The familiar “lost civilizations” of the Maya and Atlantis …… may now be adding a new name to the list.
The world-renowned journal of the Society for American Archaeology, Archaeology, has named the “Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries of the World” for the past decade: “The Eve of Chinese Civilization” – the site of Shaanxi’s Shi’an Mountains. -The site of the Shaanxi Shihuang Mountains is on the list. For many people in Shaanxi, it may seem strange.
This “lost city of civilization” has not yet found any written records. However, it will probably change Chinese civilization.
01/ A thousand years of silence, the discovery of the stone mount
The “Shi Ahn (mǎo) site” was selected as one of the “Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries of 2012” and “Top Ten Field Archaeological Discoveries of the World” as well as the “World’s Major Archaeological Discoveries of the 21st Century”. World’s Major Archaeological Discoveries of the 21st Century”.
Such a large number of recognitions shows its “stone shattering” impact. The relics and artifacts are the marks of civilization. So, what does Archaeology magazine say about the “Shi Ahn site”?
The ancient stone walls visible on the edge of the Mawusu Desert in northern Shaanxi were initially thought to have been part of the Great Wall. But when archaeologists investigated them more closely, they realized that something much older and more complex was buried there. They discovered the lost city of the Stone Mountains, dating back to 2300 B.C.
Over the past decade, excavators have uncovered a stone city with massive fortifications and complex infrastructure, thousands of lavish artifacts, and a 230-foot-tall (about 69 meters high, City Notes note) stepped pyramid that served as the residence of the ruling and leading families of the Stone Mountains. The dating and location of the site is surprising because it is believed that – Chinese civilization first developed in the Central Plains some 500 years after the establishment of the Shihuang Mountains.
Sun Zhouyong (Director of the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology) said, “The Shihuang Mountains reveal a unique trajectory of urbanization in China. This once powerful kingdom was completely unknown in ancient written records.”
In fact, “Shi Ahn site” is not “overnight fame”.
All things cognitive, there is a process, as the edge of northern Shaanxi, here since ancient times for a thousand years of the border battlefield, and there is no written record.
At that time, because of a large number of collapsed and abandoned stone walls, it was once considered an ancient Great Wall site. However, the large number of “jade” is incredible as a symbol of ancient Chinese civilization, and the appearance of the prehistoric border fortress is undoubtedly puzzling.
Therefore, these jade artifacts circulating in the folklore implicitly indicate its mysterious origin, and thus, it becomes the beginning of rediscovery.
Specifically, the stone mount was first known in the 1920s and 1930s. At that time, there was a large amount of jade in circulation here. Over the last hundred years, it is said to have been as many as four thousand pieces.
In the 1930s, the German-American Salmoni acquired jade from the peasants of the then Yulin Prefecture, allegedly out of this. One of the largest jade jangles purchased by him is now in the Far Eastern Museum of Art in Cologne, Germany. Later, many foreign museums and academic institutions collected similar jade artifacts, which were also mostly traced to the Shenmu Shihuang site.
Jade artifacts that became a key. Why? It is important to know that northern Shaanxi is not a source of jade.
As in the Zhou Dynasty, the “Nine Cauldrons” were cast to indicate power. Here, the large number of jade artifacts, which have been removed from the sphere of social production, already indicates the existence of social hierarchy and the relative concentration of power.
Their origin also indicates the existence of the “open trade” and the “external circulation” of the ancient city.
By 1976, the “Shi Ahn site” officially entered the academic field. At that time, Dai Yingxin, a professor from the Department of Archaeology of Northwestern University, made a study tour in Shanxi, combined with the related rumors and clues from the people, and conducted a review and collected a number of artifacts in September of the same year.
At the time of the “Ten-Year Catastrophe”, most of the artifacts were sold as jade to the Gaojiabao Agricultural Company in Shenmu County. According to the responsible acquirer recalls: “a total of two large baskets, no less than four or five hundred pieces, and exquisite materials”. The 126 pieces collected by Professor Dai Yingxin were among those that were not selected.
Previously, in 1958, Shaanxi Province carried out a census of cultural relics and discovered the site. 1963, during a survey of the Great Wall along the northern Shaanxi Province, the site was set foot and recorded as “Shi Ahn Mountain Site”. In the following decades, the site of the Stone Mountains was surveyed many times. Here, we will not repeat them all.
The stone carving of “God’s face” in the “Stone mount site”◎NEWS
In prehistoric civilization, it is always inseparable from “god” and “sacrifice”. A large number of carvings in this regard have been found in the “Shi Ahn site”, as well as evidence of large-scale “human sacrifice”.
