Azerbaijan drop hammer scene
The world ushered in the first "Hangzhou Liangzhu Day" to light up "watching" for Liangzhu
The sound of the mallet falling is still in your ears.
A year ago, on July 6, the world heard a real hammer.
On July 6, 2019, Beijing time, Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, at the 43rd World Heritage Conference, the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City were successfully included in the World Heritage List, and Liangzhu is a holy place that empirically proves the history of Chinese civilization for 5,000 years and has been widely recognized by the world.
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of its promotion to the World Heritage Site, and the first "Hangzhou Liangzhu Day" – every year on July 6, we celebrate the 5,000-year-old's birthday.
At 5,000 years old, it is really old, and at 5,000 years old, it will never be old – it injects a deep cultural gene into the city, and it is closely linked to our contemporary life and breathes new vitality.
This year, the children's textbooks have one more page - Liangzhu . In the newly opened national unified compilation of "Chinese History" (seventh grade volume), the new identity of the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City occupies a whole page. The new invention of water conservancy of the Liangzhu people was written into the exercises of "High School Mathematics".
This year, Hangzhou has an extra world-class cultural gold business card. Liangzhu has become a vivid window for China to show its long history and multiculturalism to the world. One of the mascots of the Hangzhou Asian Games, "Chun Chun", made his debut in the C position.
This year, your weekend list has one more "must punch" Internet celebrity landmark: Liangzhu Ancient City Ruins Park. Hangzhou citizens can swim freely, battery car, walking, cycling, independent choice. Special lectures, Daoxiang Festival, Entrance Ceremony, Garden Party, Study Activities, almost every week you can find Liangzhu cultural activities suitable for yourself and your family.
This year, we have one more time machine that can travel through 5,000 years on our doorstep. You can finally ascend to the king's palace area and feel the king's breath. Only then did you realize that the river of 5,000 years ago is still flowing. 5,000 years, just around the corner.
Ruins of Little Mojiao Mountain
In this year, the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City made their first public appearance as a world heritage, and the largest special exhibition of Liangzhu jade in history was held in the Forbidden City. After the change, the Liangzhu Museum has received more than one million viewers and more than 400,000 people watched a live broadcast.
This year, about the discovery of new archaeological discoveries, even if it is only the identification of a stone, the discovery of a group of jade workshops 18 kilometers away from the ancient city... Every hidden corner is enough to arouse people's curiosity.
This year, more people have entered this kingdom 5,000 years ago through reading. "Liangzhu Civilization Series", "Five Thousand Years of Liangzhu Kingdom", "Liangzhu Jade Line Painting", "Liangzhu Pottery World"... The Liangzhu reading materials written by front-line archaeologists, many people have "read" and "are watching" in Douban. By the way, tomorrow there is also a new book "Seeing 5000 Years - Chronicles of the Liangzhu Kingdom" will also be officially released.
This year, because of the "special case" of the liangzhu ancient city site, it provided empirical evidence for the Western world to better understand China and understand China from a historical perspective, and also had a far-reaching significance and long-term impact on the development process of human civilization.
This minute, this second, the Liangzhu civilization, which has no written historical records, is so truly "living" around us, able to touch and dialogue. 5,000 years ago, the construction of Liangzhu Ancient City was a dynamic development from the inside to the outside, from spirit to material. 5,000 years later, the continuous emergence of new materials and discoveries has prompted us to continuously improve and revise our understanding of this kingdom, archaeology, research, protection, management, monitoring, always on the road.
What has liangzhu brought to us and to this city? It always surprises us.
Liangzhu culture jade three major pieces: 琮, 璧, 钺
After the successful application, at the end of 2019, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially approved the major project of "Archaeological China - From Songze to Liangzhu: Research on the Regional Civilization Model of the Lower Yangtze River (2020-2025)", and at the same time, the "Fifth Phase of the Chinese Civilization Exploration Project (2019-2022)" was also officially launched. The ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City are an important part of these two national-level projects.
Although the ancient city has now become a Liangzhu Ancient City Ruins Park, the archaeological investigation, exploration and excavation of Liangzhu Ancient City are still continuing, which is a living heritage park, not a static vase.
Previously, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology had almost figured out the basic functional structure of Liangzhu Ancient City, but we wanted to get closer to the spiritual world of the Liangzhu people, wanted to see how society developed 5,000 years ago, how the rise and fall of a kingdom and city evolved in this millennium, and how generations of kings went through...
There are more and more unsolved mysteries, more and more detailed, from last year's successful application for heritage, the new archaeological work has become more and more refined, step by step, approaching the truth.
Punch point: outside the ancient city
Handmade "studios" are popular
5,000 years ago, when the sun was good, on both sides of the Zhongjiagang River in the ancient city of Liangzhu, the handmade market began, and various studios set up small stalls, wood, lacquerware, jade, boneware...
