Chapter 4 Chapter 4 Ancient corpses do not rot

News from our newspaper. The ancient corpse of the Ming Dynasty was discovered in Mosong Town, which was well preserved and cold as ice On August 5 this year, the police station of Mosong Township suddenly received a call from the security guards. When the local farmers were leveling the land, they unintentionally dug up a corpse. When the local police arrived at the scene, the coffin had been dug open by an excavator, and a corpse was lying face down on the ground in ancient attire. Ouyang Hua, a policeman from Mosong Township, was also at the scene. When he took a closer look, he couldn't help being surprised.The deceased was a male, judging from the skin and face, it was not a modern corpse, but it was strange that the corpse was not decomposed, and the preservation was quite complete.

After the news was reported, the staff of the municipal museum came quickly and initially determined that this might be an ancient tomb. The appearance of such a complete corpse in the ancient tomb made everyone present feel very strange.And what happened next shocked Wang Zitong, a staff member of the municipal museum!When she touched the corpse with her hands, she was surprised to find that her hands were as cold as reaching into the freezer of a refrigerator. While searching for the funeral objects of the ancient corpse, Wang Zitong found a ring in the clothes of the ancient corpse.The ultimatum is actually a kind of identity certificate for Buddhists, monks or Buddhist disciples. When the holder of the ultimatum travels around to place orders in temples, he needs to take out the ultimatum to prove his status as a monk.

Judging from the ultimatum, the holder of the ultimatum was named Yang Fuxin. The ultimatum was issued in the fourth year of Zhengtong in the Ming Dynasty, that is, in 1439 A.D., about 500 years ago.Experts preliminarily deduced that this body was the owner of the ultimatum. Since Yang Fuxin lived in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, and has been dead for more than 500 years, but his body has not rotted, and in Mosong Town in the scorching heat of August, his body is actually as cold as ice to the touch, how can this be explained? Funeral wooden figurines, iron-headed javelins, huge palms... Is Yang Fuxin a martial artist?

In order to clarify Yang Fuxin's identity, professionals began to search for clues at the scene. Among the funerary objects collected, the most eye-catching ones are warrior wooden figurines and a wooden iron-headed javelin. Zhao Kang, an expert at the Martial Arts Research Institute of the Municipal General Administration of Sports, discovered that this wooden javelin is different from the general martial arts guns.The tip of the gun is round and shovel-shaped. There is no similar gun in ancient weapons, so it can be judged that this gun is not a weapon. But Zhao Kang said that there was a little-known secret history of martial arts hidden behind it.

In the Yuan Dynasty, the northern Mongols settled in the Central Plains. For their own people, they advocated horseback riding, wrestling, and martial arts, but for the Han people, they adopted a policy of banning martial arts.So the Han people practice martial arts quietly in private; in public, they use martial arts dramas to hide their eyes and ears.In the martial arts scene, in order to prevent the opponent from being stabbed, the gun head was rounded. The gun buried with him shows that Yang Fuxin loved martial arts during his lifetime, and he may have made a living from martial arts dramas.Can this help people unravel the mystery of his identity?Ancient corpse research experts carefully examined Yang Fuxin and found that Yang Fuxin's skin was moist, soft and elastic, and some joints could still move.

According to preliminary determination, his age is between seventy-five and eighty years old. During the inspection, the experts also made another major discovery: Yang Fuxin's palm is relatively large, especially the bones in the palm are larger than ordinary people.This feature further shows that Yang Fuxin may have been a martial artist during his lifetime.Because people who practice martial arts all the year round, especially those who practice palms, a lot of practice will make the muscles of the palms develop, and it can also stimulate the bones to grow faster. Yang Fuxin's body is not decomposed, why did he take poison before dying?

The wooden figurines, wooden spears and oversized palms of warriors buried with him all indicate that Yang Fuxin may have practiced martial arts for many years.Since he is from the martial arts world, his body is not decomposed, could it be related to some secret arts in the legends of the rivers and lakes? In ancient my country, a secret technique that was widely spread in the rivers and lakes was to take poison actively.In the months before death, insist on taking poisons such as arsenic and mercury in small doses, so that the toxins accumulated in the body can prevent the body from decaying after death.

