Starting My Treasure Hunting In England

The piece of land now assigned to Liang En and the others is located not far from the sacrificial pit they found earlier, which was named Pit No. 1. The distance between the two is no more than 15 meters.

Of course, the current excavation work does not need to be carried out by Liang En and Jeanne alone. After all, one day is enough for the scholars to mobilize enough manpower to take charge of this work.

So what Liang En and the others have to do next is very simple, that is, with the help of these people, complete the exploration and excavation work, and conduct mapping of possible local presences.

"Something about this soil is not normal." When she dug down to more than 1 meter, Joan of Arc discovered that there were some differences between the soil here and ordinary soil.

The soil here is first a thin layer, like fine sand, and then a thicker layer, mixed with black humus and small stones.

"It's very simple. The difference you found comes from a flood." Liang En said with a smile, "This huge Shu capital plain was not the land of abundance from the beginning."

In the early days, the Shudu Plain was actually an area prone to floods and droughts. For those who had to live by the river for survival, a flood or drought was likely to destroy their accumulation for several years.

To give the simplest example, Sanxingdui archeology proves that the reason why the ancient Shu people's settlements in this area were abandoned was related to huge floods. Now it seems that the reason why Jinsha was abandoned is also likely to be because of floods.

The reason for this is that the upper reaches of the Minjiang River flows through the steep mountains and plains. Once it reaches the Shudu Plain, the water speed suddenly slows down, and a large amount of sediment and rocks are deposited, blocking the river channel.

As a result, when the rainy season arrives every year, the water in the Minjiang River and other tributaries surges, often causing flooding; and when there is insufficient rain, droughts occur.

This situation was not resolved until the end of the Warring States Period. King Qin Zhao of the Qin State appointed Li Bing, who knew astronomy and geography and lived in seclusion in Min'an, as the governor of the Shu State.

After Li Bing took office, he first determined to eradicate floods in the Minjiang River, develop agriculture in western Sichuan, benefit the Chengdu Plain, and create an economic foundation for the Qin State to unify China. So he built Dujiangyan after summing up the experience of his predecessors.

What everyone today refers to as Dujiangyan in a narrow sense often refers to the drinking water diversion device located in the middle of the river that irrigates the estuary. But in fact, this system should include a complete set of irrigation systems on the Shudu Plain.

After this set of projects was built, the Shudu Plain changed from a disaster-prone place in the past to a land of abundance known as "where floods and droughts follow people, who don't know about famine, and where fertile fields are thousands of miles away."

It's just that people's previous records of this land were limited to the history after the Qin Kingdom destroyed Shu. Before that, there were only a few legends passed down by mouth, such as Li Bai's sentence "There are silkworms and fish." Fu, how confused was the founding of the country?"

After entering modern times, people gradually understood these stories hidden in history through archeology, and sorted out the history of Shu before the Warring States Period.

"It turns out that the name of the Land of Abundance comes from here." Joan of Arc said in Chinese with a strange accent, "I hope we can go well this time and find something valuable."

Perhaps because of Joan of Arc's blessing, the excavation work went very smoothly. They only dug down for more than two meters when they saw something new appearing. The first thing that jumped into their eyes was an ivory with cracks on it.

The appearance of ivory here is a very interesting thing, because there are no elephants in this area now. The only elephants in China are in Yunnan Province in the very south.

However, in the era when this ruins were located, elephants were widely distributed in China. Confucius once said in the Book of Songs: If you look forward to the Huaiyi people, come and offer their Chen. The Yuan Dynasty turtle and elephant teeth greatly bribed the Southern Jin Dynasty.

The meaning of this poem in "The Book of Songs - Song of Lu - Panshui" is that the barbaric Huaiyi have surrendered to our country and are hurriedly coming to offer treasures as tribute. These treasures include beautiful jade, giant tortoise tusks, and large quantities of gold produced in the south.

Considering that the so-called Huaiyi were located in the Huaihe River Basin at that time, but they were able to use ivory as their own local product, this is enough to show that the distribution area of ​​elephants in that era was much farther north than today.

Archaeological discoveries also support the legitimacy of these records. , in 2003, a jade statue and some elephant bones were unearthed from Yin Ruins in Henan Province further north. From this, it can be inferred that there should be elephants in Henan Province during the Shang Dynasty;

So at that time, there were naturally more elephants in the Shu region further south. At the same time, both "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" and "Guoyu" mentioned that there were elephants and rhinos in the Shu region.

However, the number of ivory tusks found in this ruins now far exceeds everyone's previous guesses. In just two pits, they found more than 60 ivory tusks. Those huge and precious ivory tusks were piled at the bottom of the pits like bundles of firewood.

"I have a little question." Joan of Arc said, looking at the ivory being cleaned out little by little, "These ivory should have been very precious in ancient times."

"Yes, it is indeed precious." Liang En nodded and said. "Especially compared to now, they are more precious. Although elephants were not rare at that time, hunting elephants with cold weapons is definitely a life-threatening job."

"Then why do you think there are so many ivory here?" Joan of Arc looked at the ivory in confusion and said. "This place doesn't look like it used to be where there were a lot of high-grade buildings."

After traveling around with Liang En and seeing so many things, Joan of Arc also learned a lot about archeology, including the observation and analysis of wild ruins.

After checking here, she quickly realized that the situation at this location was somewhat abnormal. At least judging from what she found, there were not many traces of ground buildings on the surface.

According to Joan of Arc's idea, since there is a high-level sacrificial pit here, there should theoretically be a large number of similar sacrificial buildings around it, but this does not seem to be the case now.

"I guess this is a special kind of sacrifice." Liang En said his analysis. "In the ancient Chinese tradition, there is a practice of using ivory to pray against flooding. This should be the case."

Although there is a saying in archeology that unknown things are called religious objects, but Liang En is not just guessing here, but has evidence.

In fact, as a country whose history has been passed down to this day, China's ancient civilization has a strong sense of compliance, for example, when it comes to worshiping gods related to floods.

For example, the Dragon King Temple in China today is often located in relatively low-lying areas. According to the simple religious theory here, if the Dragon King Temple, a temple of a god who manages floods, is placed in a place prone to flooding, then the god will stop flood.

Of course, this method may not work. For example, we often hear that a place called Dragon King Temple was soaked in water again after a flood. But in ancient times, when there was no other way, it was not a bad thing to have spiritual sustenance. .

While Liang En and the others were chatting, the excavation work was proceeding rapidly. As the excavation work continued, some gadgets originally hidden in the gaps of the ivory began to be gradually found, revealing more aspects. situation here.