Master Archaeologist

Chapter 325 The Appearance of Shell Coins

"Yo, this is still a square shackle!"

"This thing is not very common even in the Central Plains. I didn't expect there to be in Sanxingdui!"

"And this one is made of a more delicate one, which is only owned by high-level nobles!"

Holding the brush and lying on the floating wooden board, Chen Han was pleasantly surprised.

Fang Ju is a kind of wine container and water container in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, made of copper or pottery, with a small mouth, sloping shoulders, deep belly, small flat bottom or round feet.

In addition, copper squares generally have complex patterns.

During the period of the Republic of China, a merchant vessel, the square 罍, was unearthed in Hunan. It was a bronze vessel in the late Shang Dynasty.

This Fang Fu is a work of the pinnacle of Late Shang bronze ware, and it is very exquisitely made!

The height of the device is 84.8 cm, and the height of the device is 63.6 cm.The cover is in the shape of a verandah hall, with a rectangular mouth, a straight neck and high circle feet.The whole vessel is based on the pattern of cloud and thunder, and the pattern of animal face, Kui dragon and phoenix bird are decorated on the top.

Double ear rings are decorated on both sides of the shoulders, and a beast head is placed under the front abdomen.The corners of the four sides and the center of each side are decorated with protruding long hook-shaped door edges.

The square ware of the merchant dish is huge, majestic, majestic, exquisitely carved, and magnificent. It is a representative work of the heyday of late Shang bronze ware.

Reflecting the superb skills and breathtaking momentum of the Chinese bronze casting heyday, it is known as the "divine product" with both "shape and connotation", and is known as the "King of Fangzheng".

Its body is full of various reliefs and decorations, so exquisite that even modern people will be overwhelmed when they see it.

It is now stored in the Hunan Museum, and Chen Han once visited it.

In terms of the degree of exquisiteness, the Fangzhen of Sanxingdui in front of me is definitely incomparable with the King of Fangzhen.

The square urn that Chen Han is cleaning up has a relatively simple and simple shape. Although the body also has decorations, there are no exaggerated reliefs, and the overall look is "ordinary".

However, the things that are in full bloom inside this Fang Fu are not ordinary at all.

The 罍 is a kind of wine and water container unique to the Chinese culture. Except for the Chinese, people in other parts of the world do not know how to make this special bronze ware.

Sanxingdui was able to unearth a square, which once again shows that Sanxingdui culture is a part of Chinese culture.

However, this kind of undoubted matter did not surprise Chen Han in the slightest.

To his surprise, this square was not used to hold water.

It seems that the usage of the bronze ware of "罍" has changed during the process of spreading to Shu.

In the Shang and Zhou dynasties, 罍 was a utensil used to hold wine. After all, businessmen love to drink, and most of the exquisite bronze wares were created to hold wine.

The Zhou people inherited the bronze ware culture of the merchants, so the utensils such as 罍 were also preserved, but they were not so commonly used in the Zhou Dynasty, and became a small group of bronze ware.

However, in Sichuan, it may be that Sanxingdui people's love for wine is not as exaggerated as that of businessmen, so this square box used by businessmen to hold wine is used as a storage device in Sanxingdui.

Similar to a piggy bank.

Why do you say that?

Because when Chen Han was cleaning up, he found some shells and pearls scattered next to the mud of the square.

The inside of Fang Zhen's body is now filled with mud.

However, from some of the shells and pearls scattered at the mouth of the fang, Chen Han can already judge that when this fang fang was buried in the soil, it should be full of shells and pearls.

This discovery surprised Chen Han very much.

This shows that in the primitive trading system of the ancient Shu people, perhaps shells and pearls were their general equivalents!

What is a general equivalent?

Simply put, it is a special commodity that is separated from the commodity world and serves as a unified expression of the value of all other commodities.

Before credit banknotes appeared, human societies all over the world used some commodities as general equivalents.

Taking the Chinese Central Plains civilization as an example, the earliest stage must be bartering.

Later, gradually, shells and pearls were used as general equivalents, that is, to play the role of "money".

The reason is that the civilization of the Central Plains at that time lived in the Yellow River Basin and did not rely on the sea.

Relatively speaking, shells and pearls that can only be produced by the sea have become very rare and precious things.

Rare things are more expensive.

The more precious something is, the more valuable it is and can become a general equivalent.

For example, Qi State, which is close to the sea, still used shell coins as currency until the Spring and Autumn Period!

Of course, the general equivalent of shellfish was gradually replaced by bronze in the Bronze Age.

During the Spring and Autumn Period, coins made of bronze, such as knife coins, ax coins, and cloth coins, began to circulate and replaced shell coins.

In the later Iron Age, copper coins basically ran through the history of Chinese civilization, and they were the most universal general equivalent until the Qing Dynasty.

Of course, cloth and silk have always been used as general equivalents among the people, and the most popular one was in the Tang Dynasty.

In the Tang Dynasty, "silk" was even better than copper coins, and people used "silk" to trade more often than copper coins.

The main reason was that there was a shortage of copper at that time, and the warlords in the late Tang Dynasty segregated the regime, and the central government could not issue copper coins wantonly. The copper coins issued were not enough for market circulation, so "silk" could only be used as a general equivalent.

People in the late Tang Dynasty went out to buy things, and for slightly larger transactions, they were all paid with "silk" as discounted money. There was no way, and there was no copper coin.

This situation continued until the following Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms.

Until the Song Dynasty vigorously developed Lingnan, and there were many copper mines in Lingnan area, and sea trade was opened, the Song Dynasty people had no shortage of copper coins, and cloth gradually fell from the equivalent to the status of general transactions.

Back to the point.

In the Sanxingdui civilization, shells and pearls can be found in Fangfu, and they obviously have the meaning of "storage".

This shows that shells and pearls may play the role of "money" in Sanxingdui society.

This point has precedents in the Central Plains culture. In the Central Plains Chinese civilization circle, many shell coins have been unearthed.

These shellfish coins were collected by coastal tribes and Fangguo, and then circulated to various regions.

Like Shu, it is located in the Sichuan Basin, surrounded by mountains.

Although it is said that there are freshwater shellfish that provide shells and pearls, the quantity is definitely very small, and they are considered very precious items.

And Sanxingdui people also have extensive exchanges and trade with the civilization of the Central Plains.

So since there is trade, and there is a "transnational" level of trade, it is very important that both sides of the trade have a general equivalent under the same value system.

For example, the trade between the Ming Dynasty and the Spaniards used silver, because in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty and the Spaniards, silver is a precious metal that can be used to mint silver taels and silver coins.

For the Sanxingdui people and merchants before BC, apart from "bronze", it seems that there are only shell coins and pearls between them, which can be used as settlement items during transactions!

(End of this chapter)