But this secret technique is just a rumor.If Yang Fuxin uses this method, it will definitely leave traces in his body.The chemical composition of arsenic is arsenic, and the composition of mercury is mercury, both of which are heavy metal elements. In order to solve the doubts, the experts decided to collect hair and other samples from the corpse to determine the content of heavy metal elements.However, after chemical analysis of Yang Fuxin's internal organs and hair, it was found that the heavy metal elements in his body were no different from those of normal people, and were within the normal range.

It seems that Yang Fuxin did not take the poison on his own initiative.But what made his body survive so miraculously. The burial environment and the structure of the tomb create conditions for the preservation of the corpse? Under normal circumstances, after a person dies, the cells gradually lose their vitality and decompose and dissolve under the action of autohydrolysis, which is the so-called autolysis process.Then there is the invasion of spoilage bacteria, and through the decomposition of spoilage bacteria, the human body will eventually become a dead bone.However, his body has been well preserved until today. Experts used various instruments to test Yang Fuxin's body, but they still couldn't find the reason why his body remained intact. Everyone began to consider the scope from the entity itself to the surroundings. environment of.

Most of the mummies unearthed in the past came from the Gobi Desert in Xinjiang, or places with extremely dry climates such as desert areas.But Mosong Town, where Yang Fuxin's body was sitting, had a humid climate. How could the body be preserved in such an environment? Wang Zitong, a staff member of the municipal museum, put forward another inference through research: Yang Fuxin's body is not decomposed, could it be related to the environment of the burial?Therefore, the experts focused their attention on Yang Fuxin's tomb. Yang Fuxin's tomb adopts a grouting structure: the four walls are built with blue bricks, and after the coffin is placed, the three-component mortar is poured between the brick walls and the coffin.The so-called Sanhe soil is made by boiling glutinous rice into a slurry, adding lime, loess, and lime, and mixing it in a certain proportion, which is similar to the current cement.The ancients used the grouting method to wrap the coffin with a strong sealing layer.

Among the tombs of the Ming Dynasty in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, such grouting structures are not uncommon, so experts did not pay special attention at first.But after further research, they found that the grout here used a special substance-alum. Alum acts as a coagulant that prevents the grout from cracking, thus strengthening the seal.Due to the sealed, constant temperature and lack of oxygen in the tomb, bacteria cannot reproduce, which creates conditions for preserving the corpse. Sealed coffins filled with liquid to keep corpses moist The mystery of the incorruption of Yang Fuxin's corpse has been revealed step by step, but what still puzzles experts is that the corpse has remained moist so far. What is the mystery in this? Ouyang Hua, a policeman from the Mosong Town Police Department, remembered a strange incident that he saw at the scene.The coffin that Yang Fuxin opened was full of water, and there was no rain at the time. Where did the water in the coffin come from? Some people speculated that it was a special preservative made by the ancients, like today's formalin liquid, and the corpse would not rot if soaked in it.However, experts searched the ancient documents and found no relevant records. Xu Yongqing also raised objections to the guess of the antiseptic solution. Since Yang Fuxin's tomb is well sealed, where did the liquid in the coffin come from?When the coffin was taken out, people unexpectedly discovered that the treatment at the bottom of the tomb was relatively simple, and the three-component soil slurry was much thinner than the sides and top of the coffin. The Mosong River has vertical and horizontal channels, and the groundwater level is relatively high. The bottom is specially made thin, so that the groundwater seeped in from below little by little over the course of 500 years, forming coffin liquid.Before that, because the tomb was sealed and lacked oxygen, the decay of the corpse had stopped. Later, the soaking of the coffin fluid just helped the corpse keep moist. The formation of ancient corpses is mostly accidental.In the Jiangnan area, if the sealing of the burial chambers is not done properly, or the water seeping in is not clean and bacteria are brought in, it is impossible to preserve the corpse. Like Yang Fuxin in the ancient tomb, it is the closed environment and clean groundwater that made him incorruptible. But the strange thing is that since Yang Fuxin's ancient corpse was dug up and transferred to the Mosong Town Museum for preservation, the nails and hair began to grow. Wang Zitong, a staff member of the municipal museum, said that this situation has also been encountered occasionally on some unearthed ancient corpses, but this is the first time I have seen such a rapid growth, and the specific reason remains to be further investigated. investigation.