preface:
Guizhou is a huge natural history museum
It holds the earliest life from the ocean to the mountains, from the earth
Countless forms of information into ancient relict species
Guizhou is a huge treasure trove of human "local knowledge"
Different historical stages by mountain land
People of different ethnic groups co-created it
Guizhou is a huge "cultural network"
It is made up of countless symbols and rituals
These symbols and rituals are cultural symbols of the Guizhou mountain people, the 'cultural bearers'
It is the symbolic manifestation of their worldview
They not only "show their own psychology to their own people from the perspective of their own people."
meantime
It also dominates, influences, and even determines the way these "natives" in the mountains think and behave
Symbols and rituals are timely and expressive
It is also instrumental
As one of the ways of social identity and social mobilization
For thousands of years they have strengthened mountain order and integrated mountain society
And thus created a civilization in the mountains.
Guizhou has a glorious geological history'
Let's start with a retrospective
Dance with the change of this land
Examine the origins of mountain civilization
Guizhou has a glorious history of address, let us start with a review of the dance of change that took place on this land, discussing the origins of mountain civilization, as Will Duran said at the beginning of the eleventh volume of the History of World Civilization: "Certain factors have formed civilization... The first is the address condition", the mountains of Guizhou are the material basis that constitutes the cultural system of Guizhou. Like the rest of the world, Guizhou has undergone a long history of address evolution. The mysterious forces of the universe have a masterpiece of earth-shaking evolution in this land and the behavior of human history, so that this area has been divided and given the name of "Guizhou". From then on, he began his distinctive cultural construction.
It seems appropriate to describe the natural history and civilization history of Guizhou in terms of the tides of the sea. This mountainous land, like the tides of the ocean, rises abruptly and then suddenly passes away. Again and again the tide, set off one wave after another, after the tide faded again and again, the mountain left a layer of historical imprints... Tidal natural and cultural evolution has left an incomparably rich legacy in Guizhou, and our narrative will also begin with the natural and historical archaeology of Guizhou.
The Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old, and humans only began to appear about 3 million years ago. In the long years before the emergence of mankind, there was only the rise and fall of the tide between heaven and earth, and the roar of the waves lapping on the shore.
The time of the earth conceiving Guizhou is very long and difficult, Guizhou and the giant mountain system and the areas on both sides of the east-west throughout the Asian continent, once a magnificent sea, in the "Tethys Ocean", Tetis, a goddess in Greek mythology, the daughter of the earth mother Caia and the god Uranos, the wife of the sea god Ogilos, she gave birth to a number of daughters, are beautiful female sea gods. The Austrian geologist Hughes named the ocean between the northern and southern hemispheres of ancient times the "Tethys Ocean". If this ocean is compared to the embodiment of Tethys, then the land of Guizhou that rises from it to land is like Thettis' daughter, a beautiful sea goddess who married far away to China. It is no wonder that this 170,000 square kilometers of land contains such a colorful and exquisite marine life fossil and marine strata of various eras, and the picturesque scenery is everywhere. Today, with the help of paleontologists and geologists, the imprints of life that lived in different geological epochs are unearthed one by one. This ancient spectacle of life is the dowry that Tethys gave to his daughter.
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Professor Wei Jiayong, a famous geologist in Guizhou, pointed out that the "Triassic" was a geological period between the extinction of the largest late Permian biological cluster in the history of the earth (250 million years ago) and the Jurassic period (20.3 billion years ago), which experienced difficult biological recovery, environmental upheaval and marine reptiles began to appear to become marine overlords, so it is also considered the era of marine reptiles.
Guizhou preserves an exceptionally rich paleontological remains of rare geology - paleontological relics of the late Permian → the beginning of the Jurassic, and has developed a spectacular and unique karst landscape, a transition zone of shallow sea deep-sea basins in the Triassic Period in the Area of Guiyang - Anshun - Guanling - Zhenfeng - Xingyi, which is 300 km long and 10 km wide - 30 km, lasting about 25 million years. The north is the distribution area of shallow sea limestone, and the south is the distribution area of sub-deep-sea sand and mudstone, and the topography and geomorphological characteristics of the two areas are very different, especially the transition zone between the two is the karst geomorphological core belt of Guizhou Province with cone-shaped peak forests, canyons, caves, stone forests and waterfalls as typical characteristics.
