Where does "Su" come from: Looking at the "Colorful" Life of the Ancestors 8000 to 4000 Years ago from the Neolithic Cultural Sites Journalist | Culture | Life

There are always things in the world that people take for granted, but with a little thought, they will suddenly realize. For example, people generally believe that Confucius was a representative figure of the Yellow River civilization. However, during his time, the Yellow River did not flow through Shandong, but shortly after exiting Sanmenxia in the east, it turned northeast in Xinxiang, Henan and flowed into the sea around Tianjin. In fact, the Jining and Qufu regions where Confucius grew up, lived, and taught have been located along the Surabaya River since ancient times, and the Yishu Surabaya River system belongs to the Huai River Basin. Therefore, it is more in line with historical reality to say that Confucius was a sage born in the Huai River Basin.

In the process of the origin and aggregation of Chinese civilization, the Huai River is an unknown river to the public, and the origin of Jiangsu's regional civilization precisely starts from the Huai River basin. The story begins with four representative Neolithic cultural sites in Jiangsu, the oldest dating back approximately 5500 years to the time when Confucius lived.

Shunshanji Site: A Land of Fish and Rice 8000 Years ago

Suqian, Sihong, Meihua Town. Shunshanji Site is the earliest known Neolithic cultural site in Jiangsu Province. A period of ancient life from 8500 to 7500 years ago was shallowly covered in dust and buried one foot underground.

Zhou Runken, the director of the Jiangsu Provincial Institute of Archaeology, led us to use our imagination to recreate the lives of our ancestors: 8000 years ago, the climate was warmer and wetter, and there were large areas of water and swamps around the site, as well as shrubs and forests. The ancestors settled on the hill and lived in pointed circular houses, with walls and floors intentionally set on fire to maintain strength and dryness. The pottery pot used for cooking resembles today's helmet but is slightly larger. People use pottery legs to support the pot for cooking, but a half circle shaped pottery stove has also been found underground at the site. This is the earliest pottery stove discovered in Chinese archaeology and is known as the "number one stove in the world". The ancestors raised dogs and domesticated wild boars, but there is no evidence to prove that they raised chickens.

The ancestors who settled here already had social division of labor, with women collecting fruits, taking care of children, spinning with spinning wheels and spindles, and using stone balls and plates to thresh and cook grains. Men catch deer, water buffalo, and wild boars, and they tie ceramic net pendants at the edge of the fishing net to make it sink faster and catch more fish. They also grow rice, but rice is not the staple food. Coix seed and Trichosanthes kirilowii root should be more important foods.

Ancient life is not a pastoral romance, as natural disasters, famine, and diseases all threaten people's survival. But in addition to arduous labor, the ancestors still pursued beauty. They use mud to burn palm sized monkey face, pig face, bear face, and human face, concise and vivid, with the childish innocence unique to human childhood; The handle of a deer antler has been polished off, leaving behind protruding parts such as pointed ears, round eyes, and slender fangs. People holding deer antlers may pray that they have infinite strength to catch a wild boar in one go

These are the details that archaeological discoveries tell us. The Shunshanji archaeological site was selected as one of the top ten new archaeological discoveries in China in 2012. More importantly, it filled a gap in the civilization of the Neolithic period in the lower reaches of the Huai River, allowing us to see for the first time how Chinese civilization flourished 8000 years ago in the lower reaches of the Huai River. Prior to that, Majiabang culture in the Taihu Lake Lake basin was considered to be the earliest Neolithic archaeological culture in Jiangsu, and the discovery of Shunshanji site pushed forward the civilization history of Jiangsu for at least 1500 years.

In the ongoing Jiangsu Regional Civilization Exploration Project, the Shunshanji Site is one of the core sites for studying the development process of prehistoric culture in the lower reaches of the Huai River. The site covers an area of 175000 square meters and is divided into an internal living area and an external burial area by a circular trench. The circumference of the trench is about 1000 meters, with a depth of 1.5 to 3 meters and a width of 6 to 24 meters, which is sufficient to defend against the invasion of wild animals or other tribes. This is one of the earliest and largest circular trenches in the Huai River Basin era. In the era without metal tools, this was a massive project that proved the strength of Shunshanji in the settlements of the same period.

