In the process of the formation of Chinese civilization, observing celestial phenomena is of great significance, and understanding the Big Dipper is the most important. The "Guanzi Huanliu Chapter" says it most clearly: "The east finger of the bucket handle, the whole world is spring; the south finger of the bucket handle, the world is summer; the west finger of the bucket handle, the world is autumn; the north finger of the bucket handle, the world is winter." "The ancestors can distinguish the southeast, southwest, and northwest through the Big Dipper stars, which plays a navigation role, and can also identify spring, summer, autumn and winter according to the point of the bucket handle, so as to guide farming and planting, and distinguishing between the southeast, southwest, and the northwest and spring, summer, autumn and winter is extremely critical for the ancient ancestors."
However, the number of Big Dipper stars that occupy such an important position in the history of the development of Chinese civilization has not been clear, and the literature generally records that it is composed of seven stars of "Tianshu, Tianxuan, Tianji, Tianquan, Yuheng, Kaiyang, and Yaoguang", but in the pre-Qin literature, it is said that "the Big Dipper nine stars, seven see (now) two hidden", so is the Big Dipper nine or seven? Evidence was found at the site of the double locust tree, one of the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2020".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" strange clay pots in the site 01, 5,000 years ago</h1> >
In 5300 years ago, there was an ancient kingdom of Liangzhu in southern Zhejiang, and an extremely brilliant ancient kingdom in the Central Plains. Located in Heluo Town, Gongyi City, Zhengzhou, Henan, south of the Yellow River, east of the Yiluo River, it can be described as the ruins of the double locust tree "in the world", which is a super large ancient city of 1.17 million square meters, which is called "the embryo of early Chinese civilization" and "the ancient country of Heluo" by experts and scholars, and even some scholars believe that "or subvert the central position of the Central Plains for the beginning of the Xia Dynasty".
In the central residential area of the "Heluo Ancient Country", a total of four rows of large housing sites were found, the largest of which was 220 square meters. In the porch in front of the largest house, archaeologists found nine strange clay pots, seven of which were large and two small. Above the nine clay pots is placed a complete skeleton of an elk heading south and facing the doorway. What is the significance of these nine clay pots placed in the porch by the ancient ancestors? Gu Wanfa, president of the Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, discovered the secret from the pattern of elk and nine clay pots, which turned out to be the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" recorded in the pre-Qin history books: "The owner of the house is like riding on an elk every day, declaring to the tribes and clans that he is the underground king who echoes the center of heaven." ”
In the eyes of the ancient ancestors, the elk was a magical animal, because most deer lost their horns in the summer, and the elk lost their horns at the winter solstice, so the elk was a very auspicious animal in ancient times. In the Ruins of The West Slope of Puyang, which dates back about 6500 years ago, there is a deer on the back of the tiger in the dragon and tiger pictured by mussel shells. What exactly the elk meant in the eyes of the ancient ancestors is a mystery to be solved, but it is extremely unusual for the elk to appear above the nine clay pots, right at the position of the North Star.
Coincidentally, more than 100 kilometers away from the site of the double locust tree, archaeologists have found that the Xingyang Qingtai site, more than 5,000 years ago, belongs to the ruins of a similar era, one of which is about 4,000 square meters of similar to the sacrifice square, and also found nine clay pots (see picture below), of which seven are large and two are small. Slightly different from the double locust tree site, there are no elk above the Big Dipper Nine Star Chart in the Qingtai site.
Later, through the demonstration of more than 30 astronomers, astronomical historians and archaeologists from domestic authoritative scientific research units, it was confirmed that the nine clay pots found at the Qingtai site were the Big Dipper Nine Stars, which was an ancient astronomical relic, of which seven larger clay pots formed the Big Dipper Seven Stars, plus two small clay pots formed the Big Dipper Nine Stars, and the nine clay pots in the Double Locust Tree Site were also the Big Dipper Nine Star Map.
What is the relationship between the Qingtai site and the double locust tree site has yet to be further studied, but the emergence of the Big Dipper Nine Star Chart not only confirms the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" recorded in the pre-Qin history books, but also shows that at least as early as 5300 years ago, Chinese had skillfully observed the "Big Dipper" celestial phenomenon and used the "Bucket Handle Timing" to guide agricultural production.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" >02: Scientific speculation on the change of the Big Dipper nine stars into seven stars</h1>
According to the literature, the Big Dipper Nine Stars are composed of the Seven Stars of the Big Dipper and the Left Auxiliary and Right Bow, which are the Wolf, the Giant Gate, the Lu Cun, the Wenqu, the Lianzhen, the Wuqu, the Broken Army, the Left Auxiliary and the Right Bow. The Huang Lao Jing records: "The eighth hole star (left auxiliary), then the soul of the auxiliary star Jingyang Mingye; the ninth hidden element star (right bow), then the soul of the bow star is ethereal." ”
However, in the literature after the Qin Dynasty, almost all the seven stars of the Big Dipper are recorded, and the Ganshi Star Sutra says: "The Big Dipper is called the Seven Governments, the Princes of Heaven, and also the Emperor Car." "The emperor sat on the seven stars of the Big Dipper to inspect the four directions, and set four hours, dividing the cold and heat. So far, when it comes to the Big Dipper, the Big Dipper is basic common sense, and no one will say the Big Dipper.
