Chapter 1953 One of the top ten archaeological discoveries in the world
Speaking of the rare porcelain, Chen Wenzhe thought of the oldest piece of pottery sent by Gao Qijing recently.
It was discovered in Xijiang, and it is initially estimated that it has a history of at least nine thousand years.
The reason for this judgment is entirely because they discovered a 9,000-year-old ruins.
Needless to say, the oldest pottery in the world must have been unearthed from a site dating back 9,000 years.
Anyone who knows something about history knows the terms Paleolithic Age and New Age.
Among them, the Paleolithic Age is the farthest away from us, when humans generally used stone tools.
The Neolithic Age is relatively recent to us. At that time, humans had already begun to use pottery, even painted pottery.
So does anyone know where the oldest existing pottery in the world was unearthed?
Most people may not be very clear about this issue.
Even Chen Wenzhe didn't know until he saw pottery from nine thousand years ago that our country's ceramics had been fired as early as nine thousand years ago.
Therefore, the oldest existing pottery in the world was discovered by archaeological experts at the Xianren Cave site in Wannian County, Sr City, Xijiang Province, my country.
The site is about 9,000 years old from today, almost 10,000 years ago!
The site is located in Dayuan Township, Wannian County, on a mountain basin called Xiaohe Mountain. It is a cave site of the New Age.
The site had actually been discovered as early as the 1960s, but no pottery was found from it at that time.
Since then, a joint archaeological team composed of the Department of Archeology of Peking University, the Xijiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and the Andover Archaeological Foundation of Chou State conducted large-scale excavations of the site five times in 1993, 1995 and 1999.
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As a result, animal bones were discovered, as well as a large number of pottery, stone tools, clam tools and bone tools belonging to the Neolithic Age.
An issue needs to be explained here. Although archaeological experts have long discovered pottery from this site, they have never been able to determine the approximate time of its production or production.
It was not until 2012 that researchers from my country, the Chou Kingdom, and the Germanic Kingdom re-explored the site.
After measuring the samples they took using radioactive carbon dating, they determined that the pottery unearthed from the site was the oldest existing pottery in the world.
This discovery was selected as one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in the world in 2012 by China's "Archaeology" magazine in 2013.
Speaking of this site, after archaeologists excavated the site, they found that it was divided into upper and lower layers.
Among them, the pottery found in the lower ruins is mostly coarse sand red pottery.
In terms of type, there is only one type of pottery pot, so it shows a relatively strong originality.
The stone tools found in the upper site are mainly hammered stone tools, and the types and quantities of ground stone tools are relatively small.
There are many types of pottery unearthed from the upper-level sites, such as clay red pottery, sand-filled red pottery, and clay or fine sand gray pottery.
In terms of utensils, in addition to jars, there are also pots, buckets, etc.
In terms of stone tools, there are many ground and hammered stone tools. Bone spears, clam arrowheads and other objects were also found in the site.
This shows that the Xianrendong people relied on fishing, hunting, and gathering to sustain their lives.
It should be noted that all the pottery found at the site was broken.
Judging from the existing fragments, most of these pottery vessels were made by hand.
The thickness of the tire wall is uneven and the tire quality is also very poor.
Some are also mixed with clam powder, quartz grains and other substances, so the workmanship is very poor.
The color of pottery is also unstable. For example, the same pottery piece may have three colors: black, red, and gray.
All this shows that the pottery technology at that time was still in its primitive stage.
At that time, it was very likely that pottery was fired using the method of pile firing on the ground.
Finally, let me tell you something interesting, or rather tragic.
At that time, archaeologists also discovered human bone fossils belonging to four individuals at the site.
After scientific identification, it was discovered that among the four human bone fossils, there were two adults and two children.
Two of the adults are a boy and a girl, and the two children are eight years old and one year old.
It looks like the four of them are a family of four, but experts say this speculation is wrong.
Because at that time, humans were still in primitive clan society, and monogamous families did not exist.
Everyone still lives in a group where they work together and share their income, so there is no such thing as a small family with a monogamous couple and two children.
In addition to this small episode, the ancient ceramics harvested by Chen Wenzhe are definitely not complete.
Because they were all discovered in roughly the same ruins, these ruins should even be creations of the same era.
Therefore, the things found are roughly the same, and they are not complete devices anyway.
Of course, not all ancient Taichi are fragments. For example, if it is an ancient ceramic from 5,000 years ago or 5,500 years ago, he has a complete vessel in his hand.
The discovery of this kind of porcelain was also accidental, and the same thing had been unearthed in the area where he found these ancient ceramics before.
For example, a human-head-shaped painted pottery vase from more than 5,000 years ago has been found in the same shape before, and that one is called a national treasure.
The reason why Chen Wenzhe remembers this piece of painted pottery deeply is entirely because the most beautiful part of it is the pregnant belly.
Eight thousand years ago, Dadiwan, Gansu Province was in the Holocene warm period.
During that period, the climate in this area was warm and humid, and the land was fertile.
It was there that our ancestors created my country's earliest painted pottery culture with water, fire and earth.
The human-head-shaped painted pottery vase is the only human-shaped gourd-shaped painted pottery vase among the thousands of pieces of painted pottery unearthed in the Dadiwan area.
In the seventh episode of the second season of "National Treasure", the host introduced three national treasure-level cultural relics to the audience.
Among them, the third national treasure-level cultural relic is this painted pottery vase with a human head shape from Dadiwan, Gan Province.
As the treasure of the Gansu Provincial Museum today, what is the charm of this painted pottery vase with a human head-shaped mouth?
First of all, this is a woman. In 1973, a piece of fine clay and red pottery was unearthed in Dadiwan, Shaodian, Qin'an, Gan Province.
It is a painted pottery vase in the shape of a human head with a height of 31.8 cm, a diameter of 4.5 cm, and a bottom diameter of 6.8 cm.
The painted pottery vase has a human head-shaped mouth, short hair reaching the forehead, a straight nose, a small mouth, regular facial features, and small holes for hanging ornaments on both ears, making it look like a girl in a floral dress.
We seem to see a short-haired goddess standing on the bank of the Yellow River, praying for happiness and health for her people.
This kind of shape is not outdated even today. From this, we can know that as early as more than five thousand years ago, our ancestors already had some hazy aesthetics about shape.