Located in Anyang, Henan, the site of Yin Ruins was a capital city of the late Shang Dynasty, dating back about 3,300 years. During the excavation of the Yin Ruins, experts unearthed a large number of rare cultural relics, including a decaying shrew drum that is special, because experts found that the production of the shrew drum has not removed the nail pieces, why is this? If you also want to know, the following Xiaobian will reveal it to you.
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At the beginning of the 20th century, the "dragon bone" was found in Xiaotun Village in Anyang, Henan Province, which was later sent to Beijing as a Chinese medicinal material, and was considered to be an oracle bone by the epigraphers at that time, so they traced the roots to Xiaotun Village to investigate. As a result, a huge ancient city site was discovered and identified as the Yin Ruins in later excavation studies. In the following century or so, the site of Yin Ruins has been cleaned up many times, accumulating more than 150,000 pieces of oracle bones, as well as various workshops, carriage and horse pits, sacrificial pits, Jongmyo temples and cellars.
It is worth mentioning that experts have also found the tomb of the wife and wife of King Wuding of the Shang Dynasty, and it is also the only well-preserved royal tomb of the Shang Dynasty. Although the area of the tomb is not large, but the burial items are very rich, experts have unearthed more than 3,000 pieces of jade, bronze, pottery and other utensils, such as even square Yi, ivory cup and triptych. In addition to the women's tomb, experts have also found more than 200 large and small tombs in the past 50 years, and each tomb has a surprising discovery, which makes people have to marvel that Yin Ruins is a huge underground cultural treasure house.
In 2003-2004, experts excavated a tomb in the west district of Yin Xu, numbered M1, which was also small in size, and was an ordinary earthen pit. However, experts have also unearthed some jade, bronze and ivory objects, as well as some bronze weapons, which infers that the owner of the tomb was a man, or even a military general at that time. It is worth mentioning that when the excavation reached the bottom of the tomb, experts found 4 small wooden sticks with black paint, about 22 centimeters long, in addition to decaying wooden tools. The most puzzling thing is that there is still something black on the west side of the earth wall, which is difficult to identify for a while.
Since the black substance is not easy to peel off, the experts took out the soil together and sent it to the institute for preservation and research. After a period of time, some experts found that the black substance was cortical decay, and it was also mixed with some semi-circular nail pieces, which made the experts feel puzzled, what is the skin and nail pieces? Later, experts conducted scientific tests, and the results showed that it was crocodile skin. Experts also suddenly realized that rot was a kind of war drum of the Shang Dynasty.
In ancient times, people used animal skins to make drums, such as the drums, as recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas and the Great Wilderness of the East": "There are beasts on it... Its name is 夔, the Yellow Emperor has it, with its skin as a drum, and the skeleton of a thunder beast, and the sound is heard for five hundred miles", so the drum is an ancient war drum, and the sound is also the loudest drum. In addition, there are also moles, such as the "Poetry Daya" recorded: "The drums meet", Lu Jieshu: "(鼉) its skin is strong, you can beat the drums, but the sound of the mole is far less than the drums."
Experts said that the hammer is an ancient mythical beast, whether it exists is still a problem, and the shrew is a crocodile, that is, our current Yangtze crocodile, is a real animal. Therefore, the drum that Yin Xu found was a drum, not a drum. However, what puzzles experts are that the unearthed mole is made of crocodile skin, why is there still a nail piece? Because normally, the nail pieces must be removed to make drums, such as when making cowhide drums, there is not a single cow hair.
With these doubts, the experts consulted the historical materials, and after research and discussion, speculated that perhaps the unearthed mole was only a burial vessel, not a practical instrument, so it did not need to make much sound, just need to show grandeur, majesty can be, so it left a crocodile armor piece. Some experts believe that the ancients at that time were lazy, or too late in time, so they hurriedly made a piece of mole for the owner of the tomb to bury. Later, some experts joked that this was deliberately left by the ancients to facilitate expert research, otherwise who knows what these rotten things are?
Until now, the excavation and research of the Yin Ruins site is still continuing, but experts have not yet unearthed a complete drum, after all, these things are too easy to decay, if you are lucky enough to find the drum in the near future, all these doubts may be solved.
Resources:
"Yin Xu" by Chen Zhida, Publisher: Cultural Relics Publishing House
Wenlan Hairun Studio Editor-in-Chief Wen Xiucai, this article is written by: Special History Writer: Liu Lijiang's