Today is Lichun, the first of the 24 solar terms in the lunar calendar, and the year of Chinese has begun again.
No matter what difficulties are encountered, spring will come.
The 24 solar terms are the accumulation of long-term experience and wisdom of the ancient Chinese people, reflecting the reverence of the agrarian society for the time of heaven. In the past when the economy and technology were underdeveloped, the influence of the weather on human beings was enormous, and the cold and warm of the world were related to war and peace, and even the rise and fall of dynasties.
This is the relationship between the temperature change (lower curve) and the frequency of wars in the Central Plains from 850 AD to 1900 AD.
It can be intuitively seen in the figure that the period of high incidence of war and the cold period of climate are highly correlated. Among them, the three peaks with the highest frequency of wars correspond to the peasant uprisings at the end of the Yuan and the peasants' revolt at the end of the Ming Dynasty and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the Qing Dynasty, and the three major uprisings directly led to the collapse of the three huge empires of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
Although the factors of dynastic change are very complex, climate is undoubtedly an important external driving force.
A comprehensive description of China's climate change and the relationship between climate and social development is beyond the scope of this article, and this article only briefly discusses the climate history of Northeast China and the impact of climate on Northeast society.
The full text is a bit long and is divided into three parts for the convenience of casual reading. This article focuses on the paleoclimate of the northeast region, the middle part focuses on climate change and historical events in northeast China from 2000 years ago to the late Qing Dynasty, and the next part focuses on the climate change in northeast China in the past 100 years.
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The northeast is still wrapped in silver during the spring season, but some people may not know that there were very hot periods here a long time ago.
From 3.8 billion to 600 million years ago, it is geologically known as the Precambrian, including the Middle Ages and Proterozoic. At this time, the Earth did not have stable continents, and it was not until the late Proterozoic that a number of stable platforms appeared.
At that time, the northeast was roughly bounded by the present-day Kaiyuan, Liaoning- Jilin Huinan, to the south belonged to the North China Plateau, and to the north was the trough between the Siberian Terrace and the North China Terrace. This is supported by geological and archaeological evidence, and a large number of Precambrian coelenterate and worm fossils have been found in Jixi, Heilongjiang, indicating that this place was the ocean at that time; the medieval hematite layer found in Anshan, Liaoning Province, confirms that there was a violent geological activity and a high temperature environment here.
Geological rock formations
Paleogenologists believe that the location of the Equator of the Earth in the Early Paleozoic Era was very different from that of today, passing through the central and western Siberians, passing through western Canada, and moving south along the Pacific coast. That is to say, today's southern northeast and northern China were both near the equator at that time, which is a typical tropical climate type.
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From 400 million to 280 million years ago, that is, the geological "Devonian to Permian", the northeast and north rose to land, connected with the Siberian land, and the Asian continent was basically formed.
During this period, the climate of the Northeast was consistent with the world, and it was in a warm "interglacial period", and the temperature was much higher than now. Based on the study of paleontological data, scholars inferred that the average annual temperature in the south of Northeast China at that time could reach 25 °C, which was higher than that of hainan province today.
Due to the tectonic movement of Haixi in the northeast, the terrain height difference is large and far away from the ocean, and the climate gradually turns to the continental type, and the characteristics of alternating dry and wet are more prominent.
Geological periods ranging from 230 million to 0.7 billion years ago, known as the Mesozoic, include the famous Jurassic. A large number of mesozoic cycads, new reed wood and other plant fossils have been found in Jiutai, Hunchun, Wangqing, Heilongjiang and other places, indicating that it was a warm and humid environment at that time.
The suitable climate made the Northeast region flourish at this time, becoming a paradise for dinosaurs and other animals.
National Dinosaur Geopark in Jiayin County, Heilongjiang
Jiayin County is located on the banks of the Heilongjiang River
The Jurassic period is also an important coal-forming era in the northeast, and today most of the coalfields in the northeast, especially the coal mines in Heilongjiang, have found fossils of temperate plants such as ginkgo biloba, pine cypress and ferns, proving that the formation date of these large coal mines is the same period as that of dinosaurs.
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Geological periods dating from 0.7 billion years to the present are called Cenozoic, including the Tertiary and Quaternary Periods.
During the Tertiary period, the general trend of the northeast climate was from high temperature drying to gradual cooling. Despite the decline, the Tertiary was also more than a dozen degrees warmer than the current average temperature.
