In the early morning, a middle-aged farmer walked on the field ridge humming a song.
He passed by his own field, and only glanced at it, and his body was so startled, his feet stumbled, and he fell to the ground.
"Which wicked person digs my field!"
He lay on the ground, only to see a big hole dug in his field!
This is too immoral, there are crops planted in the field!
The farmer cursed, looked around, and stomped his feet angrily.
Not only this field, but the surrounding fields were also destroyed, and the crops were crushed by the dug-up mounds.
The farmer searched the surrounding fields, and soon found sloping holes in the soil in several places.
Compared with the largest deep pits, those soil holes are only about four or five meters deep, and it seems that they are only tentative excavations from various angles.
"Ah? This is not a tomb robbery, is it?"
Have you never eaten pork or seen a pig run? The farmer immediately thought that these were robbery holes, and his first reaction was to get into the hole and feel for it.
The tossing was ashamed, but nothing was fished.
Unwilling to give up, he changed another hole, but there was still nothing there, and then he went to the biggest deep pit, jumped down to look for it, but still found nothing.
"This area has been farmland for generations, how can there be a tomb?" The farmer laughed at himself, climbed up with great effort, and hurried to report to the village chief.
Soon all the people in the village gathered and talked about who had seen a stranger recently.
The village chief jumped into the pit, but it was obvious that the surrounding soil was not the right color, it seemed to be kiln soil that had been forged.
He asked someone to bring a shovel, and after digging a few more times, he found a corner of jade in a piece of dry black mud.
"There's something!" Someone saw it with sharp eyes from above, and immediately yelled.
Everyone immediately gathered around the entrance of the cave to watch, and saw the village head peeling off the piece of soil, which turned out to be a palm-sized Yugui.
Of course, they didn't know that it was Yugui, they only knew that it was a piece of jade with a sharp upper part and a straight lower end, with sharp-edged raindrop patterns on it.
"Is it an antique?" someone asked from above
The village chief continued digging downwards, but he used his hands instead, and soon a large number of pottery, stone, jade, and bronze wares emerged from the soil.
Seeing that there were so many, he stopped quickly and asked someone to pull him up.
"Why don't you dig? Dig again!" someone booed.
"No one is allowed to go down!" The village head shouted: "Old Li, this is your field, you should call the cultural relics bureau."
He was worried about the few clever ghosts in the village, so he could only guard the scene himself.
When the farmer heard this, he threw away the hoe, and Sa Yazi ran home.
Everyone looked at him happily, and some people were envious, because if it is true that the underground is full of antiques, the government will definitely take back the right to use this large area of land, and Lao Li will get a lot of compensation.
"Didn't some professor come over to investigate twenty years ago? Why didn't he find it! The tomb robbers discovered it first."
"My field is not far from here, will there be one?"
Some people saw that the village chief was guarding here, and they couldn't possibly be distracted, so they immediately dispersed and went to dig in their own fields to try their luck.
Choose a piece of land, pull out the crops that have been planted, pick up the shovel and start digging.
As a result, when the people from the Cultural Relics Bureau arrived, the villagers dug out more than 20 deep pits with cultural relics found in a radius of several miles.
The staff of the Cultural Relics Bureau immediately realized that this was by no means a cemetery, but a large ruins, and immediately notified more people to come over, and urgently stopped the villagers to stop digging.
The matter continued to be tossed until the afternoon of the same day, when a large number of staff took control of the scene, and only then did they understand the situation.
"What? There were several holes here before you found out?"
Undoubtedly, it was not the farmer who discovered the ruins first, but someone else who dug several robbery holes in the middle of the night and left at dawn.
In this way, things will become more complicated, and the tomb robbers may have already learned about the distribution of cultural relics underground.
So they immediately hired local villagers to help guard the scene. Because the area is too large, it is difficult to see it with only a small number of staff.
"Preliminary judgment, it is a city ruins." A professor wearing glasses went deep into the pit and said after a survey.
