In the Cangzhou Museum in Hebei Province, there is an ordinary and magical cultural relic. It is said to be ordinary because it is a pottery horse, and its body shape and appearance are no different from ordinary horses, and it is said to be magical precisely because the pottery horse has a horn on its head! What exactly is it? What's going on with this horn on the head? If you want to know, let Xiaobian reveal the secret for you:
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In May 1988, an intense construction operation was underway in the north of Liu Fatzhuang Village, Yaozhuangzi, a suburb of Cangzhou City. While the bulldozer was busy, the driver suddenly found that there was an obstacle in front of him, so he immediately got out of the car to check the situation.
After careful identification, the driver found that the obstacle in front of him was a stone semicircular object, and hurriedly informed the foreman. The foreman came to check it out, and felt that things were not as simple as he thought, so he dialed the telephone of the Archaeological Research Institute.
After receiving the call, the leader of the Archaeological Research Institute immediately set up a team of experts to conduct a careful investigation. After investigation by experts, it was determined that there was indeed an ancient tomb of the Western Jin Dynasty here, and the semicircular stone found by the bulldozer was the top of the tomb chamber. There are not many funerary items in the tomb, only a bronze mirror and a few pieces of pottery, including a pottery town tomb beast, the unicorn.
The pottery horse has a saddle on its back, in a standing position, no different from ordinary horses, except that it has an extra horn on its head and a ball-shaped ornament on its mouth. After the experts invited him to the museum, they began an exploratory study of the unique shape of the unicorn, what is this strange "horse horn"?
In foreign myths and legends, there is a legend of the long horn of the heavenly god horse, but the Legend of Europe and the horse of China are not next to each other, and they are not mentioned.
To uncover the answers to the question, experts still need to look for clues from the development of ancient Chinese horses. The emergence of war horses can be described as an inevitable product of historical development. China has always been a big farming country, attaching importance to cultivating cattle, and attaching little importance to horses. However, the nomadic people outside the Cyprus have always lived on horseback, and they often ride south on horseback to invade the Central Plains, which has caused headaches for the rulers of the Central Plains.
In order to deal with these cavalry that came and went like the wind, the Central Plains regime also began to carry out targeted horse warfare. As early as the Three Kingdoms period, the cavalry developed rapidly in the north and became a war force that could not be ignored. With the popularity of cavalry, the army's breeding of warhorses has also begun to develop by leaps and bounds, and by the two Jin Dynasties, cavalry has reached the point of "armor and armor", that is, people wearing armor and horse armor.
In order to better protect their "comrades-in-arms", the cavalry also deliberately invented many kinds of defensive equipment for warhorses. The horse's head was protected by a "curtain" that exposed only the horse's eyes and ears and nose. The horse's neck is also a weak part, which needs to be protected by a "chicken neck", the horse's chest and abdomen, respectively, have "when the chest" and "horse armor" protection, while the horse's tail is protected by "rear".
From this point of view, the ancients' protective measures for warhorses can be described as the ultimate. On the tomb murals of king Guangling in the Han Dynasty, there was once a "war horse wearing armor", in which the war horse was wearing armor and seemed to be fighting side by side with the rider.
It is worth noting that in the position of the horse's head in the mural, a horn actually grows. After the experts were surprised to find this clue, they quickly compared it with the one-horned pottery horse excavated from the tomb of Liu Fatzhuang in the Western Jin Dynasty, and finally found a reasonable explanation for the long horn of the pottery horse.
Experts believe that although the pottery horse excavated from the tomb of the Western Jin Dynasty is realistic, it is intended to show the charm of the horse, while the details of the pottery horse are somewhat sloppy and frivolous, so many details on the tao horse are not deliberately displayed.
So many details that could not be expressed included the armor of the war horse, in other words, the taoma seemed to be naked and only wore a pair of saddles, but the taoma should be fully armed.
It is precisely because the pottery horse is draped all over the body that the forehead part of the horse also has a "face curtain", and the so-called "horn" and the "ball" on the mouth are installed on the "face curtain". As for the role of the "long horn", experts believe that its decoration is greater than practicality, and it should be specially designed to deter the enemy.
A small tomb, a seemingly ordinary pottery horse, but unveiled the mystery of the war harness of a thousand years ago, and it is really a legend. At the same time, we should also pay tribute to the archaeologists, and it is precisely under their efforts that the mysteries of history have been gradually unveiled, and the brilliant Chinese civilization has been truly displayed in front of us.
Wen xiucai, editor-in-chief of Wenlan Hairun Studio, written by: Special history writer: Changshan Zhao Zi worm