According to the literature, after the Shang Tang extinguished the Xia, it immediately returned to Bodu to establish the Shang Dynasty. From Shang Tang to Zhongding, the ten kings of the Shang Dynasty all had their capital in Bo, but during the Zhongding period, Bodu suffered from the river duels, and Zhongding was forced to move from Boxi to Kuidi (present-day Xingze County, Zhengzhou), and Zhongding's son Hejia moved the capital to Xiangdi, and the Shang Dynasty entered the "Rebellion of the Ninth Dynasty" and kept moving the capital, until Pan Geng moved to Yin (Anyang, Henan) and finally stabilized for more than 270 years.
Where the capital is located, ancient and modern scholars have different opinions, Pei Xiao's "History and Interpretation" of the Southern Dynasty song dynasty says that "Liang GuoguShu (southwest of Yucheng County, Shangqiu, Henan) is the southern Bo, that is, Tang Duye", and The Tang Dynasty Zhang Shoujie's "History of Justice" says "Bo, (Luoyang) Yanshicheng also." Shangqiu, Songzhou also. Tang was on the throne, Dunan Bo (ShangQiu), and later (some think it refers to The Descendant pan geng of Shang Tang) migrated to The Western Tang (Luoyang Yanshi)", and the Eastern Han Dynasty Bangu "Book of Han" says "Yanshi, corpse township, Yin Tang Sodu". Through the description of the capital city of Shangtang in the history books, it can be basically known that the Shang tribe rose in Shangqiu, and the shangtang should have been Shangqiu at the beginning, but after the Shangtang, there was a relocation of the capital, and as for where it was moved, it has become a mystery for eternity.
In ancient times, there was no archaeology, and only the texts passed down from generation to generation could be used to speculate on where the final capital of Shang Tang was, and the emergence of modern archaeology allowed people to find first-hand materials through archaeology. In 1951, a large early Shang Dynasty site, the Erligang Cultural Site, was discovered in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, and through the excavated cultural relics and oracle bones, the truth of the Shangtang capital was finally revealed fifty years later, which also confirmed that the Erlitou site was xia ruins.
Erligang cultural sites, including Zhengzhou Shangcheng ruins, Luoyang Yanshi Shangcheng ruins, Zhengzhou Xiaoshuangqiao ruins (about 20 kilometers northwest suburbs of Zhengzhou), Hubei Panlongcheng ruins, of which the Erligang ruins and Zhengzhou Shangcheng ruins are connected, because the Erligang ruins were first discovered, and then the Zhengzhou Shangcheng ruins were discovered, so this type of culture was named "Erligang Culture".
Through the "rammed earth layer" of the Erligang site, people were surprised to find that the rammed earth layer of Erligang was connected with the rammed earth in the western city wall of the old city of Zhengzhou, forming a huge approximately rectangular city wall, that is, the ruins of Zhengzhou Shangcheng, with a total area of about 3 million square meters. There are many major discoveries in the ruins of Zhengzhou Shangcheng, among which more than 20 palace sites have been found, accounting for half of the total area of the city as a whole, and the most distinctive palace ruins, with an east-west length of 65 meters and a width of 13.6 meters from north to south, is a "four heavy houses" with a cloister, which is very similar to the building of "nine rooms inside, nine guests living in it; nine rooms outside, and nine divisions in the North".
At the same time, on the upper floor of the Ruins of the Shang Dynasty in Zhengzhou, there are sites from the Warring States Period, and the words "BoQiu" (i.e. Bo Ruins) with the words "BoQiu" (亳丘) in the Warring States pottery texts have been unearthed. The "Zuo Biography" records that in the eleventh year of the Xianggong, the State of Lu united with more than ten princely states such as the State of Jin to attack the State of Zheng, and finally "allied with the north of Bocheng".
The size of the Shang Dynasty ruins in Zhengzhou and the situation of the palace show that this must be a royal capital, and the question is whose royal capital is it? The Zuo Chuan record and the Warring States Tao Wen show that in the eyes of people during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period, this should be the capital of Shangtang, but is it necessarily correct for people to understand the capital of Shangtang during the Spring and Autumn Warring States period? Some scholars have proposed that this is not the capital of Shang Tang, but the capital of Zhongding. Obviously, the judgment of Zhengzhou Mall still lacks key evidence.
In 1953, at the Erligang site in Zhengzhou, archaeologists excavated two glyphs of characters that were momentarily inscribed. One of the bull ribs (see picture below) is striking, with "fourteen carved places, with smaller inscriptions and slightly coarser inscriptions", showing the characteristics of the original inscription, which is believed to be the earliest oracle bone inscription found.
The so-called one piece of oracle bone shocked the world, and the Erligang site unearthed the oracle bone, which made people full of expectations and had every reason to believe that this would be the burial place of another batch of oracle bones. Unfortunately, no oracle bones were found later, and the Erligang site was exciting and disappointing. What is worse is that for the text on this piece of beef ribs, the famous scholar Chen Mengjia believes that it is "Xi carving", a total of 10 characters, that is, "also mouth (unrecognized characters) sheep, Yi Ugly Zhen, and Fu, July", the era may belong to the Anyang Yin Ruins period, does not contain any special historical information. The so-called "practice carving", as the name suggests, is a work of practice. Due to the high status of Chen Mengjia's jianghu, it almost became a foregone conclusion at that time, and this piece of oracle bone was slowly forgotten in the corner.
