Riding the wind of rebirth

While Zhou Zhi was explaining, a staff member came in and handed a list to Mr. Qi.

After reading the list, Mr. Qi put his hand down again. He waited until Zhou Zhi finished speaking, then raised the list in his hand and said, "The scientific identification results of the Ruyilun Bodhisattva Statue have come out. The single silk and the paper support you provided have been carbon-14 identified and proven to be from the Tang Dynasty. Based on the material of the silk, using the latest protein analysis method, the age is between 212 and 272 years."

"Ah, this..." Zhou Zhi was shocked. "If that's the case... then the Statue of Ruyilun Bodhisattva is not a copy? Did my fourth cousin and I make a wrong judgment?"

Due to the lack of scientific means and the absence of equipment such as microscopes, Zhou Zhi and his fourth cousin mainly used "visual inspection", which is also the most traditional identification method, to identify the four paintings in Jiachuan. They believed that all of them should be copies from the Song Dynasty.

However, after the National Museum of China completed the re-evaluation, the experts found that there was no problem with the inferences on three of the paintings, but the age of the "Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva" with inscriptions by Mi Fu, Cai Xiang and Chen Shidao was totally wrong.

The earliest handwritten calligraphy in China today is "Ping Fu Tie" by Lu Ji of the Western Jin Dynasty, and the only authentic work from the Eastern Jin Dynasty is "Bo Yuan Tie" by Wang Xun. Apart from these two, all the others are copies or rubbings.

This also illustrates the difficulty of preserving calligraphy and paintings before the Tang Dynasty.

Lu Ji was born in 261 AD and died in 303 AD. The date of birth and death of Cao Buxing is unknown, but history records that he became famous for his paintings in the Eastern Wu during the Huangwu period of the Sun Wu.

The Huangwu era of the Sun Wu Dynasty lasted from 222 to 229 AD.

Considering the strength of the brushwork in "Ping Fu Tie", it is impossible that it was written by Lu Ji in his childhood. It must have been created at least after the age of 290, so it could not have been written earlier than AD.

The appraisal report in Mr. Qi's hand now covers the Huangwu era of the Sun Wu Dynasty from 212 to 272.

In other words, the Ruyilun Bodhisattva Statue has become the oldest one at least 60 years older than the Pingfu Tie! This basically proves that it is the original work of Cao Buxing!

This is major news that will shock the cultural heritage protection community around the world!

Sure enough, when Mr. Qi finished speaking, everyone was stunned, and then there was a loud "boom" and everyone stretched out their hands: "Show me the report!"

Zhou Zhi was confused: "Protein identification?"

This is definitely a new type of identification, and Zhou Zhi had never heard of it before.

"It's just the latest identification technology," Mr. Wang waved to the researcher who had just delivered the identification report: "Xiao Li, Xiao Li, come and introduce it."

"The traditional carbon dating method requires too much sample size, and using it on silk is almost equivalent to destroying the fabric," said the researcher named Xiao Li. "So a chemist named Mahdi Moini tried to use a super-sensitive chemical method to solve the dating problem of silk fabrics, hair, mummies, etc."

"Moini's technique relies on the scientific discovery that there are two types of amino acids in proteins, a left-handed form and a right-handed mirror image."

"These two amino acids can only be converted from left-handed to right-handed, but not from right-handed to left-handed." "Of course, this conversion does not happen very often, but it does occur at a steady rate."

Zhou Zhi already understood a little: "That is to say, from the day the protein is produced, as it is stored for a longer time, there will be less left-handed protein and more right-handed protein?"

The researcher nodded. “Yes. The longer the time has passed since the silkworm started spinning silk, the greater the change in the ratio between the two types of amino acids. Moini was able to measure this ratio using two chemical techniques.”

"This method has three advantages. First, it only requires a tiny amount of silk sample. Second, it is fast, taking only 20 minutes to measure the ratio. Third, it is sensitive enough to measure the decomposition in hours, which means it can be used as a molecular clock for measuring protein materials such as silk."

"As far as I know, there is a sample table with an offset in the carbon-14 identification method." Zhou Zhi said, "Also, there is a huge offset in the carbon-14 identification method between seawater environment and freshwater environment."

"There is also the issue of contamination. For example, when identifying calligraphy and painting paper, the paper is easily contaminated by materials such as glue used in later mountings, which makes identification extremely difficult."

Xiao Li looked at Zhou Zhi in surprise and said, "Yes, carbon-14 does have these problems, and the protein molecular clock identification method also has these problems, so it has been used in the field of forensic identification."

"However, last year Moini joined the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, which works with many museums and focuses on cultural relics conservation. This also gave Moini the opportunity to get in touch with the museum's famous silk collection."

"Several museums agreed to allow Moini's research team to sample silk products, including ancient European Renaissance fabrics and flags from the North American Civil War. Of course, the largest number of samples were Chinese silk fabrics."

"Because historical records provide clear manufacturing dates for museum objects, we compared them with the identification results. The final experimental results obtained were that the protein molecular clock technology identified the age within 50-100 years."

"After obtaining the research results, Moini published them in the Journal of Analytical Chemistry."

"So we took this achievement here?" Zhou Zhi said with a smile, "For foreigners, this has become their 'flowers blooming inside the wall, but fragrant outside the wall'?"

"This is also normal." Mr. Wang said confidently: "Where else in the world can properly preserve silk samples from different eras? Isn't it only in China?!"

Mr. Qi also smiled and said, "This is not only beneficial to us, but also very important for Moyni to use this information to correct the test results of his technology."

"It used to be very difficult to date silk fabrics in museum collections. Researchers often had to rely on evidence from the environment surrounding the unearthed objects to support their guesses about the manufacturing period of ancient silk clothing."

"Those are secondary." Grandpa Qi said, "Because generally, unearthed silk fabrics are surrounded by many other pieces of evidence that can prove their age. There is only one thing, which is the most difficult..."

"Calligraphy and painting!" Zhou Zhi, Chen Shizhong, and Xu Bangda immediately responded: "Fake!" "High imitation!"

The job of calligraphy and painting appraisal is indeed not easy. Even Qianlong, who was very confident in his ability and called himself the "Cultural Emperor", had a group of well-educated and knowledgeable collectors, calligraphy and painting attendants, and erudite scholars, all of whom collected a lot of fakes. Then, when they encountered top-notch works such as "Fuchun Mountain Dwelling", they kept jumping back and forth between the appraisal results of the real thing and the fake. (End of this chapter)