Chapter 25 Discovery of Mesolithic Cultural Remains in Lingjing①

The remains of the Mesolithic culture in Lingjing is an accidental discovery. ① This article was written in July 1997, originally published in the 67th series of "Henan Literature and History Materials", 1998 edition In the autumn of 1962, I was assigned to the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences to do research work after graduating from Fudan University in Shanghai majoring in anthropology. In the second half of 1964, I joined the "Four Cleanups" work team and came to Xuchang City, Henan Province.The main activity of my team is in Lingjing Village.

Lingjingzhai is a small village about 15 kilometers northwest of Xuchang City.There is a pond on the west side of the village, which was originally an ancient well called "Lingjing". During the "Great Leap Forward" period in the 1950s, it was dug deep and widened to become a water storage pond. In the spring of 1965, the "Four Cleanups" team carried out tree planting activities.One morning, when I was digging a tree pit by the edge of the Lingjing water storage pond, I suddenly felt something hard under the shovel. When I dug it out, it turned out to be a milky white quartz stone, and the surrounding area was covered with gray white silt. textured soil, and it seems that such rocks should not appear in this sandy soil.When I saw this piece of quartz, I suddenly thought of a past event in my mind. In 1921, when the Swedish scholar Anderson was inspecting Longgu Mountain in Zhoukoudian, Beijing, he came across a few small pieces of quartz stone, which aroused his vigilance. Discovery of the Peking Man site.Now this piece of quartz stone emerging from the silt soil, will it be a bit famous?So I asked a young member of the commune beside me who participated in digging tree pits: "Why are there such stones here? Are there many?" He told me that the local people call this kind of stone "horse tooth stone", and said that this kind of stone is not found elsewhere. It is rare, but it is found in this sandy soil from time to time.I immediately asked: "Apart from horse tooth stone, is there anything else found here, for example, are there any dragon bones?" At this time, another young man beside me said: "There are dragon bones, not only dragon bones, but also dragon teeth. "After he said that, I immediately became excited.

That night, I went to the house of the commune member who said there was a "dragon tooth" in his home.Taking the "dragon tooth" to see, it turned out to be the lower molar of a horse. The degree of petrification is quite deep, and there is still yellow fine sand on it.At that time, I was assigned the task of grasping youth work, so I took advantage of the opportunity of frequent contacts with young members to learn more about the situation and found that almost every family had a little "dragon bones" and "dragon teeth". The members said that they could do it." Knives and guns".

Since then, I quietly began to collect these "keel bones" and "dragon teeth", and found that there are many types of fossils, and there are even tooth plates of elephant molars.At the same time, I searched carefully around the pond, and not only found more quartz stone fragments, but also found many black flint-like fragments of stone, among which there were traces of artificial processing.Especially under the guidance of the members, in the vegetable garden of a member's house next to the pond, a large pile of sand and soil left over from digging the pond was found.Turning over the pile of sandy soil, we found typical microlithic artifacts made by pressing method.At this moment, my mood is not to mention how excited.Small stone leaves the size of matchsticks, fragments of animal fossil remains, and even small fragments of ostrich egg skin fossils were found in this pile of sand.Upon further investigation, it was learned that the sandy deposits, rich in fossilized stone tools and animal remains, came from a depth of 10 meters below the surface.The surface layer of that pile of sandy soil is orange fine sand, and the layer underneath is gray-white silt soil. If the order of accumulation is followed when digging out, the orange-yellow fine sand should be in the depth, and the top layer should be gray-white silt sand.

Since I was a member of the "Four Cleanups" at the time, I didn't dare to disclose these discoveries, but just collected and observed them quietly by myself. After the "four clean-ups" work was over, comrades from our Academy of Sciences stayed to carry out "labor exercise" and "reform thought".Without the disciplinary constraints of the "Four Cleanups" movement, I used my spare time to do further research and collection, and I gained something almost every day.When I returned to Beijing after the labor exercise, the things I collected actually accounted for a considerable part of my luggage.

During the investigation after work, I noticed that there are often quite thick calcareous nodules deep in the surface of the Lingbingzhai area, and some places are cemented into poles, which the local commune members call "sand sheds".On this layer of "sand shed", sand and soil deposits containing microlithic tools and animal fossils have never been found.In addition, there are some raised hills outside the village. When commune members dug sweet potato cellars on it, they often dug out cultural relics belonging to the Neolithic and Early Shang periods, such as polished stone tools, clam shell products, pottery, and petrification. Animal (such as cattle, sheep, pigs, etc.) remains and human bones.The typical microlithic artifacts have never been found among them, and there are no fossils of local extinct species such as deer, elephants, and woolly rhinoceros in the animal remains, so the fossils found at a depth of 10 meters from the surface are similar to those found in the sweet potato cellar. What was dug up was not a set of things.

Among the cultural remains I collected, animal fossils have been identified as many as 18 species, many of which are extinct, and they represent no later than the Loess Period (late Pleistocene).There are three types of stone tools: gravel tools, flake tools, and microlith tools, which account for a considerable proportion.The latter are mostly typical microlithic artifacts, such as cone-shaped stone cores, small stone leaves, and many shaped artifacts (such as thumb-shaped scrapers, pointed objects, engravers, etc.).In the past, such cultural relics were only found in the area north of the Great Wall. After liberation, they were found on the sand dunes of Dali, Shaanxi, breaking the old concept that microlithic culture only existed in the north of the Great Wall. Now there are also microlithic tools in Lingjing, Henan. Artifact discovery.Lingjing Village is about 100 kilometers south of the Yellow River. These typical artifacts not only crossed the Yellow River, but even reached the vicinity of the Huaihe River Basin, because Yingshui, a tributary of the Huai River, flows near Lingjing Village.Therefore, geographically, microlithic cultural remains have entered the Central Plains, which cannot but be said to be a breakthrough in the history of microlithic culture discovery.In view of this, I disclosed this important discovery to the world in the form of a newsletter in 1966; later, under the guidance of Mr. An Zhimin, Institute of Archeology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, I conducted a detailed study on these discoveries, and the research results were published in May 1974. No. "Archaeology".

