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Image provided by Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
Ten thousand years ago, the footprints of the “giant” landed on the Pujiang River in Zhejiang, and this is the “mountain climber”.
At a time when most cave dwellers were still living in the Lingnan Mountains for thousands of years, the “mountain climbers” bid farewell to the survival mode of mountain and forest caves and began to settle in villages, drawing a stunning chapter in the history of East Asia.
In the autumn and winter of 2000, in Shangshan Village, Huangzhai Town, Pujiang County, the Shangshan Site “jumped” from time and space ten thousand years ago to the eyes of archaeologists, breaking through our previous understanding of the early Neolithic archaeological culture and appearance in southern China, and giving us a direction to explore the prehistoric history before the Hemudu culture. In 2006, the archaeological community named this type of relic as the Shangshan culture, marking the beginning of a comprehensive study of the Shangshan culture.
In 2020, the Shangshan Site was discovered for a full 20 years.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the naming of the mountain culture. On November 21, 2021, the “Rice, Source, and Qiming – Zhejiang Mountainous Culture Archaeological Special Exhibition” was exhibited at the National Museum of China.
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Uphill colored pottery
Ten thousand years in Zhejiang
This exhibition is jointly organized by the National Museum of China, the Archaeological Society of China, the Propaganda Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, with strong support from the Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and relevant county and city governments.
The exhibition showcases nearly 200 cultural relics from the early, middle, and late periods of the mountain culture, including the earliest carbonized rice, the earliest painted pottery, and the earliest settled village ruins, which are important landmarks of the mountain culture. There are N “most” in an exhibition, and the “mountain climbers” are very proud.
The origins of agriculture, humanity, and nations constitute the three major topics of archaeology worldwide. Rice has fed more than half of the world’s population to this day, and the development of rice agriculture has completely changed the production and lifestyle of human civilization. For ten thousand years, the rich prehistoric archaeological culture has constructed a diverse and intertwined cultural lineage in the Zhejiang region, and the mountain culture represents the source of Zhejiang’s long-standing culture.
The mountain culture can be divided into three periods: early, middle, and late. The early period was around 10000 years ago, the middle period was around 9000 years ago, and the late period was around 8500 years ago. At present, a total of 20 mountain culture sites, represented by the Shangshan Site, have been discovered in Zhejiang Province. They are generally distributed in river basins between low mountains and hills in central and southern Zhejiang. Among them, the Jinqu Basin is the most dense, with Jinhua accounting for 2/3, reaching as many as 13 sites.
The “most” of climbing mountains for thousands of years and the “most” of Zhejiang for thousands of years have filled too many gaps. The source of Zhejiang culture is here. The source of world rice culture is here.
What is the concept of ten thousand years?
A classic line that the Supreme Treasure once said to the Purple Cloud Fairy: If I had to add a deadline to this love, I hope it would be… ten thousand years.
If Zhizunbao is in Beijing, he should go and see what the real ten thousand years are, which is a grain of rice, a piece of painted pottery, and a village.
The earliest rice
The small black spot in front of me, which can only be seen through a magnifying glass, has existed for ten thousand years.
This is the first relatively intact carbonized rice, discovered in the uphill site in 2005. From it, we can see the human cultural genes that have lasted for thousands of years.
Shangshan rice is the earliest cultivated rice relic discovered in the world so far.
Why do you say that?
The pottery at the Shangshan site is mostly charcoal filled pottery. More than 90% of the early charcoal filled pottery in the mountains was mixed with dense crushed rice husks, which can be clearly observed on the cross-section of the pottery pieces – this is the world’s earliest rice husk, which is the broken husk after threshing and rice harvesting. People consciously mix the leftovers of rice into clay to make pottery after consuming it.
Analysis shows that the retained characteristics of the spikelet axis in rice husks prove that the cultivation of rice has emerged in the mountain culture, and rice has become one of the important grains for mountain people..It has also been enriched and strengthened.
Different researchers have found multiple pieces of evidence on objects such as stone tablets and grinding discs, including the sickle luster of harvesting Poaceae plants and the processing of rice, indicating the emergence of harvesting tools for rice. The matching use of grinding discs and grinding rods may often be used for rice threshing.
The results of interdisciplinary research all point to one conclusion: the mountain culture is the birthplace of world rice agriculture. At present, archaeologists are vigorously searching for rice paddies in the mountain culture, hoping to provide a more complete evidence chain for rice farming in the mountain culture.
In October 2020, Jiang Leping, the excavation leader of the Shangshan Site and a researcher at the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, visited Mr. Yuan Longping with the “evidence chain” of rice.