There are more than 10 contemporaneous sites around Shunshanji. Among them, archaeologists have discovered rice paddies dating back 8000 years at the Hanjing site. Testing shows that semi domesticated rice is grown here, so the yield is not too high. However, the ancestors have been growing rice here for thousands of years without interruption.

7500 years ago, the Shunshanji site was suddenly abandoned, leaving archaeologists with an unsolved mystery. At this time, there is still a long and arduous journey of over a thousand years before rice is fully domesticated by the Chinese people.

The traditional writing of the character "Su" in Jiangsu is "Su". Simply unraveling it reveals the land of abundant water and grass, and in this sense, the Shunshanji Site is the earliest land of fish and rice in Jiangsu.

The Camel Dun Site: May Means New Cultural Genes

In the basin around the Taihu Lake Lake, Majiabang culture, Songze culture and Liangzhu culture come down in one continuous line, forming a complete prehistoric civilization chain. However, the discovery of Luotuodun site in Yixing in 2001 challenged this system.

The most powerful challenger is a type of pottery - a flat bottomed cauldron. "Cauldron" is a pot, and in idioms such as "burning the pot and sinking the ship" and "drawing wages from the bottom of the pot", "Cauldron" means "pot".

The research on the development process of prehistoric culture in the west of the Taihu Lake Lake is one of the nine major projects of the Project of Exploring the Origin of Regional Civilization in Jiangsu Province. Hu Yingfang, the project leader and the Archaeological Research Institute of Nanjing Museum, told reporters that the Luotuodun Site is located in the west of the Taihu Lake Lake, between 7000 and 5500 years ago, which is basically the same period as Majiabang Culture and Songze Culture. However, in its early days, the appearance of the Luotuodun site was vastly different from that of the Majiabang culture. For example, in the Majiabang culture, round bottomed pots, also known as round bottomed pots, were widely popular. However, the most commonly used flat bottomed pots at the Luotuodun site were those with waist eaves and hands, and round bottomed pots were completely absent. Round bottomed pots were used with ceramic legs, while flat bottomed pots were used with ceramic stoves.

Overall, the Majiabang culture uses a round bottomed cauldron and does not have a urn or coffin for burial; The Luotuodun site used a flat bottomed kettle, and the deceased did not hold a red pottery bowl. This shows that the two have huge differences in lifestyle and spiritual beliefs, and lack of cultural melting. Therefore, some archaeologists proposed that the prehistoric civilization around the the Taihu Lake Lake basin was originally "a large area", but now it has been found to be "two lines". Therefore, a new type of archaeological culture should be isolated from the Majiabang culture: Luotuodun Culture, an archaeological culture rooted in the Yili Mountain.

More importantly, the Luotuodun site is not "one man fighting". Among the adjacent sites in the same period, the Wujiabu site in Hangzhou, the Qiucheng site in Huzhou, the Xixi site in Yixing, the Shendun site in Liyang, the Qintang Mountain site, and the Dongtantou site are all located at the junction of mountains and plains. They are distributed in a half moon shape around the west of the Taihu Lake Lake. As time goes on, they will eventually be integrated with the Majiabang culture in the east of the Taihu Lake Lake, directly promoting Liangzhu culture into the threshold of civilization.

The archaeology of the Luotuodun site reveals a lot of ancient life information, and one particularly noteworthy point is that archaeologists took a few bags of soil from the strata and washed out more than 2000 charred rice grains. Moreover, the rice grains were already divided into indica and japonica rice, indicating that agriculture was already quite developed at that time, or had replaced gathering and hunting as the most important mode of life, and rice had become people's staple food.

The agricultural revolution is known as the first revolution of human society, bringing about a leap in human society. With mature agriculture, more people can be fed, and a surge in population can achieve social division of labor and the mobilization of large-scale populations; Agriculture generates more social wealth, leading to wealth inequality and class formation in the distribution of surplus wealth. These are the prerequisites and foundations for humanity to enter a civilized society and ultimately produce a country.

Dongshan Village Site: The First Dawn of Chinese Civilization

There is a paradox in the origin of human civilization, which is that civilization is the child of barbarism. The initial emergence of civilization may not be beautiful, as it has brought about violent rule, internal repression, and external expansion, accompanied by social wealth inequality and inequality between people. This also means that humanity is starting to bid farewell to the carefree "childhood" and enter a hierarchical society from an equal society.