Geologists have described for us a historical picture of geological change, in the long process of development, the shallow sea area north of the above-mentioned transition zone has undergone 7 "vicissitudes and upheavals". The leading edge of the transition zone has become a coastal zone frequently looted by storms; the edge of the sub-deep-sea basin south of the transition zone has frequent geological disasters such as seabed collapse, landslides and mudslides; and the interior of the basin is gradually filled by a large amount of sediment brought by gusts of turbidity. In the early Triassic Period, there were a large number of seabed organisms "farming", foraging and inhabiting in the shallow sea transition zone, forming the world's earliest Triassic tube shell large barrier reef, and there were reptiles (dragons) on land and in the sea; in the early Late Triassic Period, marine reptiles, sea lilies and other organisms multiplied in large quantities, and ichthyosaurs became the dominant sea; in the middle and late Triassic Period, the sea water finally withdrew, and our province became a low-altitude alluvial plain with dense forests; in the early Jurassic Period, carnivorous dinosaurs appeared in swarms.
The fossils found in the strata of various eras in Guizhou include protozoa, sponges, coelenterates, demodex, brachiopods, mollusks, bryophytes, arthropods, echinoderms, plitodes, hemizoans, vertebrates, etc.; the plant kingdom includes fungal algae, ferns, gymnosperms, angiosperms, etc., covering all phyla in paleontological taxonomy, totaling more than 20 phyla, more than 200 families, more than 2000 genera and subgenera, more than 4000 species and subspecies, It is represented from low-grade algae to complex mammalian fossils and even human fossils.
Guizhou not only has a complete range of fossil categories and an extremely rich number, but also has a very wide distribution of its era and geographical distribution; in northern Qianbei and northeastern Qianbei. Cambrian, Ordovician, Andreuthic trilobites, penstones, brachiopod fossils can be found everywhere; in the Dushan region of Qiannan, devonian and limestone corals, strataporosum, brachiopod fossils are everywhere; lime and Permian corals in the Ziyun region. Brachiopod fossils are densely packed along the line; the double-shelled and chrysanthemum fossils of the Triassic series in Luodian, Wangmu, Chengheng and other places are even more overlapping and overlapping... In particular, some rare fossils at home and abroad are very rich in Guizhou, such as the fossils of the Lily of the First Sea, the fossils of marine reptiles, and the well-preserved fossils of sea lilies.
The long history of sea immersion has accumulated into a fossil group in some parts of Guizhou. The discovered are the Early Aurora Biota of the Urn An, the Small Shell Fauna of the Lower Cambrian Bottom Ge Zhongwu Formation or The Peach Chong Formation, the Lower Cow Hoof Pond Formation Biota, the Top Taijiang Biota, the Kaili Biota of the Early Middle Cambrian, the Henan Wubei Fauna of the Late Ordovician, the Early Chiliu Fenggang Kirwan Bundle Flora, the Late Devonian Utman Chrysanthemum Group, the Pie Ammonite Group of the Middle Permian, the Guizhou Dragon Fauna of the Upper Triassic Lower Triassic, and the Anlu Konglun Chau Fauna of the Upper Cretaceous Moutai Formation. These biota are an important part of the paleontological kingdom of Guizhou.
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After years of geological research, geologists have determined the "Greater Guizhou Beach": "Greater Guizhou Beach" is an isolated shallow sea limestone terrace in the towering and secondary sea basin. The late Permian - Triassic strata are very well exposed here, the record of the extinction of biological clusters at the end of the Permian is extremely clear, and immediately thereafter, the extremely single microbial (bacterial) deposition is the main object for studying the causes and consequences of the extinction of biological clusters, and is currently only found in a few places in the world. International academic circles believe that "Greater Guizhou Beach" is one of the most ideal areas in the world to study the extinction of biological clusters at the end of the Permian and the recovery of Triassic organisms.
The most prominent features of the Triassic geological relics in our province are: all kinds of geological relics related to the drastic changes in sea and land, a large number of repeated groups of supporting groups; the wide distribution of marine reptile fossils, the length of the duration, the abundance of the number of layers produced, the completeness of the types, the good preservation, and the symbiotic sea lilies - fish - the abundance of invertebrate fossils, which are extremely rare in the world.
In 1988, Professor Chen Junyuan of the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Taiwanese scholar Li Jiawei, and American scholar Xiao Shuhai reported in Science and Nature that "sponge animals" and their "animal embryos" fossils were found in the Wong'an biota in the Wong'an-Fuquan area, which caused a sensation in the international paleontological community. This fossil dates back 580 million years and is the oldest and most primitive animal fossil ever found.
According to Darwin's theory of evolution, the phenomenon of life should have a trajectory along the evolution and evolution from the lower to the higher. But this theory has encountered challenges in the geological history before and after the Cambrian: the Cambrian period is considered an important period of biological evolution, known as the era of the "explosion of life", and a variety of animal phyla appeared almost at the same time in this geological period. How did the diverse species of organisms come from? What caused the rapid diversification of Cambrian biological species? How did these species evolve before the Cambrian Period? The chain of biological evolution must provide convincing evidence through real and reliable paleontological information and a wealth of early fossils, which is a problem that evolution must solve. Paleontologists have conducted long, extensive searches around the world, but only sporadic specimens have been found.
