✎ “No site can have the elements and symbols of the origin of civilization like the Taosi site.” As one of the three key sites in the Chinese civilization exploration project, the Taosi site is a must-pass place to study Chinese history and ancient culture and perceive the spiritual connotation of the Chinese nation.
▲Taosi Site
On July 21, 2022, the academic seminar on “Tiantian and Weidi, Shining the Four Directions – Taosi Model of the Origin of Chinese Civilization” sponsored by the Shanxi Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics and the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was held in Taiyuan, Shanxi.
This meeting was to explore the Taosi ruins, the first city site in the Central Plains region to enter the primary stage of civilization, and to showcase its fruitful archaeological achievements, such as: an unprecedented city site, a magnificent palace wall, a regular cemetery, the earliest observatory in the world, the earliest writing to date, and a set of ritual vessels…
The original China
Since ancient times, the Taosi ruins have been a sacred place in the minds of the locals. According to the aerial film taken, for thousands of years, no matter how the nearby villages have developed and changed, they have been encircling the Taosi ruins tightly, and rarely occupied them.
▲Taosi Ruins Navigation
In the dark, it seems that there is a magical power protecting this ancient capital ruins. In the ruins of more than 4 million square meters, the city site Komiks occupies 2.8 million square meters and the palace city is nearly 130,000 square meters. The entire site has clear functional distinction, exquisite layout, and distinct burial levels, which seems to have the basic form of the country.
Many scholars believe that Taosi is the “Yaodu Pingyang” recorded in classics. According to the years of excavation, the gap between the rich and the poor in Taosi society is huge, and a few nobles have accumulated a large amount of wealth and formed a privileged class. At this time, the prototype of the country has been formed and a civilized society has arrived.
The Taosi site is a typical representative of early China.
The capital of Yao and Shun
There are only dialects near the Taosi ruins in the country, and the sun is called “King Yao”. Is it a coincidence? Or the inheritance of civilization? Or is it a certain worship? Is there any great king Yao, who has been passed down from generation to generation in the people’s mouth?BabaylanHas built a great capital?
In 2018, on the wall of the Taosi ruins palace city, archaeologists were surprised to find the remaining “Qilou”-style door site.
The tall Que Tower has always been called the gate of etiquette. Two tall que Towers extend from the southern wall of the palace city, and the pattern is similar to the style of the Yingtianmen Que Tower in Luoyang City during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Even the Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City later followed this Que Tower model more than 4,000 years ago.
▲The “Qilou Style” door address of the Nandong Gate
▲The Forbidden City<a The tall Queloo gate site shows the grandeur of the palace. Above the palace, just one main hall, the area reaches more than 540 square meters. The cellar outside the palace city stores the country's grain. The cellar diameter is 5 meters and the depth is 7 meters. The built-in spiral ramp can reach the bottom directly Komiks. These large cellar pits are almost exactly the same as Hanjiacang in Luoyang during the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
After more than 40 years of excavation, the Taosi site has become the capital of the Yao and Shun era recognized by many scholars. Wang Wei, chief expert of the “Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project”, believes that no site can have the elements and logos formed by the origin of civilization like the Taosi site. The Taosi site is in line with Yao in terms of age, geographical location and the level of civilization it reflects, and is an important fulcrum and cornerstone for empirizing the journey of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years.
The Chinese Dragon in the King’s TombCinema‘s Taosi SiteCinema‘s cemetery is the largest in the Yellow River Basin. Over 40 years of excavation shows that more than 4,000 years ago, the society here had undergone severe polarization. Unlike the tombs of a large number of ordinary people, there are relatively few noble tombs, very high specifications, and particularly rich burial objects.
In 1980, in the M3016 tomb, a special round pottery was revealed. This is not an ordinary pottery plate. The center of the plate is vividly painted with a dragon.
▲Taosi Panlong
In the entire Taosi site, only four such dragon plates were unearthed from the king-level tomb. Archaeologists believe that the dragon plate should be Babaylan should belong to the king of the time and be a symbol of high status. The dragons drawn in the Taosi Dragon Pan are all shaped like coiled dragons, with crocodile-like scale markings on their bodies, square on both sides of the head like bear ears, long jaws protruding, especially the image of branches holding the mouth, which is very rare. The Taosi Panlong is already very close to the image of the descendants of the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties and later generations. Taosi is the original prototype of the Chinese state, so the Taosi Dragon is the true Chinese dragon.
▲Longpan unearthed from the Taosi site
The world’s earliest observatory
More than 4,000 years ago, Taosi had a relatively advanced astronomical calendar and the world’s earliest observatory.