The severe wealth disparity is a crucial step from primitive society to civilized society. The earliest to take this step was not in the Central Plains region, but in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. More precisely, it was the Dongshan Village site in Zhangjiagang. Among the known Songze culture sites, the Dongshan Village site is the most developed.

The Dongshan Village Site is located on a highland 4 kilometers south of the Yangtze River, with a total area of about 270000 square meters. The most important discovery is the early and middle period relics of the Songze Culture. At that time, the tombs were already divided into "civilian areas" and "wealthy areas", located on the east and west sides of the living area, and should not be confused. If tombs already had the concept of "living separately," then society must have had a hierarchical system at that time.

Yu Chenglong, the director of the research project on the process of civilization in the north of the Taihu Lake Lake of the Jiangsu Regional Civilization Exploration Project, told reporters that archaeology showed that almost all the funerary objects of the eight large tombs in the "rich man's area" of the Dongshan Village site were more than 30, not only pottery, stone axes and stones, but also precious jade objects such as Huang, Yuan, axes, bracelets, jue, tubes, beads, pendants and chisels. However, most of the small tombs in the "civilian area" only unearthed a few simple pottery and used stone tools, and the wealth of the two was completely different.

Tomb No. 90, which has the most abundant burial items, unearthed 65 pottery, stone, and jade cultural relics. When the tomb owner is buried, there are pottery jars, pottery bowls, pottery pots, pottery beans, etc. placed beside them. Two large jade rings and a string of jade tubes are placed at the head, and a jade pendant is worn under the neck. A jade ring is held in the ear, and earrings are hung. A jade bracelet is worn on the wrist, and a stone axe indicating identity is placed beside the hands and legs. Large stones are also placed at the feet. According to the social level at that time, it was impossible for him to have such a grand appearance unless he was the most noble figure in the heyday of a ethnic group. Therefore, archaeologists gave him a nickname - King Songze.

Prior to this, the academic community generally believed that until the transition period from Songze culture to Liangzhu culture, members of the Jiangnan clan were basically equal. The archaeological site of Dongshan Village has overturned this viewpoint, proving that there was a high degree of social differentiation at least 5800 years ago in the early stage of Songze culture. If China as a whole entered a civilized society around 5000 years ago and was in the "dawn period" of civilization development, then the Dongshan Village Site is like the "first ray of dawn" of Chinese civilization.

The most surprising thing is a red pottery pointed bottom bottle, which is a typical artifact of the Yangshao culture in the Central Plains. This pointed bottom bottle is like a shell, with a pointed bottom and an empty belly, and a ring of tied ears around it. Judging from its shape, this is a work from the middle period of Yangshao culture. Through some legendary experience, it traveled thousands of miles from the middle reaches of the Yellow River to the lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

In fact, the accessibility of transportation networks in ancient times far exceeded our imagination, and the degree of cultural exchange was astonishing. Cultural relics indicate that there is cultural interaction between the Dongshan Village site and Shandong, Jianghuai, Ningzhen, and even the southeastern coastal areas. This is an open cultural exchange area, and it is precisely the interaction and exchange between different civilization regions and even outside the region that has jointly nurtured the brilliant and splendid Chinese civilization.

The Jiangzhuang Site: Civilization Conflict on the Cultural Corridor

The jade wall with a diameter of nearly 25 centimeters emits a sparkling green crystal light; The stone made adzes, knives, and arrows are polished and polished to be as smooth as jade; The ceramic large mouth statue has a diameter of over 80 centimeters and a depth of about 50 centimeters, which is rare in the same period... In the Jiangzhuang Liangzhu site of Xinghua, between 5000 and 4000 years ago, the ancestors lived here for thousands of years. What's even more amazing is that the evolution of the artifacts here is basically synchronized with the core area of Liangzhu culture 300 kilometers away, which shows the strong radiation of Liangzhu culture.