With its large collection of biological fossils and huge abundance, the Yong'an paleobiota is a powerful proof of the oldest life form before the Ezoozoic, which is about 540 million years old, providing an important basis for studying the mystery of biological evolution before the "Cambrian life explosion", and also opening a breakthrough in solving a difficult point in Darwin's theory of the origin and evolution of life. Because Guizhou has preserved a lot of life information from ancient times, people call it "the earliest home of ancient organisms".
The goddess Tethys continued to perform miracles in Guizhou one by one.
Behind the green shade village of Dingxiao Town, Xingyi City, Southwest Qianxi Buyi and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, is a large area of sedimentary rock mountain. Locals used local materials, built pigsty, repaired toilets, built houses, and dug stone slabs from the mountains. When people move the stone slabs, they often find strange "patterns" like insects like scorpions and four-legged snakes. Once the houses are built, these things snake and crawl on the walls in various postures, becoming a special decoration on the stone buildings of the green shade village.
One day in 1957, paleontologist Hu Chengzhi came here. When he saw the fossils of these small animals that still maintained the various states of life movement on the walls of the farm pen, on the outer walls of the hall houses, and on the squats of the toilets, he suddenly realized that this would be a major discovery--they were marine reptile fossils that lived in the Triassic period, one geological era before the dinosaurs. Later, this precious paleontology was named after Mr. Hu's surname, known as "Hu's Guizhou Dragon". Guizhou dragon is the earliest discovery and research in China. The triassic aquatic (marine) reptile fossil, which was also the first discovery of primitive finosaurs in Asia, is of great significance to the study of the evolution and geographical distribution of vertebrates, especially aquatic reptiles. According to expert research, the Guizhou dragon fauna also includes dragons, fish, etc., which lived in the ocean during the Triassic period 230 million years ago.
The area around Xinpu Township in Guanling County, west of huangguoshu waterfall, is a typical karst area, with thin soil layers, serious soil erosion, difficult to cultivate, but there are inexhaustible stones, and local mountain people build houses, build Tikan, and build pig pens. Building toilets, building stone ladders... Stones are not used. On these stones, a lily-like pattern is attached, which the locals call "flower stones". When they repair houses and build houses and cut panel walls, they always like to pick one or two pieces as murals and hang them in a conspicuous position.
This lily-like thing turned out to be a fossil animal called sea lily, which belongs to the same category as sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and starfish that still live in the sea today - echinoderms. They began to grow in the Ordovician oceans about 500 million years ago, flourished in the Silurian period 440 million years ago, and reached their peak in the Limestone Age 350 million years ago. Sea lilies still live in the modern ocean, one type consists of a crown like a sea lily, a stem and root like a tree pole, they use the root to fix themselves on the seabed to live, the other has no stem, composed of a crown and a foot whisker, they can move on the seabed, even floating in the water, the big crown is particularly flexible, can slowly open and gradually close, in the middle of the zhang, the plankton is sucked in, through the food ditch into the mouth that grows in the center of the calyx, swallowing, becoming their own nutrition, the foot must be used to fix on the seabed, And you can move yourself on the bottom of the sea like the feet of a millipede. Ancient sea lilies were all stemmed and fixed to live on the seabed, but the sea lilies found in the Guanling fauna around Xinpu Township in Guanling County were different, but were fixed on driftwood and drifted with the driftwood.
There are also various dragons in the rock formations around Xinpu, including ichthyosaurs that resemble fish instead of fish, those that resemble turtles instead of turtles, and sea dragons that float in the depths of the seabed... Paleontologists gave them a resounding name: New Chinese Dragon, Zhou's Qianyu Dragon. Newly paved Chinese bean tooth dragon. Beautiful wayao dragon, Guanling mixed fish dragon, etc.; there are also many fish, ammonite. Tooth-shaped stones and small animals such as bivalves, brachiopods...
There is a huge "dragon" family buried in the rock formations of Guizhou, and the footprints of "Song Qingzhen Dragon", "Deng Sanqiao Dragon" and many unspecified species of dragons and dragons have been found in various parts of Guizhou. During the time of guttis oceans, Guizhou was the home of the "dragon".
In the great natural rituals from the sea to the mountains, Tethys created one miracle after another of life miracles. After that, it created one tragic drama after another of life and death. Between creation and destruction, leave behind pages of life in the history of the earth.
To be continued...