✎ “No site can have the elements and symbols of the origin of civilization like the Taosi site.” The Taosi site is one of the three key sites in the Chinese civilization exploration project. It 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 “Taosi Model of the Origin of Chinese Civilization” hosted by the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau 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, which entered the primary civilization stage, and to display 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 text to date, and a set of ritual vessels…
The Taosi ruins have been the 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 surrounding the Taosi ruins tightly, and are very little occupied.
▲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 occupies 2.8 million square meters and nearly 130,000 square meters of the palace. The entire site functionBabaylan clearly distinguished, carefully laid out, and clearly defined tomb hierarchy, as if it had already possessed 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 was huge, and a few nobles gathered a large amount of wealth and formed a privileged class. At this time of social development, the prototype of the country had been formed and a civilized society had arrived.
The Taosi site is a typical representative of early China. The capital of Yao and Shun
The only dialect near the Taosi site in the country is called the Sun “King of Yao”. Is it a coincidence? Or the inheritance of civilization? Or <a Is the Komiks a certain kind of worship? Has the great king Yao, who has been passed down from generation to generation, built a great capital?
In 2018, on the wall of the Taosi ruins palace city, archaeologists were surprised to find the remaining “Qulou”-style gate.
The tall Que Tower, one is 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 later Meridian Gate of the Forbidden City also followed this Que Tower model more than 4,000 years ago.
▲The “Qilou Style” door address of the Nandong Gate
<a The tall Quema gate of the Forbidden City shows the grandeur of the palace. Above the palace, just one main hall has an area of more than 540 square meters. The cellars outside the palace store the country's grain. The cellars are 5 meters in diameter and 7 meters deep. The built-in spiral ramps can reach the bottom directly. These large cellars are almost the same as the Hanjia Cang in Luoyang during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. After more than 40 years of excavation, the site of Taosi is already a Yao recognized by many scholars.The capital of the Shun era. Wang Wei, chief expert of the "Chinese Civilization Source Exploration Project", believes that no site can have the elements and symbols of 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 cemetery of the Chinese Dragon in the tomb of the king
The cemetery of the Taosi site is the largest in the Yellow River Basin. More than 40 years of excavation show that more than 4,000 years ago, the society here had undergone serious polarization. Unlike the numerous tombs of ordinary people, there are relatively few noble tombs, very high specifications, and particularly rich burial objects.
In 1980, a special round pottery was revealed in the M3016 tomb. This is not an ordinary pottery plate. The heart of the plate is vividly painted with a dragon.
▲Taosi Panlong
In the entire Taosi site, only four such dragons were unearthed from the kingly tomb. Archaeologists believe that the dragon plate should belong to the king of the time and is a symbol of the status of the senior Komiks. The dragons drawn in the dragon plate of Taosi are all shaped like coiled dragons, with crocodile-like scale marks on their bodies, and the sides of the head are square like bear ears, with long jaws protruding, especially the image of branches holding mouths, which is very rare. The Panlong of Taosi is very close to the image of the descendants of Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties and later generations. Taosi is the original prototype of China, so KomiksTaosi Dragon is a 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”, Emperor YaoAstronomy was very developed during the period, and the astronomical calendar was related to agricultural production and had become a part of the royal power. The observatory was a necessary building in the capital.
Can these 13 strange stone pillars be the observatory from more than 4,000 years ago?
After years of exploration and verification and simulation observation, archaeologists finally discovered the secret of the observatory. It turned out that the ancestors determined the seasons and solar terms by observing the observation gaps of the pillars and the sunrise direction of Taer Mountain. From the second observation slit, the sunrise is seen as the winter solstice, and from the 12th observation slit, the sunrise is seen as the summer solstice. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes both see the sunrise from the seven observation slits of Babaylan.
▲Taosi Ruins Observation Station
▲Restoration of Taosi Ruins Observation Station
This is the earliest observatory in the world and the ancestral source of China’s 24 solar terms. It is 500 years older than the Stonehenge Observatory in the UK.
Mysterious Zhu Shuwen
In the excavation of H3403, a broken flat pot, the two “characters” written in cinnabar caused a great sensation.
One of the red characters is not very controversial, and many scholars believe that he is very similar to the word “玉” in the oracle bone inscriptions.
▲Zhu Shu Ping Pot
Cinema The second controversial character is whether it is the word “Yao” or “王”.
Although it is just two simple words, it is clearly discovered by ChinaThe earliest text. It was about 800 years earlier than the mature oracle bone inscriptions.
The initial formation of “ritual and music civilization”
29 musical instruments unearthed from the Taosi site, including turtle drums, earth drums, special chimes, pottery bells, copper bells, oral string zithers, etc. The combination of turtle drum and special chime is the earliest known instrument of the same kind.
▲Cross drum and restored copper bells are the earliest metal instruments found 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 turtle drums, one stone chime, and one earth drum are all placed in a fixed combination on the lower left side of the tomb owner of the noble tomb. The combination of turtle drums and special chimes was inherited from the Shang and Zhou dynasties and became the unique burial tool of 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.
▲Jade unearthed from the Taosi site
▲Jade Beast Face
The earliest astronomical measurement instrument
In the autumn of 2002, a wooden pole was found in the mid-term tomb of Taosi site, coated with black, green and red markings, which caused archaeologists to “Gui””.
Gui Biao is an astronomical instrument used in ancient my country to measure the length of sun shadow. It can measure the sun shadow and determine the location of the capital; it can conduct geodetic measurements, recognize the actual range and territory of the world; it can also be used to formulate a calendar.
Research proves that the wooden pole found in the M22 tomb is the Gui Pin. The discovery of Taosi Gui Pin also shows that the Gui Pin used in ancient China astronomical measurement first appeared in the middle of the Taosi culture 4,100 years ago.
▲The guizi unearthed from the Taosi site
From this point of view, the Taosi site is an early capital with complete functional elements such as city walls, palaces, cemeteries, musical instruments, observatorys, and large storage areas discovered in China so far. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan ruins.
All 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 cultural period was not an equal society, but a serious social hierarchy differentiation. For example, the burial differences mentioned above actually reflect the social status of the tomb owner. Second, the “king” appeared in Taosi culture and society, which meant that a country dominated by royal power appeared. Third, in Taosi society, the ritual system was initially formed and became the essence of the social system to pass on to future generations. Fourth, the material and spiritual civilization created by Taosi society are manyBabaylanBabaylan was inherited and developed by the Xia, Shang, Zhou and later generations, and was in line with one of the veins.
Cinema said that Taosi was “the original China and the main vein of China.”