For example, in recent years, archaeologists have found 70 amazing reliefs of stone snakes, monsters and half-human beasts, which are very similar to later Bronze Age portraits in China. The contents can be roughly divided into five categories: “divine faces,” “human faces,” “divine animals,” animals, and symbols.
In August 2020, the National Geographic Channel screened the documentary “Overlooking Ancient China”. In the third episode, “China’s Pompeii,” Dr. Alan McCarthy visited the “Stone Mountains” site.
“One of the largest cities on Earth at the time. The Shi Ahn people created amazing Mayan-style carvings that have never been found before in China.”
02/ Mysterious veil, the city of a thousand years
“The site of the Stone Mountains, located in Shenmu, Shaanxi, the site is located on the north side of the mountain mount of the Balao River in the village of Stone Mount in the town of Gaojiabao. It is more than ten kilometers south of the Great Wall and more than twenty kilometers west of the Yellow River.
It was built around 2300 B.C. and abandoned around 1800 B.C. The site contains the inner and outer city and the “Imperial City Terrace”, which is the largest known city site in China during the Late Neolithic period (Longshan period to Xia stage), but there is no written historical record.
For your understanding, the “City Record” interprets the “mysterious city” of “Shi Ahn site” from five aspects.
First: the scale is grand, the first in prehistory
What is the concept of 4 million square meters?
According to 1 mu ≈ 666 square meters, 1500 mu ≈ 1 square kilometer
4 million square meters ≈ 4 square kilometers, equivalent to the size of five Beijing Imperial Palace today.
In July 2011, the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology basically explored the scope of the ancient city of Shi Ahn; excavations were carried out in 2012, focusing mainly on the outer city, inner city and imperial city platform.
This magnificent fortress, with nearly 10 kilometers of walls found, surrounds a 70-meter-tall imperial city platform and an inner sanctuary. The total area exceeds 4 million square meters, much larger than the similarly dated sites of Liangzhu (more than 3 million square meters) and Taosi (2.7 million square meters), among others.
Second: the emergence of the city system, rewriting history
The Zhouli-Kaogong records the ancient Chinese camp city: “The craftsman camped the country, nine miles square, beside three gates. The country is nine warp and nine weft, and nine tracks are painted by the warp.”
However, the “stone mount site” is breathtaking in terms of shape and regulation: it consists of the imperial platform, the inner city and the outer city, and has more than ten kilometers of inner and outer walls, a prototype city plan that echoes a thousand years. The construction of the walls alone required 125,000 cubic meters of stone, equivalent to the volume of 50 Olympic swimming pools.
The highest point was a 20-story platform city, half the size of the Egyptian Pyramids of Khufu of the same period (2250 BC), but with a base four times larger. It was a huge project in the Neolithic era of that time.
Third: Technological innovation that transcends the times
The scale of the fortifications in the Shihuang Mountains is astonishing and ingenious, advancing the archaeological discovery of urn cities such as the earliest known in China by two thousand years.
There is a perfect defense system here, and the fortifications use the “horse face” structure – the mainstream structure of ancient Chinese defense architecture. For example, “the interior of the stone walls were reinforced with woven wood,” which Carbon 14 dating suggests is 2300 BCE. Previously, scholars believed that this technique was not used until the Han Dynasty, more than 2,000 years later.
Fourth: Prehistoric era, the example of human sacrifice
Here, there is another important phenomenon: ritual sacrifice. The number and location of the skulls suggest a beheading ritual that took place during the laying of the wall’s foundation – the earliest known example of “human sacrifice” in prehistoric China.
Forensic experts determined that almost all of these were young girls, likely from enemy prisoners. “The scale of ritual violence was unprecedented in early China. Centuries later, “human sacrifice” became “a defining feature of Shang civilization (1600 BC-1046 BC)” before the post-Shang dynasty ended the practice.
The black and dark green jade embedded in the stone wall highlights the ancient people of East Asia’s reverence for “jade” to ward off evil spirits and enemies, and reflects the power and wealth of the elites of the Shihuang Mountains.
Fifth: foreign exchange, openness has been initiated
The rich quantity of jade artifacts indicates that the Shihuang Mountains had to import jade in large quantities from distant lands. It can be concluded that from the Altai steppe in the north to the vicinity of the Yellow Sea, the Shihuang Mountains exchanged ideas, technology and commodities with all of them.
Many of the artifacts found in the Shihuang Mountains could only have come from distant places. For example, there are remains of crocodile skins – from the swampy region further south. It is likely that crocodile skin drums were used in rituals, indicating the important role of music in the life of the Shi’an court.