When archaeologists first discovered 13 arc-shaped rammed earth pillars, they were confused by the strange combination of “walls are not like walls, and roads are not like roads”.
According to the records of “Shangshu Yao Dian”, astronomy during the Yao Emperor’s period was very developed. The astronomical calendar was related to agricultural production and had become part of the royal power. The observatory was a necessary building in the capital.
Can these 13 unique stone pillars be the observatory more than 4,000 years of exploration and verificationCinema, simulated observation, archaeologists finally discovered the secret of the observatory. It turned out that the ancestors determined the season and solar terms by observing the observation gaps of the pillars and the sunrise direction of Taer Mountain. The sunrise from the second observation gap is the winter solstice, and the sunrise from the 12th observation gap is the summer solstice. The sunrise from the vernal and autumnal equinoxes are both seen from the 7th observation gap.
▲Taosi Ruins Observatory
▲Restoration of Taosi Ruins Observatory
This is the earliest observatory in the world and is also the Chinese href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks The ancestral origin of the 24 solar terms in the country. It is 500 years earlier than the Stonehenge Observatory in the UK.
The mysterious Zhu Shu text
In the excavation of H3403 in the ash pit in Taosi site in 1984, the two “character” written in cinnabar on a broken flat pot caused a great sensation.
One of the red characters is not much controversial, and many scholars believe that it is very similar to the “character” in oracle bone script.
▲Zhu Shu Danhu
The second controversial character is whether it is the character “Yao” or “Yuan”.
Although it is just two simple characters, it is the earliest text clearly discovered in China. It was about 800 years earlier than the mature oracle bone inscriptions.
The initial formation of “KomiksRitual and Music Civilization”
Babaylan29 musical instruments unearthed from the Taosi site, including tuo drums, earth drums, special chimes, pottery bells, copper bells, mouth string zithers, etc. The combination of turtle drums and special chimes is the earliest known musical instruments of the same type so far.
▲Crown drums and restored copper bells are the earliest metal instruments discovered in China. The oral stringed zither is the smallest ethnic instrument in China. To this day, the Qiang, Mongolian, Yi and Oroqen peoples are still in use.
▲Oral string calves
The drum that uses crocodile skin mask only appears in the king-level tomb. The same is true for earth drums. Among them, one pair of crocodile drums, one piece of stone chime, and one piece of earth drum, are all fixed combinations placed on the lower left side of the tomb owner of the noble tomb. The combination of turtle drum and special chime was passed down to the Shang and Zhou dynasties and became the only burial tool for the nobles.
Tao Temple also unearthed jade ritual instruments such as jade axe, jade cong, jade bi, and jade gui. They and the above-mentioned instruments indicate that the “ritual and music civilization” had been initially formed at this time. Babaylan
▲Jade unearthed from Taosi site
▲Jade Beast Face
The earliest astronomical measurement instrument
In the autumn of 2002, in the Taosi relicA wooden pole was found in the mid-term tomb M22 of the site, painted with black, green and red marks on it, which caused archaeologists to verify the “Guibei”.
Guo Biao is an astronomical instrument that measures the length of sun shadow in ancient my country. It can measure the sun shadow and determine the location of the capital; it can conduct geodetic measurements, recognize the actual scope and territory of the world; it can also be used to formulate a calendar.
Study proves that the Cinema wooden pole found in the M22 tomb is a ruler. The discovery of Taosi Guizhi also shows that the instrument used in ancient China’s astronomical measurements first appeared in the middle of the Taosi culture 4,100 years ago.
▲Guizi unearthed from the Taosi site
From this point of view, the Taosi site is an early capital ruin with complete functional elements such as city walls, palaces, cemeteries, musical instruments, observatorys, and large storage areas found in Komiks so far.
All kinds of archaeological signs also show that as early as more than 4,000 years ago, Taosi entered the national stage and entered a civilized society. First, the Taosi culture period was not an equal society, but a serious social hierarchy differentiation occurred. For example, the differences in tombs mentioned above actually reflect the social status of the tomb owner. Second, the emergence of the “king” in Taosi culture and society, which means that a country dominated by royal power emerges. Third, in Taosi society, the ritual system was initially formed and became the essence of the social system to be passed down in future generations. Fourth, the material and spiritual civilizations created by the Taosi society were mostly inherited and developed by the Xia, Shang, Zhou and later generations, and are in line with the lineage.
It can be said that Taosi was “the original Chinese and the main vein of China.”