Things about Liangzhu culture

Let’s introduce the ancient city of Liangzhu, and mention the jade articles by the way. (This article is entirely written by hand based on the knowledge in my head. Please forgive me for any shortcomings)

The Liangzhu culture was actually an important local civilization in ancient China. Like the Cahokia Civilization in North America, it is characterized by huge artificial mountain buildings, huge urban centers, and vast political territories. However, what makes the Liangzhu people unique in the world is their advanced wood construction technology, water conservancy technology, plowing technology, lacquerware technology, black pottery magic technology and jade-making technology.

Before the Liangzhu traditional pottery and lacquerware techniques were discovered, only a large number of Liangzhu jades had been unearthed in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions for thousands of years and were favored by the world. Therefore, people felt that the Liangzhu people were like Only jade can be made. Historically, Chinese people have a long-standing preference for Liangzhu jade. Archeology shows that both the Shang and Zhou aristocrats and the Sanxingdui aristocrats once enthusiastically collected Liangzhu jades. But from that time on, they may have lost track of who made the jade objects. Even before the 1980s, people always thought that those tall and exquisite jade congs were "ancient jade from Zhou and Han Dynasties".

The Liangzhu people’s jades seem to have been inherited not from their ancestors, the Songze people, but from the Lingjiatan people. In 3600 BC, the Lingjiatan people emerged in the Huaihe River Basin. They built perhaps the earliest city in China - the Lingjiatan ruins including a ceramic brick square, a group of stone pillars, a royal tomb and a canal surrounding the city. Their jade wares are even more astonishing, featuring jade shovels, jade figures, jade dragons, etc., forming the earliest jade burial tradition in southern China. The wealth of Lingjiatan people attracts attention from all directions. Among them are the Songze people, the ancestors of the Liangzhu people. In 3400 BC, the Songze people launched an attack on the Huaihe River Basin and occupied Lingjiatan. Later, they invaded the Central Plains in one go and confronted the Yangshao people south of the Yellow River. But soon, the Songze people withdrew from the Central Plains, and the Songze culture was replaced by the Liangzhu culture.

From the destruction of the ancient city of Lingjiatan in 3400 BC to the rise of Liangzhu culture in 3300 BC, the two eras are very close. Liangzhu jade technology also flourished, which makes people suspect that a large number of Lingjiatan jade craftsmen were captured and brought to the Taihu Lake Basin (this can be a research direction for your thesis title, that is, to demonstrate the relationship between the two).

Soon, the Dawenkou people in Shandong expanded violently to the west and destroyed the Yangshao culture; the Liangzhu people expanded northward, defeated the Dawenkou people and took northern Jiangsu as their own. In eastern China, a situation was formed where Dawenkou and Liangzhu stood in opposition to each other from the north to the south. After the Liangzhu people defeated the Dawenkou people, they expanded southward to the middle reaches of the Qiantang River and expelled the descendants of the Hemudu people to southeastern Zhejiang. In this way, the Liangzhu people solved the threats from the north and the south and obtained unprecedented conditions for economic development.

Due to the adoption of rice plowing agriculture and the inheritance of large-scale irrigation technology from the Songze people, the Liangzhu region has become the most developed region in China's agricultural economy. The development of agriculture, the vastness of the territory, and the peaceful development conditions prompted the rapid advancement of the complexity of Liangzhu society. In 3000 BC, in the southern part of Tianmu Mountain, a small settlement emerged near Yaoshan, where Yaoshan altars and noble tombs were built. 100 years later, they filled in the swamp area in the south of Tianmu Mountain and built a giant rectangular building platform - the Mojiao Mountain ruins. The site covers an area of ??300,000 square meters, is 8-10 meters high, and requires 2 million cubic meters of earthwork. This building platform was the largest building in the world at the time. On top of it, three more two-story platforms were built - Da Mojiao Mountain, Xiao Mojiao Mountain and Wugui Mountain. It is not clear what buildings are on these three two-story platform.