"What? There is a city? I understand, Lao Fang. The tomb robbers discovered this place earlier than us. Because they were in other people's fields, they dug at night. After digging something, they soon discovered that this was not a tomb, so they withdrew ’ said another expert above.
Professor Fang climbed out and said, "Tomb robbers definitely can't do it if they want to dig a city. They can only try their best not to leave empty space. Many precious cultural relics were found at the scene. It is conceivable that they must have taken away a lot. But several of them It’s a robbery hole, and it didn’t dig to the ruins layer at all, probably because time doesn’t allow to continue digging.”
"It can be speculated that the group of tomb robbers has rich experience in surveying. Professor Wu led someone to survey this place 20 years ago. At that time, they simply tried it with a Luoyang shovel and left." Another expert said.
Professor Fang said with a smile: "What conditions were there twenty years ago? Luoyang shovels are not omnipotent. But these grave robbers are really powerful. The soil under the farmland has such a high moisture content that they can even find ruins?"
Everyone laughs, this is a typical case of tomb robbers stimulating archaeology, which was common a few decades ago.
There are basically only three ways to discover the archaeological site. The state approves an archaeological project, and professionals take the initiative to find it.
Farmers dig wells, or engineering teams dig them unintentionally.
In the end, there are tomb robbers, using their superb technology, to dig first.
They were talking, on the other side, a young Ph.D. rushed over, holding a corroded square tripod in his hand.
Professor Fang took a look and was taken aback: "Old Chen, isn't this a site from the early Neolithic Age?"
Professor Chen frowned, and went up to take a look. When he first arrived, he went to the local villagers to learn about the situation. Hearing that there were a large number of stone and jade artifacts, he first judged that it was a Neolithic site. In fact, he had not had time to study it carefully. Artifacts discovered.
Looking at it now, I knew something was wrong. Although the bronze ware in front of me was corroded into a lump, but there was no patina in some parts, revealing delicate lines. From the tip of the iceberg, it can be seen that it should have been very exquisite.
In other words, this is a pre-Shang site that used both copper and stone, and it was also in the Xia Dynasty at the latest.
"Professor, all the cultural relics dug by the local villagers have been recovered, and there are a lot of jade and bronze wares." The young doctor said.
The two hurriedly looked over, and saw hundreds of pieces of jade huang, jade wall, jade shovel, copper tripod, copper gong, copper spear, copper bell, copper pendant scattered on the ground...
Among them, the jade wares are extremely exquisite, and the artistic style is quite different from that of the Longshan culture and Erlitou culture of this generation, and the decorations are quite different.
"Hurry up and get the emergency approval, we must do rescue excavation as soon as possible." Professor Chen quickly called the director and said.
The director froze, "Old Chen, what are you in a hurry for?"
Professor Chen said: "Bronze ware has been found, can I not be in a hurry? Judging from the degree of corrosion, the site should have been soaked in water for a long time, and there are tomb robbers staring at it. I don't think there is any need to wait."
"I see, the approval document will come soon." Hearing this, the director knew that the ruins must be excavated as soon as possible.
That night, in order to prevent tomb robbers from digging holes nearby, all the staff stayed at the scene to guard, and also hired local villagers to patrol.
The night passed without incident, and early the next morning, the Provincial Institute of Archeology arrived to conduct a preliminary survey of the entire site.
Three days later, the land use rights have been handed over, the approval documents have come down, and the site has been cleaned up.
The provincial professional archaeological team started the first rescue excavation.
After working continuously for four days, the pit got bigger and bigger, and there were more and more cultural relics. A large number of jade, pottery, and bronze wares were excavated every day.
Among them, the number of pottery is the largest, and in a short period of time, it has reached 200,000 pieces!
Bronze wares followed, with more than 16,000 pieces, and most of them were weapons.
What makes people sad is that most of the bronzes are seriously damaged, not by man-made damage, but by water erosion!
