Modern Express News (Special Correspondent Liu Jingyan Deng Wenting) Where does the fire of the origin of human civilization and the fire of the modern Olympics intersect and collide? The answer: Mud River Bay Archaeological Site Park.
On February 8, a Modern Express reporter followed the interview group and drove more than 100 kilometers from Zhangjiakou City to the Nihewan Archaeological Site Park and the Nihewan Museum in Yangyuan County. Just five days ago, after the Beijing Winter Olympic Torch was passed in the Yanqing Area of Beijing, it arrived at the Nihewan Archaeological Site Park for relay. The theme of this point is "the homeland of mankind in the East".
△ Nihewan National Archaeological Site Park
Huge ancient ape-man head, "marking" a cultural site of more than one million years
The Torch Relay Route connects the iconic landscape within the park. Starting with the ancient ape-man head sculpture, the torch is passed along the "Axis of Life on Earth" along the central axis. The torchbearer holds aloft the torch and faces the ancient human head sculpture, waving to the ancestors of eastern humans.
△ Ancient human heads
The Nihewan Ruins Group is one of the earliest places where human beings set foot and one of the important origins of human civilization, showing the process of the Chinese nation's reproduction, creating culture, and finally igniting the spark of human civilization, and is the common cultural treasure house of all mankind.
Climbing up the long corridor, the huge ancient ape-man head has become a landmark in the square.
△ The side of the head of an ancient human
Archaeologists around the world have never ceased to explore the mystery of human origins, and the world's recognized place of human origin is the Oduvai Gorge in East Africa, where ape-man fossils have been excavated about 2.33 million years ago. As early as the early 1920s, the unique strata and beautiful myths and legends of Nihe Bay attracted the attention of a group of Western missionaries and scholars. Over the past hundred years, many scientists at home and abroad have come here to study and excavate, and gradually unveiled the mysterious veil of Nihe Bay, making it famous at home and abroad. So far, more than 300 named sites have been discovered in the Nihewan ruins group, of which 50 are more than one million years old.
After the head of the ancient ape man is wrapped around, it is the site of the small long beam of the national key cultural protection unit. Discovered in 1978, the Xiaochangliang site is the first cultural remains found in the Nihewan Basin that are more than one million years old, with paleomagnetic dating back to 1.36 million years. There are a wealth of cultural relics unearthed here, buried in the lower layer of the Nihe Bay Layer, mainly stonework and animal bones. The combination of stone tools tends to be complicated, and scrapers, concave scrapers, sharpeners, and smashers have all appeared, and the processing is relatively sophisticated.
△ Ruins of small long beams
Discover the footprints of steppe mammoths, where ancient humans ate steppe mammoths
The Maquangou site, 2,000 meters away from the Xiaochangliang site, is the oldest ancient human cultural site found in Nihe Bay. Traces of ancient human eating steppe mammoth activity have been found here.
The strata of the Maquangou site are about 24 meters lower than that of Xiaochangliang, which is the lowest strata and the oldest cultural relics found in the Nihewan Basin, and as of the end of 2019, 15 cultural layers have been found in multiple sites, and after stratigraphic comparison, the age of the Maquangou site group has been basically determined from 1.25 million to 1.76 million years.
The Maquangou site was first identified in 1992, and the discovery process was very accidental. In that year, Xie Fei, a staff member of the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics, led a team to carry out paleolithic archaeological surveys in Nihe Bay, and some interested villagers in the vicinity often went to the archaeological site and had a preliminary understanding of some fossils. One day after the summer rains, a villager in Cen Jia Wan Village named Bai Riyou was herding horses in the horse pen ditch, and found a suspected fossil stone in the collapsed soil of a towering cliff, handed it to the archaeological team, and after verification, found the original layer. In July of the same year, the archaeological team removed the huge loess accumulation above the cultural layer of the site, and completed the first excavation work in 1993, which was the first excavation pit and the first cultural layer, and the first cultural layer was later determined to be 1.55 million years old.
The trench wall of this excavation area is steep and straight, and the nihe bay layer is very well exposed, which is an ideal observation profile, and the characteristics of the nihe bay stratigraphic profile can be clearly seen.
△ Meal prairie mammoth scene restoration
66 fossil elephant footprint pits have been excavated here, and it is speculated that these footprint pits are likely to be the remnants of steppe mammoths and are very rare and rare. In addition, the remains of a group of human dining steppe mammoths were also found, vividly showing the scenes of ancient humans hunting, dismemberment, meals and bone sucking activities at that time.
Visit the Nihewan Museum, where the "C" shaped jade pig dragon is the treasure of the town hall
Completed in 2010, the Nihewan Museum is the largest paleolithic museum in China and an important carrier for the comprehensive display of Nihewan culture.
△ Mud River Bay Museum
It is located in Nihewan Cultural Square, Yangyuan County New District, 50 to 60 kilometers from Nihewan Archaeological Site Park. The museum uses painting, sculpture and modern scientific and technological means such as sound, light and electricity to show the production and life scenes of human hunting, gathering, using fire, eating and making tools in the ancient lake of Nihewan from 2 million years ago to 10,000 years ago.
The jade pig dragon in the collection is the treasure of the town hall. This jade pig dragon is milky white, "C" shaped, 3.3 cm high and 2.6 cm wide, jade, pig head, snake body, shaped like an embryo, the pig head is towering with both ears, the kiss is extended forward, the nose tip is wrinkled, the head and tail are opposite, there is a gap on the outside, the middle pair drills a large hole, a small perforation behind the ear, and the curled part combined with the pig's head is the snake body, that is, the original form of the dragon.
△ Jade Pig Dragon
It was excavated from a rectangular pit vertical pit tomb at the site of Jiangjialiang on the north bank of the Sanggan River basin in the Nihewan Basin, and the owner of the tomb is a woman, about 40 years old, wearing this jade pig dragon on the right neck of the tomb owner. It is a typical representative of the Hongshan culture, dating back to about 5,000 years, which is the transition period from matriarchal society to patrilineal society.
The Jade Pig Dragon was the prototype of the earliest dragon. The tomb owner who wears the Jade Pig Dragon has an extraordinary status, and is a privileged person who combines theocracy and power. The Jade Pig Dragon is considered to be an artifact that communicates heaven and earth, and can spread rain in the clouds and suppress evil and blessings. It was also a symbol of political power, like today's seal, which could give orders and dispatch troops.
5,000 years ago, the three great humanistic ancestors of the Chinese nation, the Yellow Emperor, the Yan Emperor and xuan you, fought and integrated in the Sanggan River area, created the totem recognized by the Chinese nation as a "dragon", and realized the first great unification of the Chinese nation, and "the Chinese nation came from here" became one of the three major cultural brands in Hebei Province.
In 1995, when archaeologists from the Institute of Cultural Relics of Hebei Province excavated the Jade Pig Dragon more than 6,000 years ago at the site of Jiangjialiang, the Jade Pig Dragon had been preserved at the Provincial Institute of Culture and Research because Yangyuan did not have the conditions to protect cultural relics at that time. Later, with the efforts of the staff of Yangyuan Nihewan Museum, on December 15, 2019, Jade Pig Dragon finally returned to Yangyuan, the "hometown" of 24 years.