Chapter 6 Section 5 Xishuipo, Hongshan Temple, Zhufeng and other special tombs

In 1987, a strange "tomb" was discovered in Xishuipo, Puyang City, Henan Province, with a pit in the shape of a shield.In the middle of the tomb, there is an old male skeleton, which is generally in a supine upright posture with the head south and the feet north. Three more juvenile skeletons were found along with a pair of leg bones and a pile of triangular-shaped clam shells.It is unclear what kind of tomb this is. Some scholars believe that the clamshell dragon and tiger were not buried at the same time as the three juvenile skeletons around them, but were closely related to the old male skeleton between the dragon and the tiger. The age is 6000 years ago (Figure 1).

The clamshell dragon is located on the east side of the old skeleton, with a head in the north and a tail in the south. It is 1.78 meters long.The clamshell tiger is located on the west side of the old skeleton. The back of the tiger is opposite to the back of the dragon, about 1.5 meters apart, with the head north and the tail south.The tiger is 1.39 meters long, its head is slightly lowered, its tail is drooping, and its limbs are intertwined. Its shape seems to be walking.The pair of dragons and tigers are both made of unprocessed natural clam shells, and the whole shape is full of three-dimensionality.Among them, the dragon pattern is the earliest discovery in the Central Plains so far.

There are three groups of dragon and tiger patterns on clam shells found in Xishuipo, arranged in a line from north to south, with a distance of about 20 and 25 meters. The second group has images of deer and other animals. Riding alone.The interpretation of the meaning of these three groups of dragon and tiger patterns has not yet formed a unified understanding, but most scholars believe that the dragon was once a totem worship object of the Chinese ancestors, and the tiger was like a symbol of divine power. The fact that the old man was accompanied by a dragon and a tiger after his death at least shows that his identity during his lifetime was respected at that time.

This kind of dragon remains were not only found in the prehistoric cultures of the Yellow River Basin, but also in the prehistoric cultures of the Yangtze River Basin and the West Liao River Basin, and they were all earlier. In 1993, a dragon pattern made of river pebbles was found on the Jiaodun site about 25 kilometers south of the Yangtze River in Huangmei, Hubei, and its age was about 6000-5000 years ago.The dragon pendulum is sculpted on the braised soil, with a total length of 4.46 meters, with its head on the west and its tail on the east.The dragon-shaped mound sculpture in the West Liaohe River Basin was discovered in 1994 on the Chahai site in Fuxin. It belongs to the Xinglongwa culture and is about 8,000 years old. It is the earliest known dragon pattern.The dragon is placed in the middle of the site with reddish-brown stones of equal size. It is nearly 20 meters long and about two meters wide.In the north of the dragon is a large house site with an area of ​​about 120 square meters, and on the south side of the dragon there are closely arranged tombs and sacrificial pits.This plane layout relationship shows that as early as seven or eight thousand years ago, the dragon had a special meaning in the society at that time.

In 1989, a rare tomb with urn coffins was discovered in Hongshan Temple, Ruzhou, Henan, and its age was around 5,500 years ago.The tomb is a rectangular earth pit, 6.2 meters long from east to west, 3.5 meters wide from north to south, and about 0.5 meters deep. The southeast corner has been destroyed. The bottom of the tomb is covered with a layer of fine loess about 10 cm thick. The urn coffins with burial utensils, lids or bowls are arranged in 11 rows from north to south.One person is buried in each urn coffin, all of which are secondary burials, including men, women, old and young. The oldest person is over 60 years old, and the youngest person is under 10 years old.The base of each urn had a circular perforation pierced before firing, suggesting that they were made specifically as burial implements.What kind of social customs and historical background are reflected in this kind of urn coffin cluster tomb where more than a hundred people are buried together is worth studying.However, what attracts more attention is that these urn coffins are also decorated with painted or plastic figures, lizards and so on.Painted patterns for characters, animals and plants.The figure pattern generally draws the shape of the human body, not the facial features.Animal patterns include birds, turtles, deer, lizards, fish patterns, etc. The shapes are already abstract, and the local features are often exaggerated.Plant patterns include leaf pattern, continuous branch pattern and so on.In addition, male genital patterns are painted on individual female urn coffins, reflecting the awareness of male reproductive worship that existed at that time.

The Zhufeng tomb is located on the Zhufeng site about five kilometers south of Linqu County, Shandong. Three wooden tombs were excavated in 1987 and 1989, two of which were single coffins with double coffins and one with one coffin and one coffin. They belonged to the Shandong Longshan Culture In the late period, it is the largest wooden coffin tomb discovered so far 4,000 years ago. The two tombs with double coffin and single coffin are basically the same in shape and structure.One of the tombs is 6.3-6.44 meters long, 4.1-4.35 meters wide, and 1.48-1.72 meters deep. Outside the inner coffin is a 0.25-0.35-meter-high raw soil two-story platform, and the outer coffin is placed in raw soil. On the second-story platform, a second-story platform of mature soil was built outside the outer coffin, so that there are three steps from the entrance to the bottom of the tomb.The outer coffin is well-shaped, 4.65 meters long, 2.75 meters wide, 0.34-0.52 meters high, and 0.12-0.16 meters thick.The inner coffin is also in the shape of a well, 3.85 meters long, 1.6 meters wide, 0.5-0.55 meters high, and 0.12-0.15 meters thick. There is a cover on the inner coffin.The wooden coffin in the inner coffin is placed on two wooden skids. The coffin is 2.6 meters long, 0.58-0.6 meters wide, 0.3 meters high, and 0.05-0.12 meters thick.One person was buried in the coffin.In another tomb with double coffin and single coffin, there is also a side box on one side of the coffin, and a foot box on the outer end of the inner coffin. Hold the deer teeth.The found tombs with single coffin and single coffin have been partially destroyed, and the scale is quite large.The tomb is 6.68 meters long, with a two-story platform made of raw earth. The coffin is 4.38 meters long, and the top of the coffin has a beam and a cover.The coffin is 2.64 meters long and 0.72 meters wide, with a small side box on one side of the coffin.

The burial objects of these three large wooden coffin tombs are very rich, including all kinds of exquisite pottery, bone wares, jade wares and so on.Pottery includes tripod, 鬹 (gui gauge), 罍 (lei base), beans, basins, three-legged basins, bowls, boxes, eggshell pottery cups, etc.Jade wares include axes, knives, rings, hairpins [zan zan Yinping], crown ornaments, pendants, etc.Among them, the hosta is translucent milky white, with three embossed human faces on both sides, 10.3 cm long.The head crown is 23 centimeters long, composed of jade rods and fan-shaped openwork carvings, and is inlaid with turquoise, which is extremely precious.In addition, many traces of decayed painted wooden utensils were found between the inner and outer coffins, in various colors such as red, black, yellow, gray, and white; some also showed crocodile bone plates and pig mandibles.

The Zhufeng tomb is not only large in scale and rich in burial objects, but also the earliest double-coffin and single-coffin tombs discovered so far, which has a profound impact on the coffin system in the burial of later generations.