Master Archaeologist

Chapter 205 Some Primitive Funeral Culture

After discovering the martyrdom pit in a strange location, everyone immediately surrounded the martyrdom pit and began to clean it up.

This horse martyrdom pit is quite large, with a length of more than six meters from north to south and a width of more than one meter. More than one horse should have been buried.

Moreover, there are not only martyred horses in the pit, but also some bluestone blocks and branches are piled up in a mess in the northern corner of the pit. I don't know what special meaning it has.

Soon, the burial situation in the pit became clear.

A total of six horses were buried. The horses were placed irregularly, stacked up and down, and numbered 1 to 6 from south to north.

Among them, the No. 1 horse is lying on its side, and there is a triangular red sandy clay brick remnant beside its neck, with a tie around its neck, which should be a war horse.

The neck of No. 2 horse was severely bent and deformed.

Horse No. 3 is close to the west wall, with its head facing down. There is a long wooden plank in front of the horse's head, and the north end of the plank presses the head of No. 4 horse.

Horse No. 5 faces north and is relatively well preserved, with a large number of broken stones and branches on its east side. The number 6 horse is under the number 5 horse.

As for the sex and age of these horses, they have to be sent to professionals for identification before they can be clarified.

However, Chen Han guessed that these horses should all be stallions.

Generally, the horses used for burial are male horses, war horses or chariot horses.

As for the age, it should also be between 4 and 6 years old. Horses of this age are equivalent to the most energetic 25-35 years old, and are the most suitable age for combat.

And while they were busy cleaning up the martyrdom pit, the Qinghai Archaeological Institute, which was responsible for the excavation and cleaning of the section of the tomb near the corridor, also heard news.

They found a skeleton of a martyr in the filling soil in the middle of the tomb 1.4 meters away from the opening of the tomb.

The tomb, in fact, means the entrance of the tomb, which is equivalent to the martyrdom found in the filling soil next to the tomb door.

The martyrdom was disturbed by the robbery cave, and only the skeleton of the lower body remained. The total length of the existing human bones is 0.7 meters.

It is speculated that he was originally buried at the entrance of the corridor to guard the tomb for the owner of the tomb, similar to the coachman in the tomb of the king of Nanyue.

It's just that this tomb has been robbed and harassed. After the tomb robbers dug through the tomb passage, they treated it roughly, and when backfilling it, they directly mixed it with filling soil into the tomb passage.

Based on the only surviving bones of the lower body, and some other scattered bones found in the filling, especially the teeth, it is inferred that the age of this person should not exceed 16 years old.

So young, even a child, he was buried.

It can be seen that Tuyuhun, or Tubo Kingdom, still retains a very cruel burial culture.

But that's not surprising either.

The Tubo Kingdom is actually the ancestor of the modern Tibetan people.

At the beginning of the [-]th century, Tibetans were still in slavery, and they still had the habit of using slave leg bones and skulls to make ritual vessels and wine vessels.

In the Tibet Provincial Museum, you can see a bunch of artifacts of Tibetan mages left over from the beginning of the last century, all made of human bones.

This is true even in the twentieth century.

How civilized were the Tubo people in the eighth century AD?
Using teenagers under the age of 16 to be buried or something is all about sprinkling water!
"This person was martyred. At least the right lower limb still has a complete femur, tibia and foot bone, and the left lower limb has a tibia and foot bone."

"This shows that at least he was not used as a Tubo magic weapon."

Generally speaking, Tibetans prefer to use the skull, tibia, and femur to make ritual utensils, rather than the bones of the arms.

The main reason is that the bones on the legs are longer and thicker, which are more suitable for making magic tools.

The man's lower limbs are sound, which at least shows that he has never experienced such cruel things before his death.

This may also have something to do with the fact that this tomb belongs to the Tuyuhun tribe, not the Tubo people.

Although Tuyuhun is not Han, he is a branch of Xianbei.

But at least the Xianbei people had experience in Sinicization. The Northern Wei Dynasty during the Southern and Northern Dynasties was the country established by the Tuoba tribe of the Xianbei people.

At that time, the Xianbei people accepted the influence of Han culture, and they were considered to have changed from a nomadic people to a semi-nomadic and half-farming people.

By the late Northern Wei Dynasty, the Xianbei people who entered the Central Plains had basically been fully Sinicized.

Although the Tuyuhun people are not from the same branch as the Tuoba tribe, they have been more or less influenced by Han culture in the past few hundred years.

At least they will no longer play with the bloody human bone artifacts and wine vessels of nomads and plateau peoples.

Of course, in addition to this human and horse martyrdom pit, the archaeological team who surveyed other sacrificial buildings on the ground soon discovered two sacrificial pits for sacrificial sacrifices.

One is K4, which is located on the north side of the cemetery, and its southwest corner is 2 meters away from the northwest corner of the sacrificial building F5.69. It is obviously a sacrificial pit for worship.

The opening of this pit is only 2.5 meters deep from the surface. The plane is rectangular, 1.2 meters long from east to west, 1 meter wide from north to south, and 1 meter deep. The pit walls are made of raw soil.

Obviously, it was a sacrificial pit dug on the spot and buried on the spot.

This should be the new burial pit dug by the Tuyuhun people after the burial of the tomb owner.

A large number of animal bones were found in the pit, most of which were dismembered and put into the pit in layers. After preliminary identification, they mainly included camels, horses, dogs, goats, deer, and chickens.

This shows that the sacrificial culture of the Tuyuhun people at this time, or the Tubo Kingdom, is very similar to that of the more primitive Shang and Zhou dynasties in the Central Plains.

At that time, the Central Plains was already in the Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty advocated thin burial and thin sacrifices. The general priests were very modern and similar, that is, they set up altars, delivered three animals, and offered sacrifices in places such as ancestral halls.

After the sacrifice is completed, these tributes will be taken back to eat, so there is no waste.

However, Tuyuhun and Tubo still retain a relatively primitive priest culture. Like the Chinese ancestors, they conducted large sacrifices, directly dug a priest pit, and buried the sacrificed animals for the ancestors underground.

In addition, another sacrificial pit connected by a passage was found in the filling soil at the southeast corner of the tomb.

Because this sacrificial pit is next to the tomb, it is difficult to avoid the harassment of tomb robbers.

Near this sacrificial pit, there are four robbery holes, and the nearest one is directly above the sacrificial pit.

It may be that the tomb robbers misjudged the location and took the sacrificial pit as a tomb and knocked it down vertically.

Because this sacrificial pit is just outside the tomb, it is probably the sacrificial pit left by the owner of the tomb during the first sacrifice after he was sent into the tomb to seal the tomb.

After the sacrifice, the tomb passage will be sealed.

The top of the sacrificial pit is lined with sheds in a north-south direction, which is also an important evidence that a sacrifice was held.

However, due to robbery and destruction, only 10 sheds of different lengths remain. It can be roughly seen that they should have been erected above the sacrificial pit to support the soil above and prevent collapse.

And this sacrificial pit is further down, which is where the gate of the tomb is located.

The tomb door was found, which means that the tomb, which has been robbed repeatedly, opened its heart to the archaeologists on site.

(End of this chapter)