Legend has it that people used flutes to fix their hair as early as the Nuwa era.
Qing Wang Ji's "The Origin of Things" records that women tied their hair in a bun, which began with the Suiren clan, and when they arrived at the Nuwa clan, they used wool as a rope and tied it backwards, or used jingsuo and bamboo as a bun to tie their hair into a bun. It can be seen that the custom of tying hair and putting a flute has been around for a long time.
At that time, the simplest hairstyle was to drape your hair casually over your shoulders. The other is hair cutting, which is to cut the hair short on the forehead and the back of the head, which is very neat. For longer hair, tie it back from the forehead with a rope, and for more complicated things, tie the hair up at the top of the head or at the back of the head, and then tie it into the hair curl with a small stick to make it a bun. This small stick was called "笄" (sound with the same machine) in ancient times, and after the Han Dynasty, it was called "hairpin".
Ancient women and coming-of-age ceremonies
Hair tie is most common in the Yellow River Basin, especially in many areas of Henan Province, such as Mixian, Shangqiu, Yanshi, Tangyin, etc. in Henan Province. There are also some discoveries in Hebei, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Shandong, Jiangsu, Anhui and other places adjacent to it. It can be seen that at that time, men and women in the Central Plains were mainly tied with their hair. In addition, it has also been found sporadically in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, Zhejiang, Yunnan and other places. Especially in Gansu, the style, material and way of inserting and wearing are very special.
Golden hairpin Ming Dynasty 20.5 cm long and 1.5 cm wide Gansu Provincial Museum
Most of the hair flutes made by our ancestors were made from local materials. There is a bamboo flute next to the bamboo forest, hit the prey, the animal's teeth and limb bones are very good bone flute raw materials, the mussel shell by the sea and the river is smooth and shiny, and it is also very chic to pinch a pottery stick to burn when burning pottery, and the rare stone and jade are even more amazing materials.
Gu Lu late Shang period about 14 ~ 11 century BC In 1976, the women of Yinxu in Anyang City, Henan Province were good monks
Commonly used bone flutes
At that time, people most commonly used bone flutes, with as many as 1,000 different styles, mostly the bones of cows, sheep, pigs, deer and other animals. The simplest form is like a small stick that has been sharpened, with one end pointed for easy wearing, and the other end exposed outside the hair becomes the head. The head of the flute has a spherical, ring-shaped, T-shaped, etc., and some of the more particular ones are also carved with some horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines on the stick-shaped flute as decoration, and the length of such a flute is generally between 10 cm and 16 cm.
The ancestors of the Banpo site in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province loved to decorate, in nearly 2,000 pieces of various types of jewelry, stone, pottery and bone as many as 700 pieces, there are rods, two pointed heads, and T-shaped. Several bone flutes unearthed from the Fuzhuang site in Hao County, Anhui Province are quite simple and practical.
Inserted in the hair is also a slender and delicate bone needle, which is not only a practical sewing tool, but also a fixed hair. I remember that when I was a child, my mother would often rub the needle twice on the hair when sewing clothes, saying that the hair was oily and the needle would be better used, and it turned out that the ancients had known this trick for a long time.
Ancient stone flutes
It's hard to imagine that a modern busy and impatient urbanite would grind a stone stick into a tiny hairpin with his bare hands. But in the ancient Dawenkou of Shandong, in ancient times, adult men and women mostly wore stone hairpipes in their hair. ‘
More stone pipes have also been found at the Banpo site in Xi'an, Shaanxi. For example, the two conical stone pipes of the Yinjia Village site in Xianyang have a round cap left on the top, like a stone nail, but unfortunately they are incomplete. A total of more than 60 stone flutes have been collected from the Dadiwan site in Qin'an, Gansu Province, all of which are made of hard and fine stones, and the heads are sharpened and smooth. A broken turquoise grinding stone flute was also found at the site of a tributary of the Gangjiang River in Qingyuan County, Guangdong. It may be difficult to make or easy to break and heavy, and the stone flute is gradually replaced by other materials.
Precious jade
There are only three prehistoric jade-making centers in the world: Mexico, New Zealand and China. And only China has formed a unique jade culture. Jade is a specialty of China, and it was first discovered by people in rivers, seashores, or in the sand. Fragments of jade in the mountains fell into the river and were exposed by the long-term erosion of the current, lying beautifully on the shore or in the water, and were picked up by people. At the same time, you will also get a lot of hard jade and beautiful stones from digging caves and striking stone tools.
Shijiahe Culture Jade Eagle Pattern (Front) Neolithic Collection of the Freer Museum of Art, USA
People were struck by its oily luster, hard texture, and quiet charm, and thought it to be a stone from heaven, so they made it into various ritual vessels and ornaments, and wore them on their bodies to show beauty, wealth, and power. At that time, techniques such as cutting, drilling, grinding intricate patterns and polishing were already available. But the slowness and tediousness of the process has greatly honed people's patience. For those who understand the difficulty of attacking jade, these jade objects, which represent the skill and great energy of the craftsmen, become the most noble objects, and the possession of them gives them a certain power and status. At the same time, these jade artifacts also express that the ancestors' understanding of jade has been deeply rooted in the bones.
Collection of Yan'an Institute of Cultural Relics Longshan Culture Collection of Yan'an Institute of Cultural Relics
Beautiful and precious jade is the most important material for hairpins, just by polishing the jade strip smooth and regular, its color and texture can show an unusual noble quality. There are such jade pipes in those important tombs. The highly decorative jade flute has been found in the Longshan culture in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River. In addition, there are very rare mussel pipes and tooth pipes. In the ruins of Jiangou Village in Handan, Hebei Province, there are flattened mussels, but they are only the upper part.
As a long-haired woman, if you want to know how to insert a flute, it is as simple as taking a chopstick and trying it on your hair, whether it can be inserted straight or obliquely, it is as you like, and the same was true at that time.
To learn more about the world's ancient culture and beadwork art, please pay attention to [Yujian Art Museum]