Previous excavations have revealed the secrets of the river, and it turns out that the eastern part of the city is dotted with a large number of handicraft workshops, hundreds of workers gathered, and the Liangzhu people have mastered a variety of high-end handicraft skills.
The people in the city are doing handicrafts, so what kind of work do the Liangzhu people outside the city do?
In the second half of last year, archaeologists carried out trench excavations and test excavations in a number of terraces in the outer city, and also found the remains of the same handicraft production activities. This shows that outside the core area of Liangzhu Ancient City, there are generally started industrial workshop areas, and there are especially many "studios" of jade and stone tools, which have not been found before. Moreover, many "studios" only make one product, such as stone hammer (arrow), stone hammer, the division of labor is very clear, and the technical division of labor has been quite fine.
The workshops found so far are all in the late Liangzhu period, and it is possible that by the late Liangzhu period, handicraft production has increasingly become an important foundation of Liangzhu civilization. So where do the raw materials for these workshops come from? Production mode, organizational model, and product "logistics" are the next key research objects.
We also know that the people in the city do not grow rice, but there are large granaries in the city. Where does such a huge reserve of rice come from?
Obviously, this should be provided by the residents of the suburbs of the ancient city and the residents outside the Liangzhu ruins group. Every day, they rowed bamboo rafts and delivered food to the townspeople. Then, there must be a system similar to tribute.
We can further speculate that the commodity trade and exchange of the Liangzhu people is very frequent. Economic archaeology related to agriculture, handicrafts and trade will be a new academic growth point for the study of Liangzhu Ancient City in the future.
Layout of the core area of Liangzhu Ancient City
Punch point: Heritage Park
The secret of the Land City Gate
Liangzhu Ancient City is a water city. A total of 8 water gates connecting the inner and outer rivers of the city have been found on the city wall, two on each side, and the most unique thing is that a land gate has been found in the middle of the southern city wall.
We now go to Liangzhu Ruins Park to play, and the first stop is Lucheng Gate. In the second half of last year, after the archaeology team did a long exploration ditch excavation of the Lucheng Gate, it was found that no, after the north-south direction through the door, there was water in front and behind, and there was no trestle bridge, and the Liangzhu people had to flow through the water every day. This only land city gate did not serve as a north-south land passage connecting the inside and outside of the city. Could it be that there is another meaning?
There are also three piers at the Gate of Lucheng. Why three? Thinking about it again, on the palace area of Mojiao Mountain, there are three big Mojiao Mountain, small Mojiao Mountain, and Turtle Mountain. In the concept of the Liangzhu people, is there a special meaning?
There is another strange thing. On the edge of the southern city wall, no abandoned accumulation of life before the late Liangzhu culture was found, while the other 8 water gates found relatively thick living waste accumulations, indicating that there have been people living here for a long time. That is to say, the Lucheng Gate has not been used for nearly four or five hundred years, and there is almost no human activity.
Perhaps, this gate is not practical for everyday purposes, but is likely to be used alone for ritual purposes. Ceremonial buildings are generally built on the south side, such as the Noon Gate of the Forbidden City, which is just south.
Further south of the Lucheng Gate, is the Great View Mountain, with a triangular silhouette, which is very recognizable. If the Liangzhu people stand at the Lucheng Gate and gaze directly south, the pointed triangular spire just floats on the city gate.
Such a special landscape. Will Daguan Mountain be the sacred mountain of the Liangzhu people?
Punch point: 3,000 square kilometers
150 new sites have been discovered
In addition to the bustling "Liangzhu CBD" ancient city site area, within the 100 square kilometers of the Liangzhu urban system (still in Liangzhu and bottle kilns), there are also a vast suburb with an area of more than 40 square kilometers, which we call the suburbs.
In recent years, archaeologists have conducted large-scale full-coverage exploration of the suburbs and discovered more sites. The latest exploration results at present speculate that there were 20,000 to 30,000 people living in the suburbs at that time. Exploration of suburban settlements is largely complete by 2025. At that time, we will have a new understanding of how the Liangzhu people living in the suburbs live in the living areas, cemeteries, and rivers, urban and rural structure, economic production, and the ruling mode of the Liangzhu King.
And the outskirts. Previously, it was about the 1,000-square-kilometer Hangzhou C-shaped basin. For example, the Maoshan site, the largest Liangzhu culture rice field has been found, which may be the state farm of the Liangzhu Kingdom. Now, the scope of the suburbs has expanded, including 2,000 to 3,000 square kilometers of Deqing, Lin'an, Fuyang, and Xiaoshan. The latest archaeological discovery is that 18 kilometers away from the ancient city, in the middle of the Qing Dynasty, there is a large-scale jade-making workshop group in the Liangzhu culture period.
