Master Archaeologist

Chapter 326 Red Spots
"It's time to exercise the strength of the waist and abdomen again."

Lying on the suspended wooden board, Chen Han smiled wryly and shook his head.

This square box full of soil, shell coins, and pearls was tilted in the pit, otherwise the shell coins would not have fallen out.

As a large bronze vessel with a length of about [-] to [-] centimeters and a diameter of more than ten to twenty centimeters, this square is not light in weight.

To pick it up, Chen Han's posture of lying on the suspended wooden board is a test of the strength of the waist and abdomen.

Fortunately, during the period of cleaning and excavating Pit No. [-], they have basically been exercising their waist and abdomen strength.

Compared with before, Chen Han's waist and abdomen strength is indeed much stronger now, and his eight-pack muscles are almost out.

Excavated the part of Fang Yu that was stuck in the soil, especially the edge of the mouth. After digging out a distance that allowed his hands to reach in and hold the edge of the mouth, Chen Han took a deep breath, and while holding the edge of the mouth with both hands, he Holding the base, he lifted it up vigorously.

"Um……"

Pull it hard, but it doesn't move.

The contact area between the bronze vessel and the soil is too large, and the lower half is stuck to the soil. It is difficult to pull it up by manpower alone.

And the result of not being able to move is that you have to dig out slowly.

Hollow out all the places under the square that are in contact with the soil before pulling it up.

This is another big project that takes time and effort.

It is not an easy job to operate on the floating board.

The pressure on the waist and abdomen is not ordinary.

As long as a little analysis is done, it can be found that the force of prone operation in the suspended state is indeed many times that of the normal situation.

In fact, even if a normal person is lying in mid-air suspended, because of the posture problem, the head will inevitably flow back and congest the blood, and even if they do nothing, they will feel a little dizzy.

In addition, the abdomen still needs to bear the force of the whole body and the excavation of cultural relics, even as a young man, Chen Han is a bit overwhelmed.

Every half an hour or so on the hoverboard, he needs to get down and stretch his waist to relieve the pressure before he can continue to work.

He couldn't imagine how the archaeologists in their 50s and [-]s persisted when excavating the sacrificial pits with higher numbers.

Chen Han, Zhuang Yunpeng, and colleagues who were busy in other pits relied on this to repeatedly lie on the suspension boards, and bit by bit to clean up and extract thousands of cultural relics in these pits. .

The degree of hard work is beyond human comprehension.

"We were too optimistic before." Chen Han said to Zhuang Yunpeng with a wry smile after resting beside him for a while.

When we set off to the Sanxingdui Archaeological Base, everyone was very optimistic.

I feel that such a sacrificial pit full of cultural relics with an area of ​​only 16 square meters is easy to deal with.

After all, the items are very concentrated. If you move faster, you can even extract a bronze vessel in a few minutes.

Originally, they thought that it would take two or three months to clean up and extract all the bronze wares in the sacrificial pit.

But now it seems that this idea is completely too optimistic, it is simply a dream.

The actual extraction difficulty is ten times what they imagined.

It is estimated that it will take a year to extract all of them, which is considered a quick move.

Looking back now, Chen Han feels that he not only underestimated the difficulty of this project, but also underestimated the depth of this sacrificial pit!

With the deepening of archaeological work, pieces of bronzes with the characteristics of Sanxingdui have been unearthed.

Just when everyone thought that the excavation work was coming to an end, the appearance of large tracts of ivory shattered their illusions.

A new nightmare has begun.

In Pit No. [-], a large number of intact ivory, the kind that has never been processed, was found.

And the number is astonishing, so many that the first seven sacrificial pits may add up, and there are not as many ivories found in this pit.

"one two three four five six.."

"There are at least six layers of ivory accumulation."

"Which year and month do we have to dig to be the head?!"

Complaints are nothing but complaints. In fact, everyone is still full of enthusiasm for the excavation work.

In addition to cleaning up the utensil layer, Chen Han was also seriously looking for all the clues left by the ancient Shu people that were related to the civilization of the ancient Shu Kingdom in the deep pit.

The hard work paid off, and soon, he did find some strange traces.

With the deepening of the cleaning work, Chen Han found some spots on some gold utensils, mostly gold masks.

These spots were all red, and under Chen Han's careful observation, he found that these spots looked like traces left by some kind of liquid after it dried up.

On this point, he will not be wrong.

After discovering this strange thing, Chen Han immediately reported it to the Sanxingdui Cultural Protection Center through WeChat, hoping to find out from the cultural protection center whether this happened only in Pit No. [-] or in other pits.

Soon, the Cultural Heritage Center sent a reply.

In fact, the team of the cultural relics protection center, which is responsible for the cleaning of gold artifacts, also has this question.

It turned out that the erythema discovered by Chen Han was not an isolated case.

Traces of this red spot were also found in other sacrificial pits, and even in cultural relics unearthed during the first large-scale excavation of Sanxingdui in 1986.

The Cultural Heritage Center also believes that these red spots are traces left after some kind of liquid dries up.

But what exactly this liquid is, there is no research result yet.

After such a long time, it is really difficult to extract some researchable ingredients from this erythema.

However, in fact, the Cultural Heritage Protection Center has already guessed.

How do these spots form?
Maybe some kind of liquid paint was poured on these utensils?
After all, the ancient ancestors did have the custom of smearing some colored pigments on their faces.

And this custom exists all over the world, and even now some tribes in Africa and some primitive tribes in the Amazon jungle do so.

Chinese ancestors, especially those near the south, also had this habit.

At first, this habit actually originated from repelling mosquitoes. The ancient ancestors applied some herbs that can repel insects on their bodies.

Because the juices of some herbal medicines are colored, including green and red, the custom of smearing pigments on the face gradually formed.

Later, this custom took on a religious color, so ancient religious people all over the world like to paint their faces with various colors of paint.

It seems understandable that Sanxingdui people painted these golden masks.

However, this explanation is not tenable enough.

If it's paint, then why are there just some red spots instead of specific painting, even if it's just simple lines or geometric patterns!
The red spots, on the other hand, seem to be more reminiscent of something else.

Bloodstains!
(End of this chapter)