Erlitou site is the earliest capital site discovered in China, and the discovery of ruts in the site has advanced the history of automobile use in China by about 200 years.
Erlitou Site, located in the southwest corner of Erlitou Village, Yanshizhai Town, Henan Province, covers an area of more than 3 million square meters and is known as "the first capital of China". Erlitou team of Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently discovered a large-scale ancient Miyagi in this site, which is at least about 3,600 years ago, and is the earliest confirmed Miyagi in China. At the same time, two roughly parallel ruts were found on the road on the south side of Miyagi. The rut in the excavation area is more than 5 meters long and continues to extend eastward and westward. The rutted frog is groove-shaped, which can be seen as concave, showing layered accumulation of road soil and lime soil. The distance between two frogs is about 1 meter.
Dr. Xu Hong, captain of Erlitou Team of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that judging from the ruts found, the car body was narrow at that time, only about 1 meter, while the gauge of carriages found in Yin Ruins in the late Shang Dynasty was generally more than 2 meters. It can be inferred that the two-wheeled vehicle with rut marks on the south side of Erlitougong District is probably a vehicle with some special function. Whether to drive a rickshaw or an animal, and what kind of animal to drive, all need textual research.
"It can be said with certainty that the tradition of car use in China appeared hundreds of years before the Shang Dynasty." Dr. Hong Xu said that the ruts found in Erlitou and Yanshi Mall are similar in characteristics and small in shape, which is quite different from the carriages found in Yinxu, Anyang. In addition, the remains of horses are rare in the sites before the late Shang Dynasty in China. Therefore, the custom of riding horses in the late Shang Dynasty in China has not yet found its local origin in archaeology, and the origin of carriages in the late Shang Dynasty is still an unsolved mystery.
According to ancient documents, China's car was invented by Xi Zhong in Xia Dynasty, but from the archaeological point of view, Xi Zhong's car-making is still a mystery.
Guo Wu, an assistant researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that according to the records in ancient books, the invention of the automobile should be attributed to the car policy in the Xia Dynasty. Xia Shu Shi Gan recorded a car war that broke out in early summer. Lu's Spring and Autumn Annals records that Shang leaders also used chariots in the overthrown war.
Professor Mei Lin from Peking University traces the history of automobile manufacturing in China by studying the tools for manufacturing and repairing automobiles, and the automobile manufacturing in China can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty. Early bronze tools were mostly concentrated in Xinjiang and Gansu, and Xi Zhong's early activity area was in the east of Gansu, so it is possible for Xi Zhong to make cars. He thinks that early cars were not found in China. Maybe the earliest cars in China were made of wood, so they can't be preserved so far, or there is no custom of being buried with the car, so we can't see them today.
Guo Wu said that from the archaeological findings, China's two-wheeled auxiliary chariots almost suddenly emerged from the ground. As early as before War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, some car remnants had been found in the excavation of Yin Ruins in Anyang, but it was impossible to accurately understand the whole picture of cars. Because after the wooden cart decays, only traces of wood remain in the loess.
After the founding of New China, under the leadership of the famous archaeologist Xia Nai, the Institute of Archaeology of China Academy of Sciences successfully stripped the cars of the Warring States Period for the first time in Liu Lige, Huixian County, Henan Province. According to the wood marks, their shapes and details were found out, and they were initially restored. After the experience, a series of cars in the late Shang Dynasty were excavated, and it was learned that most of the chariots and horses buried with Shang nobles were located in the southwest of the main tomb. Surprisingly, the structure and technology of chariots in the late Shang Dynasty were very complicated and perfect, and no primitive chariots were found.
In ancient times, this kind of machinery with diverse materials, complex structure, different types of work and numerous technological processes could not be realized overnight, so at first foreign scholars declared with one voice that China's chariots were imported from the west. China documents clearly recorded the history of Xizhong in Xia Dynasty making cars and using chariots. So, before the mid-1990s, archaeologists sharpened their heads to look for the primitive stage of China cars. But looking for it, there are no cars in the strata earlier than Yin Ruins, only documentary evidence, and some of these documentary evidence are suspicious and unreliable after some textual research.
1996, during an excavation in the northeast corner of Yanshi Mall in Henan Province, archaeologists found two rutting marks parallel to the city wall at the bottom near the city wall. The excavated rut is 14m long, and the gauge is only about 120cm. Yanshi shopping mall is about16th century, and it is 500 years later than the earliest carriage in the west, whether it is grassland or western Asia. So in terms of time alone, it is still impossible to rule out the possibility that the carriage will come from the west.
Guo Wu believes that the rutting of Erlitou site provides important clues for exploring early cars in China. However, it is still an unsolved mystery that China made cars in Xizhong, Xia Dynasty.
The experts compared the spoke chariots of Shang and Zhou Dynasties in China with those of the West, and found that they belonged to the same system and came from the same source.
In fact, if we compare the spoke chariots of China in Shang and Zhou Dynasties with the wagons of Eurasia, Egypt and West Asia, we will find that they have many similarities, even in some subtle places. Mr. Wang Haicheng, who studies East and West chariots, summed up these similarities on the basis of detailed comparison. He found that both eastern and western chariots use auxiliary wheels, and the technology adopted is to knead wood into wheels (that is, to bake wood repeatedly with fire, and when the wood is hot, repeatedly apply external forces to it to make the wood reach the desired shape); Horse bit, whip and bow are similar in shape; Driving methods are similar or related; They all use the same technology to make carriages, and they also have similarities in maintenance methods. They are all controlled by the upper ruling class. They are all tools for the ruling class to show off their power, and the use of carriages is graded. Carriage didn't play a big role in the war.
There are so many similarities from structure to function that they belong to the same system and are homologous. Of course, there are some differences between the East and the West, mainly reflected in the size of the carriage, the texture and decoration of the horses and chariots. This difference is caused by geographical environment, cultural traditions and other factors. Moreover, if the carriage is introduced from the west, it will inevitably take a long time and space. It is reasonable that there are some variations in this communication process.
Attached drawings:
He 'nan Anyang Guojiazhuang Chemakeng
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Che Ma Hang of Yin Dynasty Unearthed in Anyang, Henan Province
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Chemakeng in Warring States Period, Liu Lige, Huixian County, Henan Province
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