By the end of last year, in addition to the Liangzhu ruins group, nearly 150 liangzhu cultural sites had been newly discovered in the suburbs.
On this year's Heritage Day, in the archaeological excavation area of liangzhu ancient city site, Chen Minghui, director of the Liangzhu workstation, stood in the archaeological excavation party and told us what archaeology is.
Punch point: Northwest side of the ancient city
Look for stones, jade mines, find DNA
Liangzhu people made stone tools, where did the stones come from, what kinds, this is geological archaeology.
Last year, researchers re-identified the 1,000 square kilometers of stone tools in the Liangzhu site group, including the Liangzhu cultural stone tools in the Provincial Archaeological Institute, the Liangzhu Museum, and the Yuhang Museum, and then surveyed the rock resources in the surrounding 800 square kilometers to 900 square kilometers, and drew a rock distribution map. It turned out that there were many major stones that had to be collected in fixed places far away.
For example, the stone made by the Liangzhu people has to use a striped siliceous rock, which is only produced in the Nanyuanxi River Basin, or a little further south of the Watershed River Basin, after finding it, first beat the blank, and then transport it back, before starting the finishing processing, the operation chain is very long.
The traceability of Liangzhu jade has also made great progress. For so many years, where the jade mine was, I never knew.
When the researchers were investigating the stone source, they found some clues, and collected tremolite samples on the northwest side of the ancient city of Liangzhu. The best jade material in Liangzhu, the first in the ranking, is tremolite nephrite. We are familiar with the king of Qi, the king of Qi, delicate, dense, is made of it, the color of white flowers, the standard color is called yellow white, which is what we commonly call chicken bone white. At that time, they were supposed to be bluish yellow and transparent, which was the mainstream color of the high-grade burial jade in the high-grade cemeteries at that time.
Punch point: Heaven into the earth
Build a Liangzhu Zoo
In addition to continuous field archaeology, Liangzhu's high-tech archaeology has actually been carried out silently for many years, from remote sensing satellites to molecular biology, multidisciplinary intersection, almost all the scientific and technological archaeological means that can be used, are used.
On the basis of traditional archaeology, scientific and technological archaeology can help us restore the life of the ancients in more detail.
The Provincial Archaeological Institute is establishing a Zhejiang region-based Yangtze River Delta remote sensing resource library. At present, all the keyhole guards in Zhejiang have been collected, and the early aerial film data of the 1940s to 1970s in Zhejiang Province has been basically collected.
What's the use? The researchers specially processed these satellite films and aerial films and made them into stereoscopic images and placed them in mobile phones and pads. Later, the archaeologists went out to do site investigation, for example, although it is a residential area in front of them, but the mobile phone checks one by one, and immediately knows what the landform of different ages in this place looks like, which is equivalent to bringing a "virtual digital sand table" - put on red and blue glasses, you can see the three-dimensional image, and it is very convenient to find the site.
There's also a lot of DNA that people are interested in. The Provincial Institute of Archaeology and the PaleoDNA Laboratory of the Institute of Paleovertebrates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have carried out sampling and research on human ancient DNA in the Songze-Liangzhu period in Zhejiang. In the past, ancient human DNA in the southern region was difficult to extract, but the latest news is that for the first time, dna from two individuals has been successfully extracted in the Liangzhu site. In the future, we can know whether there is a "genetic" relationship between Liangzhu people and current people, including the dynamics of migration and the source flow of the population, and we can get some answers.
For example, what are the zoos in Liangzhu? Through the analysis of the remaining animal bones, the remains of animals of 44 species have been found, and we have come to see the river seafood feast that the Liangzhu people may have eaten: field snails, square ring snails, pear-shaped ring snails, oysters; mussels alone, there are sail mussels, domed bead mussels, Chinese pointed clams, twisted mussels, fish tail wedge mussels, spear mussels, dorsal tumor clams; river clams, clams, clams, hair cockles; fish species are still eaten by people today, sharks, carp, green fish, grass carp, catfish, catfish, mullet, yellow jawfish (wang thorn fish), blackfish (blackfish). Of course, they are also indispensable in the zoo, including yellow-spotted giant turtles, Chinese grass turtles, ring-necked pheasants, geese, wild ducks, cranes, eagles, red-faced monkeys, rats, dogs, tigers, otters, wild boars, domestic pigs, chamois, roe deer, sambar deer, sika deer, elk, holy buffalo, Asian elephants.
(Originally titled "Light up for Liangzhu "Looking" Tomorrow, the world will usher in the first "Hangzhou Liangzhu Day") "What was found in the year of applying for heritage, what was found The excavation of archaeologists has not stopped Our Liangzhu is not a static vase" Original author Ma Li.) Edited by Zhang Zhongwen)