Chapter 20 The fourth section of the gift requiem

When prehistoric society developed to a certain stage, human intelligence had a great development. People began to think about life and death, and came to the conclusion that the soul is the master of the human body.Human beings not only have the concept of the soul, but also believe that the soul has the property of immortality, thinking that there is a world of ghosts outside the real world.Hence the worship of ghosts, and the awareness of the proper placement of the souls of the dead.The best way to appease the dead is to hold a grand funeral, bury the body, express mourning, and pray for the soul to be reborn as soon as possible.

The custom of burying the dead began in the late Paleolithic age.The cavemen buried the dead in the caves where they lived, expressing the kinship between life and death.In the Neolithic Age, burial gradually became a strict system, and different burial methods appeared in different cultural communities in different regions. The existence of the clan public cemetery is a remarkable feature of the primitive clan system society.Cultural sites such as Peiligang, Yangshao, Dawenkou, Majiabang, Songze, Daxi, Majiayao, and Qijia have all discovered large-scale public cemeteries, with dozens or even hundreds of tombs arranged relatively neatly together.In the later cemeteries, there was a phenomenon of burials in different areas, which may be group burials in family units.

Prehistoric burial methods generally include flat burial, earth pit burial, urn coffin burial, etc. Others include cave burial and sarcophagus burial, and the number is slightly less.Flat ground burial refers to burying corpses directly on flat ground. Neolithic residents in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River used this method. Many such burials have been found in Majiabang, Songze, and Xuejiagang cultural sites.Pit burial is the most popular prehistoric burial method. The pits can be deep or shallow. Single burials are more common, and there are also joint burials.Pit burial is the main form of cultural tombs in Peiligang, Yangshao, Dawenkou, Longshan and other cultures.Urn coffin burial refers to the burial of corpses in large pottery. It is mainly suitable for burying children who died young, and it is more popular in the middle reaches of the Yellow River.The Banpo people of the Yangshao culture have a special urn coffin burial place, which is buried inside the village and not mixed with adult tombs outside the village.

For the most part, the burials of the dead were one-time, but a number of secondary burials have also been found.The second burial refers to a temporary burial after the death, after the body decomposes, the bones are picked up and buried again, and buried in a public cemetery.A large number of secondary burials have been unearthed in the cemetery of Wang Yin in Yanzhou, Shandong Province of the Dawenkou Culture, the cemetery of historians in Weinan, Shaanxi Province of the Yangshao Culture, and the cemetery of Hengzhen Village in Huayin.Some even buried dozens of people in the same tomb in sequence. This kind of tomb with secondary burials has been found in Northeast China, Central China, and South China.

The resting posture of the dead was also very particular in prehistoric times, and different regions have different traditional habits.The postures for burying the dead mainly include leaning up and straightening up, bending over, bending down, squatting and so on.Standing upright is the most common burial style. The deceased is placed on his back and his hands and feet are naturally vertical.Bending down is just the opposite of burial on the back, where the deceased is placed on his back.Residents of the Majiabang culture are prone to burial, and similar burials are also found in the Daxi and Qijia cultures.Limb flexion burial is a special burial method in which the limbs are bent and bound and then buried. It can be seen in Majiayao and Daxi cultures. This burial method is still very popular in the Guanzhong area of ​​the Bronze Age.Squatting burials are similar to bent-leg burials, but with the head up and in a squatting posture, which are mainly found in shell mound sites in the south.

In order to appease the dead, some necessities of life should be buried with the dead for their use in the underworld.The burial objects of the Neolithic Age are mainly pottery, production tools, decorations and food, and sometimes dead bodies or whole animals.Generally, the number of burial objects used in the early days was small, and there was no obvious difference between the tombs. This aspect reflects a state of equality, and also shows that social productivity is relatively low.By the end of the Neolithic Age, some large-scale tombs appeared, with significantly more burial objects than other tombs, some as many as hundreds of pieces, while some small tombs had nothing. This not only shows the fact that the rich and the poor are divided, but also shows that The society has grown a powerful class, and the prehistoric society characterized by equality and average began to collapse.

The burial pottery is generally a daily utensil, and later there are specially fired Ming ware, which are special funerary objects, small in size, poor in craftsmanship, and of no practical value.The production tools buried with them are also some practical ones. In some areas, men generally use stone axes, stone shovels, stone adzes, etc., while women use spinning wheels and millstones, etc., which coincide with the production activities they engaged in during their lifetime, indicating that the social division of labor has been established. There are obvious gender characteristics. Livestock are used as burial goods, and generally only part of the animal body is buried in the tomb, such as hooves, heads, teeth, etc.Most of the livestock remains unearthed in prehistoric tombs in China are pigs, and there are pigs and sheep in the Northwest China.It is common to be buried with pig mandibles, and 68 pieces were found in a Qijia culture tomb in Yongjing, Gansu Province.Whole pigs are also used for burial, as was found in the Dawenkou Tomb in Dadunzi, Pi County, Jiangsu Province.In the Xinglongwa site of the Xinglongwa Culture in Aohan Banner, Inner Mongolia, two whole pigs were used for the burial in a room.There is also the custom of dog sacrifice in the Dawenkou cemetery. There are eight tombs in Liulin, Pi County, and 18 dogs in nine tombs in Dadunzi.

What's more, at the end of the Neolithic Age, the phenomenon of human burial appeared, and men with a certain status asked their wives and concubines to die.The Dawenkou, Qijia, and Zhukaigou cultures all saw typical male-centered female sacrificial tombs. The male was buried with his body upright and the female with his limbs bent sideways. There are also examples of two females being sacrificed together.The burial at the time of death is a portrayal of being enslaved in life. Women lost their original equal status, and the phenomenon of people oppressing people appeared (Figure 18). Another point to mention is that prehistoric ancestors were very particular about the direction of tombs.A large number of statistical studies have shown that most of the tombs in the same cemetery or even the same cultural community have a generally uniform direction, and the heads of the dead are all pointing in the same direction.For example, the cemeteries of the Peiligang Culture are all southward and slightly westward, the Yangshao Culture is mainly westward and northwestward, the Qijia Culture is also westward and northwestward, and the Majiabang Culture is northward, with north Yinyang The Yinghe Xuejiagang culture is northeast, and the Shixia culture is east.

According to research, the direction of the tomb may indicate the direction of the soul, that is, the direction of the so-called "spiritual world", that is, the direction of the legendary origin of the clan.After death, the soul will return to the homeland, so the tomb has always been used to indicate the direction of return.Since a certain cultural community distributed in a certain area has common beliefs and traditions, the direction of burial is surprisingly consistent, and it is extremely difficult to undergo major changes. Burials are one of the most important relics often seen in prehistoric archaeology, and their study has always been valued because it is an important aspect of understanding prehistoric societies.That age-old age is long gone, but many of its secrets are treasured in the tombs of that age.