So, why did the Big Dipper become the Big Dipper? According to ancient legend, the left auxiliary and the right bow are uncertain, and everyone who sees the left auxiliary and the right bow is destined to be rich and noble, and often they are extraordinary people, which is undoubtedly a superstitious statement. Needham once pointed out in the "History of Chinese Science and Technology, Astronomical Volume", that there was a big dipper nine stars in ancient China, and due to the precession, the two stars (auxiliary stars and bow stars) of eight or nine stars (auxiliary stars and bow stars) were withdrawn from the star circle, which was the reason why the "Big Dipper nine stars" was changed to "seven stars". Nowadays, some scientific explanations are that these two stars are relatively dim and difficult to see with the naked eye, so there is a saying that there are seven appearances and two hiddens. Therefore, the ancients did not deny the Big Dipper, but they could hardly see the left auxiliary and the right bow (seven sees two hidden), so the nine stars turned into seven stars.
However, the question arises again, since the left auxiliary and right bows are dim and difficult to see, why can the ancestors of the double locust tree lay down the Big Dipper Nine Star Map, so that the ancient people's vision is comparable to today's astronomical telescopes. Scholars speculate that this may be related to the supernova explosion more than 5,000 years ago, and one of the stars that is no longer visible today may be Jingxing, that is, supernova. In the "River Map", it is recorded: "The Yellow Emperor ruled, and The Jingxing was seen in the Big Dipper. "The ancients named the supernova Jingxing, and during the Yellow Emperor period, there may have been Jingxing, which burst out of the shining light, shining like the Big Dipper stars, so the ancient ancestors mistakenly thought that it was one of the Big Dipper stars, because the supernova explosion ended quickly, so future generations could not observe it. Perhaps, the complete invisibility of this star caused a huge political storm at that time.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="7" >03: The history of the Ancestors' Exploration of the Big Dipper</h1>
The discovery of the astronomical relics of the Nine Stars of the Big Dipper not only shows that the worship of the "Big Dipper" more than 5300 years ago was one of the highest beliefs of the ancestors of the Yangshao culture, but also shows that the ancients' understanding of the Big Dipper stars at that time was relatively mature. The worship of the Beidou is not formed at once, and the cognition of the Beidou will not be achieved overnight, but will inevitably need to go through a long period of time accumulation.
In the 1980s, in the west slope of Puyang, Henan, archaeologists found the Yangshao cultural site more than 6500 years ago - Puyang West Water Slope Site, the most eye-catching of which is the dragon and tiger patterns stacked with mussel shells, "true dragon" was born to break the legend of the Yellow Emperor's fit dragon, but also China's earliest time, the largest size, the most realistic form of the dragon image, known by experts as "China's first dragon". Regarding the dragon and tiger images, the scholar Feng Shi made a surprising discovery, that is, the dragon and tiger images in the Xishuipo site are exactly the same as the meaning of the Green Dragon and White Tiger Star Chart of the Tomb Of Marquis Yi of Zeng in the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, and the two are about 4,000 years apart, which shows that the Chinese civilization is in the same vein is not a lie.
In addition to the dragon and tiger motif, there is also a major discovery in the Xishuipo site, that is, there is also the earliest Chinese "Big Dipper" (see the picture below): the mussel sculpture triangle at the foot of the tomb owner is due north, which is the Dou Kui (bucket spoon), and the two leg bones placed horizontally are the image of the bucket (bucket handle) mussel sculpture triangle and the two leg bones, which is the Beidou in the sky.
The four elephants in traditional Chinese astronomy (Eastern Canglong West White Tiger, Southern Suzaku And Northern Xuanwu), archaeologist Xia Nai calculated that there are only more than 2800 years of history, but after determining the Beidou in the Xishuipo site, the dragon and tiger in the site are not simple images, but represent the green dragon and white tiger in ancient astronomy. Therefore, the above picture is not so much a tomb map as an astronomical map, representing that the tomb owner is the underground king who echoes the center of the heavens.
That is to say, the Puyang Astronomical Map is not only the earliest astronomical map in China, but also the earliest astronomical map in the world, pushing the origin of the concept of the four elephants of Chinese astronomy to 6500 years ago.
More importantly, judging from the more mature astronomical maps in the Puyang Xishuipo site, this is by no means the beginning of the Chinese's understanding of the Big Dipper, and there must be a deep accumulation before this, as for the earlier source, further archaeological discoveries are needed.
In fact, there has always been a confusion in the study of ancient history: more than 10,000 years ago, Chinese had already planted rice, millet (millet), eight or nine thousand years ago has carried out large-scale agricultural production, but if you want to carry out large-scale agricultural production, the premise is that at least you need to master the rough calendar to determine the sowing time, so what calendar did the ancient ancestors use to guide agricultural production? Perhaps, at the same time as the development of farming, the ancient ancestors have accumulated astrological knowledge, and finally explored some mysteries of the Beidou and realized the "time of the bucket handle", thus supporting large-scale agricultural activities. That is to say, the time when the ancestors discovered the "bucket handle timing" is likely to be before large-scale agricultural activities, and the time of the ancient ancestors' cognition of the Beidou may be much earlier than we think, and it is far more than 6500 years.
Through the archaeological discovery of the Beidou remains, it can be seen that the Chinese civilization passed on the torch, by no means a foreign culture, 6500 years ago the ancients found "the stars in the sky to participate in the Big Dipper", 5300 years ago the ancients according to the stars at that time put out the "Big Dipper Nine Stars" to order the world, 2000 years ago the ancients will be the Big Dipper seven stars of various myths, today although do not rely on the Big Dipper stars to guide the way, but today people will sing "the stars in the sky to participate in the Big Dipper", while using the "Big Dipper" satellite navigation. In the cognition of the Big Dipper, ancient and modern are in the same vein, and history and today are intertwined.