He pointed to the photos of the stone grinding disc and stone grinding rod and introduced, “This is a tool that has been used to grind rice husks for thousands of years. It is not easy to find agricultural evidence, and we have found a rich and complete chain of evidence.” Yuan Longping praised, “Rice for thousands of years, it’s not simple! It’s not simple!”
The earliest painted pottery
Colored pottery is an important symbol of prehistoric culture in the Yellow River Basin, but the earliest colored pottery in China appeared in the Qiantang River Basin, and a rich variety of colored pottery was unearthed from the Cross Lake Bridge culture dating back 8000 years. The origin of the cross lake bridge painted pottery can be traced back to the mountain culture. The Shangshan Culture painted pottery is the earliest painted pottery in the world.
Colored pottery from the Shangshan culture, dressed in red and adorned with white.
Red color is mainly a strip of color, decorated on the lips or shoulders of pots and jars. The most typical utensil is a large mouthed basin. This kind of implements is painted with red clothes on the outer wall, milk white clothes on the inner wall, and dark red red ribbons around the mouth, which appear in the middle and late period sites of Shangshan culture, such as Huxi, Qiaotou, Xiatang, Xiaohuangshan, etc.
The milky white patterns are more diverse. It is mainly found on pots, pot shaped jars, circular foot plates, and bowl shaped vessels, and is more common on the shoulders and necks of the first two types of vessels and the abdomen of the last two types of vessels. When applied to pottery clothing, it has a protruding feeling when touched. The patterns include sun patterns, short line combination patterns, folded teeth patterns, and dots.
The sun pattern refers to the most clear concrete symbol, reflecting the spiritual and cultural connotations of consciousness, faith, and so on. Several sets of short line combination patterns are believed to be the earliest hexagram symbols, and this type of painted pottery mainly appears in the Qiaotou and Huxi sites.
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Carbonized rice discovered in the mountain ruins
“The first person in Zhejiang”
A large number of pottery and stone tools left by the mountaineers, as well as several molars and a femur, were found in the mountaineering site.
Two tombs from the late period of the Shangshan culture (approximately 9000 to 8500 years ago) have been discovered at the Qiaotou Site in Yiwu. The tomb with the number M44 is a rectangular vertical pit tomb, which for the first time unearthed well preserved human bone remains from the late period of the Shangshan culture. No wonder experts call it “the first person in Zhejiang” and “the first tomb in Zhejiang”.
The tomb owner bent his limbs on the side, with his head facing east, and buried a pottery jar with him, placed between the upper limb bone and the pelvic bone. The tomb owner has an oval shaped skull, with a medium long skull, a high skull, and a moderate skull width, a high face, and a moderate face width. The tomb owner has a medium low orbit, a slanted forehead, and a flat jaw. The facial flatness is moderate, and the nasal shape is unknown. In terms of physical characteristics, it belongs to the Mongolian ethnic group, which is the earliest visible appearance of a mountain climber to date.
The First Village in Ancient China
The mountain people are also ahead of others in terms of “living”.
Let’s take a look at the early Neolithic sites that are older than the Shangshan Culture: the Zengpiyan site in Guilin, Guangxi, and the Xianren Cave site in Jiangxi for ten thousand years. They can be as early as 12000 years ago, and are basically in the the Nanling Mountain area. They have a unified name: cave sites. At that time, people were still living in caves. When the environment around a cave was not suitable for survival, people would move to other places, so it could not be called settlement, but also called semi settlement. That is to say, the concept of a village has not yet been formed.
It is the “mountaineer” who first walked out of the southern cave and opened up a new life in the wilderness basin of the river valley.
In the early period of the Shangshan culture, a large number of pillar cave relics and house sites with grooved foundations appeared, indicating that the people of the Shangshan had already lived in wooden structures. In the late stage, regular housing sites emerged. This type of ground or railed architecture is very common in the middle and late Neolithic sites in the Jiangnan region, and the residential mode has been basically established during the Shangshan Culture period.
Moreover, the area of Shangshan cultural relics often reaches tens of thousands of square meters, resulting in a certain layout of villages. In the middle and late stages, ring trench settlements also emerged.
Rivers, hills, villages, human habitation, barnyard grass, acorns, Job’s tears, reeds, ginger, lotus roots, kudzu root, lilies, yams… With abundant food and delicious fruits and vegetables, thousands of years ago, Shangshan was already a “land of fish and rice”. In the middle stage of the development of the Shangshan culture, the number of sites gradually increased, and human footprints reached the Yiwu area, making the Jinqu Basin a center.