✎ “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-see for studying Chinese history and ancient culture and perceiving the spiritual connotation of the Chinese nation.
▲Taosi Site
On July 21, 2022, the academic seminar on “Tian Tianwei Earth and Shining to the Four Directions – Taosi Model of the Origin of Chinese Civilization” hosted by the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau and the Archaeology Institute 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 showcase its rich 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 original Chinese country, Komiks
Since ancient times, the Taosi ruins have been a sacred place in the minds of the locals. According to the Babaylan filmed, no matter how the nearby villages have developed and changed, they have been encircling and tightly surrounding the Taosi site, and rarely occupying the pressure.
▲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 accounts for 2.8 million square meters and nearly 130,000 square meters of the palace. The entire site has clear functional distinction, exquisite layout, and distinct burial hierarchy, just like Komiks already has the basic form of the country.
Many scholars believe that Taosi is the “Yaodu Pingyang” recorded in classics. Babaylan based on many years ofJudging from the discovery results, the gap between the rich and the poor in Taosi society was huge, and a few nobles accumulated a large amount of wealth and formed a privileged class. By this time the social development has been developed, the prototype of the country has been formed and a civilized society has arrived.
The Taosi site is a typical representative of early China.
Yao and ShunCinemaThe capital
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? Has the great king Yao, who was passed down from generation to generation by the people, 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 quid buildings extend from the south wall of Komiks’s 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 Quelound gate of Komiks shows the grandeur inside the palace. Above the palace, just one main hall, the area is 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. These large cellar pits are almost exactly the same as Hanjia Cang in Luoyang during the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
After more than 40 years of excavation, the Taosi site has become a source of many scholars认定的尧舜时代的都城。 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 tombs of ordinary people with a large number of tombs, there are relatively few aristocratic tombs, very high-quality 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 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 belong to the king of the time and is a symbol of high-level status. The dragons drawn in the Taosi Dragon Pan 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 the branches with the mouth holding the branches, 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 the Taosi dragon is the real Chinese dragon in the Cinema sense.
▲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 “Shangshu Yao Dian”, astronomy was very developed during the Yao Emperor’s period, and 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 city.
Can these 13 strange stone pillars be the observatory from more than 4,000 years ago?
Create through years of exploration and verificationKomiks, 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. From the second observation gap, the sunrise is the winter solstice, and the 12th observation gap is the summer solstice. Both the spring and autumn equinoxes see the sunrise from the seventh observation gap.
▲Taosi Ruins Observatory
▲Taosi Ruins Observatory Restoration
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.
The mysterious Babaylan href=”https://comicmov.com/”>CinemaShuwen
In the excavation of H3403 in the ash pit in Taosi site in 1984, two “characters” written in cinnabar on a broken flat pot caused a great sensation.
One of the red characters is not much controversy, and many scholars believe that he is very similar to the “character” in oracle bone inscriptions.
▲Zhuwen Shufang
The second controversial word is whether it is the word “Yao” or “王”, and Komiks is currently indecisive.
Although Cinema is only two simple words, it is the Ming Dynasty in ChinaThe earliest text that was discovered. 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 its kind.
▲The drum and the restoration of the copper bell 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 people 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” has 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 verify the “Gui Biao”.
Gui Biao is an astronomical instrument that measures the length of sun shadow in ancient my country. It can measure the sun shadow in the earth 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 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 that has been discovered in China so far, which has all the functional elements of city walls, palaces, cemeteries, musical instruments, observatory platforms, large storage areas, etc. Various archaeological signs also show that as early as more than 4,000 years ago, the Taoist temple 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 difference in tombs mentioned above actually reflects the status of the tomb owner society Cinema. 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, most of the material and spiritual civilizations created by Taosi society were inherited and developed by the Xia, Shang, Zhou and later generations, and were in line with the lineage.
It can be said that Taosi was “the original Chinese and the main vein of China.”