The 20 identical thin, smooth and curved bones found are the earliest prototypes of a primitive mouth-string instrument. It can be said that “the Stone Mountains are the birthplace of the mouth reed instrument.”
03/ The Eve of Civilization, the Stone Mountains
Never before has this place been mentioned in ancient Chinese texts, let alone an ancient city of such a large scale and complexity, and with such close interaction with foreign cultures.
According to the Carbon 14 series of dating, the Shi Ahn site dates back to 4,300 years ago, 500 years before the civilization of the Central Plains, more than a thousand kilometers to the south. The earliest date for the Xia Dynasty from the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Dating Project” is about 4,000 years ago, and the Stone Mountains are earlier than Xia.
The sheer scale of the project has led archaeologists to believe that the Shihuang Mountains enjoyed the loyalty of smaller satellite towns in their vicinity and controlled their workforce.
More than 70 sites from the same Neolithic period have been excavated in northern Shaanxi, and ten are located in the Balao River basin, where the Stone Mountains are located. “These satellite villages or towns were like the moon, revolving around the Shihuang, laying a solid social foundation for the formation of the early Shihuang state” – (Sun Zhouyong, Director of Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology).
Historians believe that it may have been the center of northern China in the early Xia period. Some experts have studied that it could be the capital city of the Yellow Emperor, Kunlun City (the site of Taosi Temple in Xianfen, Shanxi, the capital of the Tang Yao Emperor).
So far, it is basically confirmed that it was a mega-colony, probably the central colony of the whole south-central Inner Mongolia, northern Shanxi and northern Shaanxi, and also the “ancient city”, “ancient country” and “country” as Mr. Su Bingqi said. “ancient state” stage in the three-step process.
Why do you say so? Here, reacquaint yourself with the Jin-Shaan plateau region.
Around 2300 B.C., the northern end of the Jin-Shaan plateau formed a pattern with the Shihuang City as the core; roughly at the same time, the southern end had the site of the Lushan Mountains with an area of over 2 million square meters, which became the center of the southern polity and may represent an evenly matched group with the Shihuang Group.
Therefore, the main social groups in this region of the Jin-Shaan plateau include at least the northern group with the Shihuang Mountains as the core, the central group with the Lushan Mountains as the core, and the Taosi group with which the Shihuang Mountains had very close relations. Within a certain period of time, they and the Xia group stood on top of each other, building a social picture of “ten thousand states”.
For the still “mysterious” Shiyuan, the Taoji site, which is said to be “of the same lineage and origin”, becomes a reference object.
Pottery Temple, and the stone mount is the same metropolitan site
Excavation results have more than the most: 1.
1, the earliest astronomical observation system for measuring sun and shadow
2, the world’s oldest observatory
3, the earliest writing until the excavation of the site
4、The earliest dragon totem found in the Central Plains
5、The world’s earliest building material “slate tile” until the excavation of the site
6、The largest prehistoric burial in the middle reaches of the Yellow River
……
However, there are still some clues as to why the stone mount was abandoned after 500 years. It wasn’t due to earthquakes, floods or plague. Warfare may have driven people away, but more evidence points to climate change.
In the 3000 BC era, the climate in northern Shaanxi was warm and humid. By 2000 BC – 1700 BC, it became dry and cold. The lakes dried up and the forests disappeared …… The Shihuang Mountaineers migrated to unknown lands.
Nowadays, the Mauwusu Desert is almost wiped out. To the naked eye, the yellow earth wasteland around the Shihuang Mount City is lush and green. Nowadays, the rainfall in northern Shaanxi such as Yulin is even no less than that of Xi’an in the Guanzhong Guan plain. Thousands of years of vicissitudes and changes are all in sight.
More importantly, it is about the origin of Chinese civilization.
“The Shihuang Mountains, along with many other sites, show that Chinese civilization had many roots and was not confined to the Middle Plains in the middle reaches of the Yellow River,” says Jessica Rosen, professor of Chinese art and archaeology at Oxford University.
“There are several features that derive even from the world outside of today’s northern China – for example, the stone architecture is more related to the grasslands than to the Middle Kingdom. Other features include the use of grazing animals for subsistence, raising cattle and grazing sheep, and metallurgy. In effect, China absorbed these very important technologies and seamlessly integrated them into its own culture.”
The stones of the Stone Mountains reveal much. These, too, challenge our understanding of Chinese civilization in the earliest period. “The eve of Chinese civilization,” the Stone Mountains have more secrets.
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