Master Archaeologist

Chapter 249 Hua Xiawen, number one in the world!

The accuracy and authenticity of the historical records of the Chinese people ranks first in the world!

This, of course, is beyond doubt.

After seeing the copper clepsydra, Chen Han couldn't help but revisit the rigor of the ancients' "writing history".

A time-telling device more than 2000 years ago has been accurately recorded in history, so that descendants more than 2000 years later can have a glimpse of the life of the Chinese people at that time.

"Time" does not seem to be a very important thing.

Especially for modern people, there are time displays on mobile phones, computers, clocks and watches and other carriers.

It seems that knowing what time it is is not a difficult thing.

However, whether one can actually know "time" is the most important thing whether a civilization is advanced or not.

Saying it can make people feel very divided.

Don't look at the modern society as if scientists are already accurate to the time scale of one ten-thousandth of a second.

However, there are still many places on earth where even time cannot be grasped.

Whether it is some indigenous tribes in Africa, or some indigenous people in the tropical rainforest of Central America.

They are still in the era of slash-and-burn farming, at most they can only roughly grasp whether it is morning, afternoon, noon, or night.

When it comes to specific points, we can only rely on the position of the sun to make a vague estimate.

This is also the reason why these aborigines can only be confined to the primitive stone age, and have not been able to develop advanced civilization for thousands of years.

Because they didn't invent a timekeeping device, they couldn't know the time and couldn't develop a regular calendar.

Without a calendar, a stable farming society or animal husbandry society cannot be formed, and one can only rely on the sky for food and hunting for a living.

If the society is unstable, then there is no way to get rich and develop the social system, economy, and culture...

The modern countries that now stand on the earth can be traced back to BC, and they all developed to their current state by mastering the time and calendar.

Westerners originated from the ancient Greeks who divided day and night into 3000 o'clock and divided the four seasons of the year 12 years ago.

After this timekeeping method and the original calendar were spread to Europe, they were used until the fourteenth century.

As for Huaxia, it was even earlier.

Some Neolithic sites discovered so far have the function of "watching the sky", and very primitive sundial equipment has been found.

The principle is actually "immediate results", relying on the shadow of the sun to determine the time at this time.

Legend has it that after the Yellow Emperor defeated Chiyou and unified the world, he ordered people to formulate a calendar, which is called the Yellow Emperor Calendar.

In the subsequent Xia Dynasty, there was the first calendar that professionally guided agriculture, which was the earliest Xia calendar.

After the summer calendar, there are "Yin calendar", "Zhou calendar", "Lu calendar" and "Zhuanxu calendar", which are collectively called the ancient six calendars!
Among them, the earliest one with specific calendar content is "Zhuanxu Calendar", which is the calendar used by Qin Shihuang after he unified the six kingdoms.

However, the "Zhuanxu Calendar" was not formulated during the period of Qin Shihuang. It is said that it was formulated on the weekend, but after Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, he unified the calendars of the six countries and stipulated that the whole country must use the "Zhuanxu Calendar"!
But when the "Zhuanxu Calendar" was formulated, the Yellow River was still running elephants!
By the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Emperor Wu of the Han deeply felt that the "Zhuanxu Calendar" was no longer in line with the times, and the calendar was no longer accurate.

So the calendar was revised again.

This is the "Taichu Calendar" in which January is the first month, which is familiar to later generations!
The solar terms such as rain, vernal equinox, grain rain, Xiaoman, summer solstice, great heat, end of summer, autumnal equinox, frost, light snow, winter solstice, and great cold that are well known to later generations come from the "Taichu Calendar"!
The "Taichu Calendar" at that time set a return year as 365.25 days, and a lunar month equals 29.53 days!
And it also recorded the cycle of five stars for the first time, and measured the rendezvous cycle of the planets very accurately!

For example, Mercury has 115.87 days, which is only 0.01 days less than today's measured value!
Using a 135-month eclipse cycle, the sun passes through the yellow-white node 23 times in a cycle, and the two times are an eclipse year, that is, 1 eclipse year = 346.66 days, which is less than 0.04 days greater than today's measured value!
It's hard to imagine that this is a calendar from BC!
The astronomical calculations made by the Chinese people in BC are only 0.01 to 0.04 days away from the calculations made by scientists today with advanced observation instruments!
And this advanced calendar was officially launched in 104 BC, 58 years earlier than the ancient Roman "Julian Calendar" with similar accuracy!
In the area of ​​astronomical exploration, Ancient China is at the forefront of the world!

Thanks to the Chinese people's good habit of writing history, from the Zhou Dynasty 3000 years ago to the Qing Dynasty, all the comet return data were recorded in the history books by the Chinese people!
So much so that astronomers all over the world, when studying comets, need to find records of comet return from China's historical records!
There are also ancient star maps, and only China's records are the most accurate and correct in the world!

Regardless of some foreign and Western historians, all kinds of doubts about the Three Emperors and Five Emperors recorded in "Historical Records", as well as the history of Xia and Shang Dynasties, feel that there are too many fantasy colors to be reliable in history.

But Western astronomers are very honest.

When looking for astronomical records in BC, they always use the records in "Historical Records" as the only research materials.

There is no way, except for those astronomical records in "Historical Records", such as "Historical Records·Tianguanshu", such as celestial phenomena, comet meteors, cloud and gas strange stars, more than 90 groups of star names, records of more than 500 stars, and the laws of motion of the five major planets , the periodicity of eclipses.

There are also historical astronomical events recorded in "Historical Records".

For example, in August of the second year of Emperor Xiaojing of the Han Dynasty, the comet came out of the northeast.

In the autumn of the second year, Yinghuo went retrograde and guarded Beichen.The moon rises between Beichen.The year star is retrograde in the heavenly court.

This records the special astronomical record of Mars and Jupiter retrograde in the second year of Emperor Jing's Yuan Dynasty!
The retrograde of Mars and Jupiter that occurred in 155 BC was only observed and recorded by Chinese people!
This is a miracle for the global astronomy community!
Now, more than 2000 years later, earth astronomers still have astronomical records from more than 2000 years ago for inspection and research!
Just for this point, Huaxia's contribution to the world's astronomy community is already enormous!

From an astronomical point of view, thousands of years are just a blink of an eye for astronomy.

The research of astronomy and the recording of data often take thousands or even ten thousand years as the time unit. It can be said that the research of astronomy is a job that needs to be recorded for a long time.

And China's historical records undoubtedly contributed to modern astronomy, an astronomical record that lasted for two to three thousand years!

This is the most brilliant legacy left to the world by the Chinese ancestors!
(End of this chapter)