Master Archaeologist

Chapter 372 Original text?

The debate about Liangzhu characters has been short for ten years, but it has been more than 80 years for long.

The discovery of the Liangzhu engraved symbols and the discovery of the Liangzhu ruins were simultaneous.

In particular, the materials discovered in 1936, obtained through scientific excavation, are the earliest batch of archaeological materials that depict symbols of the Liangzhu Culture.

Around the 20s, many small and medium-sized cemeteries and residential sites were discovered in the Liangzhu site group, and a large number of pottery with carved symbols were found on the unearthed pottery.

Later, people also found many symbols on stone tools, of which jade only accounted for 3%.

The writing carriers of the Liangzhu people are diverse, but few of these symbols can be associated with the tomb owners of the noble tombs.

Over the past 80 years, Liangzhu culture has discovered more than 750 inscriptions and more than 340 types.

There are single symbols like flowers, birds, lobsters, crocodiles, and symbols like an apple with a bite out of it.

There are some symbols that look similar to oracle bone inscriptions, such as "king", "earth" and "five".

The symbol on the sandy black pottery unearthed at the Bianjiashan site is very similar to the "five" in oracle bone inscriptions.

Among these symbols, there are a large number of repeated symbols, and the combination with utensils has obvious regular symbols.

In the decades of Liangzhu archaeology, this is not unusual.

The shocking thing is this year's Liangzhu excavation work.

Just when Chen Han and Kong Jianwen were digging the dam.

This round of excavation work in Liangzhu has received frequent reports of success.

The people of Liangzhu in Yuhang Nanhu posted a "one sentence" on the circle foot pot, which has 12 "characters"!
This is the first time that Liangzhu discovered the symbols that form phrases or even "connect words into sentences"!

This discovery seems to be just the beginning.

Immediately afterwards, at the Zhuangqiao Tomb site, which is also the site with the most inscribed symbols found in Liangzhu cultural sites, in previous archaeological work, inscribed symbols have been found on 242 artifacts at this site. accounted for nearly one-third.

Most of them are found on pottery.

A total of 7 stone tools are engraved with symbols, and one is engraved with inscribed stone axe.

The most important thing is that this time at the site of the Zhuangqiao Tomb, a new inscribed stone axe was discovered, and on the A side of the stone axe, there are 6 "sentences" arranged in a row, which can be multiple Interpretation order.

On side A, there are 6 vertical symbols, in the shape of "Bu" and "日" (also like "Gan"), repeated in pairs, forming a sentence similar to "日吉日启日启", like a sentence engraved .

"What the hell do they mean?"

"Are they the source of Chinese characters?"

This has become a controversial question among experts and scholars concerned with Liangzhu archeology.

Whether Liangzhu has writing or not, each generation of archaeologists should not evade this question when faced with these materials.

The origin of characters is related to the origin of civilization and the origin of the country. We have discussed the origin of civilization in these years, and this issue cannot be avoided.

After carefully observing the real objects, some experts re-imitated the engraved characters on the two stone axes based on the photos taken with reference to the original copies.

According to the characteristics and sequential relationship of the inscribed marks, the chaotic superimposed inscribed marks are peeled off layer by layer, the non-symbolic inscriptions or "scars" are excluded, and the original symbol units are distinguished. 18 pcs!
Moreover, some engraved symbols are common "symbols" in Liangzhu!
For example, there are nearly 10 examples of the "Bu"-shaped symbol on one of the stone axes in the Zhuangqiao Tomb Site, and it may be a relatively common symbol in the Liangzhu period.

As for the "Gan"-shaped symbol (also like the "Japanese" shape), the scratches are not very regular, and the difference is not very big in terms of the identification of the symbol itself. It should be the same symbol, and the same kind is also found in the Liangzhu culture. Engraved character.

These two "words" are very common.

Coincidentally, the meaning of these two "words" is too easy to understand.

"Bu", this is a character that runs through the oracle bone inscriptions, and it is the abbreviation of the rituals when the ancestors at that time prayed to the gods and ancestors.

"Day", this is a text representing the unit of time.

The combination of these two words seems to mean X-day divination!
As we all know, the reason why oracle bone inscriptions exist is because they are divination words written on tortoise shells!

In fact, none of the real daily writing and recording materials of merchants, such as history books and classics, have survived.

If it weren't for oracle bone inscriptions written on oracle bones, this special carrier.

If it were not for the discovery of oracle bones, the academic world would not even be able to prove that merchants had a mature writing system!

Think about it, the characters used by merchants on oracle bones are already so mature, so mature that the academic circles agree that this kind of characters are definitely not developed by merchants in 200 years, but definitely inherited other original characters before they matured. of.

Just like that, it almost disappeared in the long river of time, without being known by anyone.

As long as the businessman chooses not to choose oracle bones, but to use wood as a carrier for divination, nothing will be left behind in later generations.

As for the Liangzhu civilization, even if there are mature original characters, there is a high probability that they will not survive.

After all, in the late Neolithic period, after much deliberation, it seems that wood and the silk fabrics that Liangzhu people have researched can be used as carriers for writing.

And precisely these two carriers are very difficult to preserve.

Liangzhu people may also have the habit of writing primitive characters on wood.

However, carving these single characters on stoneware, jadeware, and pottery may really be an act of expressing possessions.

There are many words on individual utensils, but the particularity of those utensils is considered.

For example, things like "Yue" have always been ritual vessels.

Perhaps these utensils engraved with multiple characters are ritual utensils used by Liangzhu people for sacrifices.

Chinese people, from ancient times to the present, will never forget to worship their ancestors.

And this habit has already begun since the tribal age.

Merchants also like to carve inscriptions on utensils, and then use them to worship ancestors.

After Chen Han learned about the discovery of the artifacts with multi-character combinations, he took a special look at it.

Experts have several similar scars on the B side of the stone yue, which are completely different from the strokes of the symbol itself, and may not be part of the symbol itself.

They believe that the symbols on the stone tools may have used three different techniques of engraving, cutting, and scratching.

This shows that Liangzhu people have done a lot of research on "carving characters".

At least three techniques have been developed for lettering.

This made Chen Han more inclined that the Liangzhu people may have already produced primitive characters.

Writing is not the result of long-term accumulation, it should be created by special groups (social elites) in a short period of time.

When creating characters, it may refer to the existing symbol system or configuration experience.

For example, when merchants created oracle bone inscriptions, they must have referred to earlier original texts.

The creation of the original characters by Liangzhu people must also refer to earlier engraved symbols.

Compared with the early Liangzhu talismans, archeology has discovered many!
(End of this chapter)