And from a geological point of view, the ruins were covered by floods wrapped in sediment.
But fortunately, it is precisely because of being covered in an instant that the building complex is well preserved!
The entire city was pressed under the sand as a whole. As long as it is carefully excavated, the appearance of the entire city can be restored.
But as the excavation progressed, everyone became confused again.
Because the ruins of workshops for casting copper and making pottery were excavated in pieces on site, and 200,000 square meters have been discovered! .
The scale is so large that it is rare in the world!
Archaeologists once wondered whether this is the ruins of the ancient city? If it is a city, why are there all smelting and production buildings
"This is most likely a city specialized in forging and production. It must not be the capital of a certain culture."
"Is this the industrial center of Xia Dynasty?"
"It may also be a military center, which cannot be dated for the time being. From a cultural point of view, it does not belong to Erlitou or Longshan culture. This may be a vassal culture of the Central Plains..."
"A vassal? You have no basis for this. This is Xinzheng, located in the hinterland of the Central Plains. From the perspective of jade, it is very similar to the Longshan culture. It must be a transitional culture between Yu and Xia."
"How can there be a transitional culture between Yu and Xia? Judging from such a strong productivity of bronzes, this should be a culture of the same period as the Xia Dynasty."
Archaeologists debated endlessly, until someone excavated a bronze sacred tree from the ruins...
"Ah? No way? It actually belongs to the same type as the Sanxingdui culture?"
"This is a major discovery! Sanxingdui is no longer an independent and isolated culture, it has branches and leaves!"
"The Central Plains and Shu are far apart, but they have extremely close exchanges. People in this city are very likely to be part of the culture of the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin at the same time, so that's why."
"So... is it Zhuanxu?"
The people present were all bigwigs, and they quickly thought of Zhuanxu, because according to the literature records, Zhuanxu's ancestor was granted to Shu, and after several generations, Zhuanxu became the lord of the Central Plains again.
Therefore, in the pre-Shang period, when the Central Plains and Shu land had the closest exchanges, there is a high probability that it was the era of Zhuanxu.
"Is this Zhuanxu's capital Emperor Hill? If it is true, then the emergence of bronze technology has been advanced for at least five hundred years."
"It's impossible to be the capital city. Although the excavation has not been completed, such a large-scale workshop site group must have corresponding divisions for workers to live in. In this way, it will occupy at least 300,000 to 400,000 square meters. , this is obviously not a political center. The capital of this culture can only be said to have not been discovered, we only discovered this smelting city."
"In addition to the undiscovered capital, this culture also has large-scale, concentrated cities dedicated to smelting and production... In the era of Zhuanxu, the technology was even more advanced than that of Yaodu? Was the technology of Yao and Shun backward?"
The archaeologists were inexplicably horrified. They guessed that the Taosi site was the capital of Yao, and there were also bronze wares, but in terms of productivity, it was far worse than this city.
If it is really the era of Zhuanxu, it means that after the death of Zhuanxu, culture has been interrupted and technology has regressed.
During the time of Tang Yu, the advanced bronze technology of Zhuanxu period was lost.
"Wait a minute, I know what this might be... The Ruins of Zhurong! Right! According to ancient history, the Ruins of Zhurong is located in Xinzheng."
"Yes, that's right, since Zhurong's Ruins is called a Ruins, it means that it has been abandoned long ago. Judging from the scene, it was caused by floods, and the whole city was covered under sand, so it was renamed from Zhurong Kingdom to Zhurong's Ruins."
"Gonggong is in charge of the water conservancy project, and Zhu Rong is in charge of the 'fire conservancy' project, that is, smelting and manufacturing!"
"Not only that, Zhu Rong is also a military officer, so Zhu Rong's country is the Ministry of National Defense in ancient times!"
"This place is responsible for the production of a large number of ordnance, and it is also the industrial center of the Central Plains."
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