The discovery of Lingjing microliths has attracted widespread attention in the academic circles, because it is striking in terms of cultural attributes and age: it has typical microlithic artifacts.It also lived in symbiosis with late Pleistocene fauna.The lack of polished stone tools and pottery sherds in the remains of Lingjing culture makes it inappropriate to place it in the Paleolithic or Neolithic ages, but only in the transition period between the two (i.e., the "Mesolithic age"), and it may belong to the early stages of the era.Some people once suspected that it was dug out from a depth of 10 meters below the surface. The horizon is not clear, the age is difficult to determine, and it is "mixed".

Although they come from 10 meters below the surface, it is an indisputable fact that some typical microlithic artifacts are firmly cemented with mammal fossils of the late Pleistocene. Anyone who has seen these specimens will not suspect that they are symbiotic. Authenticity, and such microlithic artifacts have never been found in the local late Neolithic cultural sites.The antiquity of the Microlithic Age in Lingjing is unquestionable. More importantly, the research on the culture of the "Mesolithic Age" has made breakthrough progress in recent years, and there are more studies on the culture of the "Mesolithic Age" in China. The emergence of more evidence will greatly help us to better understand and study this archaeological doubt.

In 1973, near the origin of the Yuanmou ape-man fossils in the Yuanmou Basin, Yunnan, I found typical microlithic artifacts, which were indistinguishable from those in Lingjing; Cultural relics similar to Lingjing microliths were found.I have inspected some of the utensils and found that the two are very similar.It can be seen that the emergence of Lingjing microlithic culture is not an isolated case.After the official publication of the Lingjing material, the archaeological circles in Japan, the United States and other countries have introduced it; recently, someone in the British archaeological circle has specially written an article to introduce the discovery and research results of the Lingjing culture. It can be seen that its value and significance have been recognized by the world archaeological circle attach importance to.

For me, the discovery of Lingjing culture also opened up a new research field for myself.Although I am mainly engaged in the research of physical anthropology-paleoanthropology, after the discovery of microlithic cultural remains in Lingjing, Henan, the culture of the "Mesolithic Age" aroused my strong interest and became another research topic of mine. focus.Following the discovery of Lingjing, I discovered the remains of the Danawu microlithic culture in Yuanmou in 1973. Since 1982, I have devoted myself to the exploration of the cultural transition between the Neolithic and Paleolithic ages at the Bailiandong cave site in Liuzhou, Guangxi.After more than ten years of excavation and in-depth research, and the cooperation of various disciplines, the research on the culture of the "Mesolithic Age" in China has made breakthrough progress.For a long time, there have been many controversies on this issue in my country's academic circles. A considerable number of people have doubts or even negative views on this issue, and always think that the definition of "Mesolithic Age" is unclear.In fact, these comrades only focus on cultural artifacts, thinking that as long as there is a clear indicator, they can judge the existence or non-existence of a certain culture.For example, it is believed that the Paleolithic culture was mainly made of stone tools, and the Neolithic culture was mainly polished stone tools and pottery. It is so simple that it seems that if pottery fragments are found in the ruins, it belongs to Neolithic culture, and if there are no pottery fragments, it belongs to Neolithic culture. Paleolithic culture.In fact, how can there be such a simple thing?Neolithic and Paleolithic cultures are reflections of two different economic forms. The foundation of the development of primitive culture is the transition from a predatory economy dominated by gathering and hunting to a productive economy dominated by primitive farming and domestication activities. Utensils as indicators can summarize everything.Taking the emergence of pottery as an example, pottery fragments dating back 16,000 to 7,000 years ago have been found in several sites in southern my country. Can you place these sites in the Neolithic Age?Obviously inappropriate. After in-depth research in many aspects, it has been confirmed that the Bailian Cave Stone Age cultural site in Liuzhou has continuous layered deposits from 37,000 to 7,000 years ago, and contains five cultural zones in the middle, each of which has a special culture. The remains show a clear track of the transition from Paleolithic culture to Neolithic culture.Between 18,000 and 12,000 years ago, the four elements of the Neolithic age—polished stone tools, pottery, primitive farming, and primitive domestication—came into being gradually during this time span.The framework of the Bailiandong culture series, that is, the identification and establishment of the transition from Paleolithic culture to Neolithic culture, provides conclusive evidence for the existence of Mesolithic culture in China. In 1994, at the international academic symposium held in Liuzhou, this important discovery and research achievement was generally recognized and highly praised by the participating scholars. The discovery of Lingjing microlithic cultural remains and the resulting significance of the study of my country's Mesolithic culture have been increasingly recognized by the academic circles with the development of archaeology in my country. Naturally, further studies on the nature of the Mesolithic culture represented by the Lingjing microlithic culture still need to be carried out.The first is to systematically excavate the ruins. Even though it will be difficult, it must be done.Secondly, a detailed comparative study should be carried out based on the excavated artifacts and companions to verify the correctness of the conclusions obtained in the previous work.The study of the Bailiandong culture in Liuzhou, Guangxi mainly solved the problem of the existence of Mesolithic culture in southern my country, but in the northern and central plains of China, the solution to this problem is still a relatively weak link.I believe that the further excavation and in-depth comparative study of the Lingjing site will provide more first-hand information for thoroughly revealing the cultural features of the Mesolithic Age in China, exploring the specific details of the transition from Paleolithic culture to Neolithic culture information, play a greater role.