The suitable climate made the plants of the Tertiary Period highly developed, which was another coal-forming period in the northeast region, and the famous Fushun Coal Mine was formed in this period, and the humid and warm climate created a large subtropical forest in the southern part of the northeast.
In the late Tertiary to Quaternary periods, temperatures in the northeast began to drop, and subtropical, temperate plants moved south. Although there are also alternating cold, warm, dry and wet on smaller time scales, the general trend of cooling has not changed.
About 2 million years ago, large continental ice sheets appeared in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and temperatures dropped rapidly.
This long process, which lasted 2 million years, reshaped the ecosystem of the Northeast, roughly forming coniferous forests, grasslands, wetlands and broad-leaved forests distributed in the south.
Extrapolating from the pollen combinations and animal fossil groups in the geological sediments of this period, the coldest period occurred about 11,000 to 10,000 years ago, when the average temperature in the northeast was more than 10 degrees lower than now, and the temperature in the north was lower, which was the coldest time in the northeast so far.
A large number of fossils of mammoths, woolly rhinocerosses and other ice-edge animals from this period have been found near Harbin, which also provides strong evidence for this conclusion.
Mammoth fossils from the Heilongjiang Provincial Museum
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From about 10,000 years ago, the climate of the northeast began to warm, and from the perspective of large time scales, this warming process has continued until now.
Several alternating cold and warm in this general trend not only formed the natural ecological environment of today's northeast, but also profoundly affected the historical and cultural process of northeast China.
From 10,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago, especially 8,000 years ago to 5,500 years ago, this is a period of rapid heating, when the temperature in the Heilongjiang region is roughly the same as today's Shandong Peninsula, the southeast of the northeast is higher, the humid and warm climate makes the forests in the northeast develop rapidly, the vast forest sea is distributed in the northeast, the forest area is about 2 times the forest area in 1935, and today the Harbin area was densely forested at that time.
Under the suitable climate and precipitation conditions, the plants are very luxuriant, and a large number of dead branches and leaves continue to accumulate to form organic matter, and the black soil in the northeast appears during this period. According to soil determination, black soil in Liaoning was formed 7500 years ago, and black soil in Heilongjiang was formed 6500 years ago. At this point, the large forests and black soils that best represent the natural ecology of northeast China have basically taken shape.
Northeast Black Land
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The warm and pleasant environment and abundant products have also given birth to human civilization.
The early human civilization in Northeast China is well known as the Hongshan culture from Chifeng and Chaoyang.
The Hongshan culture is named after the first discovery in Chifeng Hongshan, and the cultural subject dates back more than 5,000 years and lasts for about one or two thousand years.
The totem of the Red Mountain culture is jade pig dragon
In fact, there is an earlier civilization site, which may not be very famous, but it is very important, which is the Xiaonanshan ruins located in Raohe City, Heilongjiang.
Xiaonanshan archaeological site
The mainstream view is that the Xiaonanshan culture dates back about 9,000 years. Researcher Liu Guoxiang of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has done a long-term study of the exquisite jade excavated at the site, and believes that the earliest of these jades should be 7500 years old.
At the same time, he pointed out that the Xiaonanshan culture is a local culture produced locally, and there are no external influencing factors. Scholars' views vary, but the Xiaonanshan site does occupy an extremely important place in the archaeological history of Northeast China.
Part of the jade artifacts unearthed from Xiaonanshan
In ancient times, when technology was extremely underdeveloped, it was very difficult to process jade. The Rao River is located at the easternmost tip of China, thousands of kilometers away from the Hongshan ruins, but these two ancient civilizations invariably have a fanatical worship of jade, which is difficult to explain by coincidence. It is boldly speculated that there is some kind of inheritance or fusion between Xiaonanshan and Hongshan, and when the climate or other living conditions are not suitable, ancient humans may have migrated over long distances.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > concluding remarks:</h1>
For a long time, the northeast land has experienced the vicissitudes of Songhai. Dinosaurs foraged by the blazing sun on the edge of the Heilongjiang River; woolly rhinos braved the wind and snow to run on the banks of the Songhua River.
The warmth and humidity of the past created the fertile wilderness and the mangy forest sea, and also nurtured the childhood of mankind, and the emergence of civilization in this land became one of the sources of Chinese civilization.
All this is due to heaven.