Gan Huiyuan once served as the person in charge of the archaeological excavation site at the Jiangzhuang site. He told reporters that Liangzhu culture is mainly distributed in the the Taihu Lake Lake basin, and the discovery of the Jiangzhuang site broke the traditional concept of Liangzhu culture that "it is not the Yangtze River", and also gave people a chance to glimpse the life of ancestors at the edge of a civilization circle. In a hunting scene depicted on a black pottery jar, a wild boar with tusks and mane is tied with a rope and suspended from a branch. Its four legs are drooping, but its head and tail are raised, seemingly still struggling. The ancestors also had a rich diet, including deer obtained from hunting and pigs raised by themselves. At that time, rice was one of the staple foods, and thickets, water chestnuts, and melons were also consumed in large quantities. Apricots, peaches, dates, and other foods also appeared in the recipes of our ancestors.

But this does not mean that the ancestors here lived a pastoral life. Among the 280 tombs excavated by archaeology, there are a large number of bones with signs of violent injuries. Some tomb owners are missing a hand, some have lost their heads, and some have separated their heads and necks. The owner of Tomb No. 158 is a male in his forties and fifties. He was buried in a boat shaped coffin hollowed out with a thick piece of wood. The bones were scattered and roughly arranged in the shape of a human. Inside the coffin was the remains of a headless woman who had lost her head during burial. There were six skulls outside the coffin, one of which had its heavenly cover cut off.

With so many heads buried with him, it is obvious that he is a significant figure, but he is not like a person from Liangzhu, but more like an outsider. His two side incisors were uprooted, which is common in the Dawenkou culture distributed in the Su Lu Yu Wan region. Does this indicate that the tomb owner was not from Liangzhu, but was buried heavily for his military achievements in Liangzhu? Does it further indicate that the owner of the tomb is not from Liangzhu, and therefore was not buried according to Liangzhu customs, as the most typical jade bi and jade cong of Liangzhu culture did not appear in this tomb?

Located on the northern edge of the Liangzhu Cultural Circle, with so many traces of violent injuries, some experts suspect that this is a settlement with military characteristics. Scholars have compared the Jiangzhuang Site with the Dawenkou Cultural Site in Liangwangcheng, Xuzhou. Statistics show that in the tombs of the Jiangzhuang Site, about 67% of those aged 15-35 died, which is 20% higher than the Liangwangcheng Site; Only about 20% of deaths occur between the ages of 36 and 55, while the Liang Wangcheng Site accounts for about 40%. This survival pressure does not come from the natural environment, and can only be traced back to the prevalence of violence and even tribal wars.

There is great potential for scientific and technological testing in the Jiangzhuang Site, which has the most human bones unearthed in one go at the Liangzhu Culture Site. DNA testing can determine whether there is a blood relationship between the deceased and whether the deceased is a prisoner or a member of the same clan; By detecting the ratio of carbon-13 and nitrogen-15 in bones, we can infer the proportion of meat and vegetables in the diets of our ancestors, as well as their protein intake; Strontium isotope testing can infer the approximate ratio between indigenous people and "outsiders"; Strengthening carbon-14 detection can accurately measure the time of the deceased's life within a range of several decades; By combining multiple skeletons, it may be possible to perform a portrait restoration to see what the people at that time looked like

The genetic fragments of Chinese civilization may be hidden in the bones left by these ancestors.

Between 8000 and 4000 years ago, the Shunshanji Site, Luotuodun Site, Dongshan Village Site, and Jiangzhuang Site served as a thread that outlined the emergence of Jiangsu civilization. However, they were not alone. Such Neolithic cultural sites were scattered throughout Jiangsu, including Huanggang, Longqiu Village, Sidun, Yingpan Mountain, Beiyinyang Camp, Sanxing Village, Caosheshan, and Zhaoling Mountain... Like other early cultural sites in other regions of China, they were like a trickle of the origin of Chinese civilization, eventually converging into a flowing river of Chinese civilization. How did Jiangsu's regional civilization sprout and thrive, how did it reflect the continuity, innovation, unity, inclusiveness, and peace of Chinese civilization, and what did it contribute to the diverse and integrated Chinese civilization? This is exactly the core question that the Jiangsu Regional Civilization Exploration Project aims to answer. The story of the origin of "Su" will be written into a new chapter in hand shovels, laboratories, desks, and seminars.

Xinhua Daily · Intersection Reporter Wang Hongwei and Yang Minpu