With the deepening of the archaeology of the Erligang culture, no cultural remains of the Anyang Yin Ruins period have been found, but belong to the sites of the early and middle Shang Dynasties. Scholars have timed the major sites of the Shang Dynasty found, from the absolute chronology point of view, the Erligang site appeared the earliest, dating back to about 3620 years ago, followed by the Zhengzhou Shangcheng site, the Xiaoshuangqiao site appeared at the time of the decline of Zhengzhou Shangcheng, and finally the Anyang Yin Ruins. As an oracle bone in the early Shang Dynasty, this piece of beef ribs, even if it is a "customary carving", has extraordinary significance, so some scholars began to re-study it.
In 2003, Li Weiming, a research librarian at the National Museum of China, suddenly found that when studying this piece of beef ribs, it should be 11 characters on the bone piece, instead of the 10 words usually thought before, and the correct interpretation should be "You Tu Sheep, Yi Ugly Zhen, and Fu, July", the biggest difference from other interpretations is to recognize a "乇" character.
There is "and milli soil" in the oracle bones of Yin Ruins, so it is judged that "and qi tu" is "and qi tu"; the tao and jin texts of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, "乇", "House", and "亳", were once used as place names, so "乇" is the early Shang Dynasty writing method of "乇", which means that Bu asked whether it was possible to sacrifice sheep in Bo.
The large-scale city and the high-specification palace complex were in the middle and early period of the Shang Dynasty, and the word "乇" was produced, and it was considered to be "milli" by the Spring and Autumn Warring States. All kinds of clues come together to confirm that the Erligang site, Zhengzhou Shangcheng, is the capital of Shangtang, and the ten kings of the early Shang Dynasty are fixed here.
Whether the Erlitou site is a summer ruin has always been a great controversy, but from a geographical point of view, shangtang was built in the zhengzhou shangcheng ruins, which can prove to a certain extent that the erlitou site is a summer ruins.
First of all, look at the location of Shangqiu, Erligang ruins, Yanshi Erlitou ruins (see above), Shangqiu to Erligang - Zhengzhou Shangcheng is about 210 kilometers, to Yanshi Erlitou about 310 kilometers, Zhengzhou Shangcheng to Yanshi Erlitou is about 100 kilometers. There is also an important place- QiXian County, where the history books record that after the Shang Tang destroyed xia, the descendants of the Xia people were moved here, and after the king of Zhou Wu destroyed the Shang, the descendants of the Xia people, Donglou Gong continued to be sealed in Qidi.
After understanding the location of these places, we can further understand the historical situation at the time of the change of Summer and Shang. Shangqiu is very far from Erlitou, Shangtang or in order to prepare for the extinction of Xia moved the capital to the site of Erligang, closer to the Xia capital Erlitou, or after the destruction of Xia, to guard against the remnants of the Xia people, the Chinese Zhou Yu Shang records that the priest of the father said, "In the past, I was the first king and the queen to serve Yu and Xia." And the decline of Xia, abandoning Ji and not doing business, my first king did not use his official, but sneaked between Rong Di", the Zhou people fled to the northwest, sima Qian recorded that the Xia people fled to the north, the northwest of Shanxi, which made Shang Tang have to focus on defense. Even better, shang tang placed the descendants of the Xia people in the state of Qi, located between the Shangqiu and Erligang ruins, in the absolute encirclement of the Shang Dynasty, even if the rebellion is difficult to succeed. That is to say, the conclusion that the Erlitou site is a Xia Ruins is more in line with the geospatial logic of the relationship between Xia and Shang.
Professor Liu Xu of Peking University commented on the discovery of the word "乇": "Such an important piece of Oracle material actually omitted a keyword, and an omission is 50 years." "The literati speak more subtly, and the voice outside the words is self-evident, which is undoubtedly a mistake in archaeological research, which reminds me of another thing."
The "Golden Seal of the King seal of guangling in the Eastern Han Dynasty" is an important cultural relic that confirms the authenticity of the "Golden Seal of the King of Han Weinu" unearthed in Japan, but this cultural relic is a major archaeological mistake. In 1980, the Nanjing Museum conducted an archaeological excavation of the Han Tomb No. 2 in Hanjiang, Yangzhou, and because the tomb was stolen and filled with broken bricks, miscellaneous soil and ceramic tiles, archaeologists cleaned it up. The next year, when the local road was being built, the villager Tao Xiuhua accidentally found a shiny thing when he was picking soil on the side of the road, and the golden seal of the King seal of the Eastern Han Dynasty Guangling Really reappeared in the sky.
It can be seen that whether it is the history of the discovery of the characters on the ribs of the cattle at the Erligang site, or the loss and recovery of the golden seal of the King of Guangling in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it shows that archaeological research activities cannot miss every detail, and sometimes the historical truth is inadvertent, as we often say that "details determine success or failure".
References: "A History of the Dynastic Capital Hidden in One Word" and so on