In 1986, archaeologists were excavating the No. 2 sacrificial pit at the Sanxingdui site when they accidentally found that among the large number of bronze fragments that had been smashed and burned by fire, there were about 6 recognizable bronze fragments shaped like wheels. After expert restoration, two pieces of bronzes with a diameter of about 85 centimeters and a completely consistent configuration were finally obtained.
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These two wheel-like bronzes have a history of more than 3,000 years, it looks like a circle, there is a raised circle in the middle, and the five strips of light around the circle are arranged radially, and the appearance looks like the steering wheel of our car today, placed in the museum, inexplicably has a very modern "sense of violation".
This shape of the bronze artifact is very different from the bronzes excavated in the past, at first the experts did not know the role of these two bronzes, they speculated that this may be the ancient Shu people's shield, wheels, so the original excavators named it "wheel shaped vessel".
Later, archaeologists further excavated and studied thousands of artifacts in the sacrificial pit and found that there were no other carriages or trims in the sacrificial pit, and it was too thin as a wheel to bear the weight of the vehicle, so it should not be a wheel.
Similarly, as a shield, most of its area is hollow, which is difficult to play a defensive role, so the possibility that it is a shield can also be ruled out.
Considering its overall characteristics, it is similar to the form of the "sun glow pattern" on the roof of the copper temple excavated from the same pit, at this time, scholars have put forward a more recognized point of view: will it be a "decorative sun shape instrument that expresses the ancient Shu people's concept of sun worship"?
This view was agreed by most scholars, so in the official report "Sanxingdui Sacrifice Pit", its name was also renamed from "wheel shaped device" to "sun shaped device", that is, the "bronze sun wheel" in the Sanxingdui Museum as we know it.
Most scholars believe that the "bronze sun wheel" is an artifact enshrined by the ancient Shu people in the temple to sacrifice the sun god, and it accepts people's sacrifice and worship as a symbol of the sun, which is an important part of the life of the ancient Shu people.
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Solar energy brings light and heat, and in primitive societies, it was often regarded by the ancients as the source of life.
Regarding the "worship of the sun", it is common in all regions of the world, it runs through almost the entire human civilization, as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the ancient Shu people had a special ritual to sacrifice the sun.
In the religious culture of the ancient Shu people, totem ornaments about sun worship can be seen everywhere. From the golden four birds around the sun ornaments and bronze statues unearthed from us, they can reflect the ancient Shu people's worship of the sun.
"The god of heaven, the sun is respected", in the hearts of the ancient Shu people who advocated witch culture, the sun god was the supreme god, and its messenger, the three-legged Jinwu, would ride it in the sky every day, so there was a distinction between night and day and four seasons in the human world.
As we all know, Sichuan's climate is humid, summer and autumn are rainy, cloudy, and even the Chengdu Plain is often threatened by floods before the Dujiangyan Water Conservancy Project was built.
Rainy all year round, will affect hunting, labor, coupled with summer and autumn and facing floods, in this environment, sacrifice to the sun, pray to the sun god for a sunny day, has become the norm of ancient Shu people's life.
The sun affects agriculture, production and travel, for the ancient Shu people living in the agricultural era, the importance of the sun is irreplaceable, it not only brought a bumper harvest to the ancient Shu people, but also deeply affected all aspects of the ancient Shu people's life.
In the era without clocks, when the sun god spread the light to the world, people knew that the sky was dawn, and thus, the ancient Shu people knew the time.
In spring, everything wakes up under the call of the sun and re-blooms the breath of life. From this, the ancient Shu people knew the four seasons...
By summarizing the laws of the sun's movement, the ancient Shu people could also identify the direction, master the techniques of farming, and improve grain production, even if all this is just the sun's unconscious behavior, but in the eyes of the ancients who believed in the concept of animism, these were all blessings from the gods.
What could be more visual than directly dispelling the cold and darkness, bringing warmth and light to the sun, and displaying miracles more visually?
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In the era when science and technology had not yet emerged, the ancients could only rely on limited experience and the naked eye to observe and judge the world, which was very subjective and difficult to be recognized by others.
In order to better avoid risks and allow human beings to survive in a dangerous primitive society, how to master and pass on this limited knowledge has become an important responsibility of tribal leaders.
The Flintstone clan drills wood for fire, and Shennong tastes hundreds of herbs, and the stories of these ancient people passing on the torch hide the secrets of the continuation of Chinese civilization.
Some of these secrets can be explained by the ancients, and some of them are powerless, and this sense of powerlessness in the face of the unknown forces them to seek "answers" irrepressibly, and they urgently need a theory that can guide them to show their external perceptions in a concrete form.
Sorcery appeared, or mythical beliefs.
The ancient Shu people, who practiced witchcraft, believed that there was a subtle connection between man and the gods, and that as long as the shaman offered sacrifices to the gods, he could communicate with the gods and get the blessings of the gods.
The so-called sorcery of shamans often builds this bridge by imitating the characteristics of the gods they believe in, and in this sense, the "bronze sun wheel" is the bridge between the ancient Shu people and the sun god.
When the wet weather affected the normal growth of crops, when the flood flooded the human city, when the winter cold beat the ancients recklessly, the shamans of the ancient Shu kingdom would pray for the protection of the sun god through rituals in exchange for warm sunlight.
Of course, most of the time, the psychological comfort of this ritual is far greater than its practical significance.
In the development of civilizations around the world, the origin of religion and the origin of myths are often synchronized, through the myth we look at the ancient Shu people's sun worship culture, we will find a very interesting point: in the ancient Shu people's belief, the distance between gods and people is close to the extent that mortals also have access to it.
God protects the human world, which is the plot that will appear in almost all mythological stories, but unlike the ancient Shu myth, the hierarchy of gods and people in other myths is quite strict, mortals and gods are basically two different dimensions of existence, and the gods in the ancient Shu myth are quite humane, it is more like the continuation of the real world in the spiritual world, far less than the gods in other myths.
In the view of the ancient Shu people, people believe in gods, gods respond to people's prayers, and gods and people can interact with each other through ladders and gods and birds. After a person dies, the soul can also break away from the body and enter the world of God.
Ancient book "Huainanzi · The Terrain records: "Jianmu is in Duguang, and the emperors are from top to bottom. There is no scene in the middle of the day, there is no sound, and the heavens and the earth are also covered. ”
Among them, all refer to the Shu land, Jianmu is the passage of the gods to and from the celestial realm and the human world, in the ancient Shu people's sun worship, people can enter the celestial realm through the ladder to achieve self-sublimation.
This primitive belief happens to reflect the creative imagination of the ancient Shu people, as well as their active exploration of the relationship between nature and man.
Text/Brain Hole Fun History
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