tomb, and words have been found on pottery, coupled with the appearance of ceremonial instruments and musical instruments, which proves that the tao temple society has entered the stage of civilization. With the ruins of Wangchenggang and Erlitou cultural sites in Henan, which were basically identified by the archaeological community as the capital of Yudu and the early Xia Dynasty, more and more experts believe that the ruins of Tao Temple are the capital city where the ancestor of humanities, Emperor Yao, lived.
Gao Jiangtao: This 43-year archaeological excavation and research, of course, including other research, including the historical field and even this folklore, in terms of research in all aspects, more and more let us feel that the Tao Temple site may really be yao's capital, of course, it is not a piece of evidence, it is a chain of evidence, it is a lot of evidence.
Wang Luxiang: Such a conclusion has been formed.
Gao Jiangtao: Of course, we can't say that this hundred percent is Yaodu.
Wang Luxiang: Because after all, the written evidence is not very sufficient, right?
Gao Jiangtao: It has a lot of evidence that we think should be evidence that has not appeared, as far as what you said is no text, it is Yaodu, but this matter, whether it is archaeology or any discipline, if you want to prove one thing or confirm that one thing is not, it is impossible to reach one hundred percent, especially archaeology, because after all, what we excavated was left to us by the ancients and left behind. Although this chain is not perfect or complete, it does tell us that at least this place is probably Yaodu, we can only say so, but in comparison, these other places related to this Yao or the literature have relatively little evidence.
In June 1985, the first excavation of the Tao Temple site ended, although the harvest was very rich, but more questions were still temporarily buried in this land of more than 2 million square meters, with the later excavation of the Tao Temple site, more amazing discoveries continued to appear, and the original appearance of the Tao Temple site became clearer.
Editors: Wang Zhu, Wang Erya