However, in the center of the three platform foundations, a large building foundation was excavated, covering an area of ??more than 3,000 square meters, surrounded by column facilities. It may have been a huge palace comparable in size to the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City today. On the edge of the Mojiaoshan site, a huge braised adobe house was discovered. The area of ??this house exceeds 300 square meters, and it may not be an ordinary facility. The establishment of the Mojiaoshan site marks the formation of the ancient city of Liangzhu.

However, the Mojiaoshan site was just a platform city at the beginning. Later, probably due to population expansion, three lower large platform foundations were built in the north, east and west of the Mojiaoshan site, making the Mojiaoshan site Jiaoshan and its surrounding areas have formed a super-large building base covering an area of ??one million square meters. However, it is not yet clear what kind of buildings were built above.

After that, anti-mountain tombs were built in the northern part of the Mojiaoshan site, and the Huangfenshan building foundation was built in the southern part of the Mojiaoshan site, forming a cluster of super-large buildings. In 2800 BC, the Liangzhu people built a 6.5-kilometer-long waterproof embankment - Tangshan Tuyuan - on the west side of the building complex; then, they built a second waterproof embankment - Qiwu - 7 kilometers to the west. Shanda Dike and Penggong Dike, the total length of the two embankments reaches 11.5 kilometers. It forms the flood control fortification on the west side of Mojiao Mountain. Afterwards, the Liangzhu people built a huge embankment along the river at Liangzhu Port on the south side of Mojiao Mountain. In this way, Liangzhu people built the largest urban flood control project in the world at that time through their strong organizational and mobilization capabilities.

By 2500 BC, the ancient city of Liangzhu was reaching its peak. Between Tangshan Tuyuan and Yaoshan, various artificial mountains have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a rain, forming a strip of buildings dotted like the Milky Way.

The central part of this building complex extends to the south and is connected to Mojiao Mountain. The central link is the mound buildings in Jindi and Huangnikou. To the east of them is the Yaojiadun ruins, the sub-central building complex of this generation. This is a settlement group formed by several juxtaposed mounds. Noble tombs were found among them. In order to facilitate transportation, the Liangzhu people still Two parallel canals were dug on both sides of the Yaojiadun site. The two ends of this belt-shaped site group are the Yaoshan and Huiguanshan sites respectively. Both sites are comprehensive mound buildings that combine altars and tombs. There is a purpose-built central square area on each of them, with the diagonals pointing towards the incident angle of the sun at different solar terms - the diagonals of the square areas of the two altars point exactly the same. They embody the astronomical and calendar knowledge of the Liangzhu period.

At the same time, the famous Liangzhu ancient city wall was also built. It surrounded Mojiao Mountain and Huangfen Mountain in the center, forming a closed, rounded rectangular central area with an area of ????2.9 million square meters. On the periphery of the central area, there are also densely distributed external communities, such as Meirendi and Bianjiashan. The main functions of these external communities are to produce jade and black leather traditional pottery handicrafts, and to export industrial products. They were probably also engaged in the production of lacquerware and silk.

These peripheral communities are equipped with huge canals and regular artificial water streets. Taking Meirendi as an example, there is a huge wooden revetment built on the surface of the Tutai ruins, with heavy inlays on the upper side. , finely processed wooden boards. Below the wooden boards are huge rows of crossbars, and there are sleepers under the crossbars. These wooden components weigh around one ton, and the entire building stretches hundreds of meters. There are also facilities for berthing boats on the revetment. At another Bianjiashan site that has been completely excavated, a large number of well-preserved lacquerware, black-skinned traditional pottery and small jades were discovered. A wooden pier more than ten meters long was also discovered. A large number of characters with the function of recording events were also found on the pottery sherds. illustrates the commercial nature of these sites.

By 2400 BC, the ancient city of Liangzhu had developed into a huge city stretching over 30 square kilometers, larger than any other city in the world - such as Uruk in Mesopotamia. The city is only 4-6 square kilometers, and Mohenjodaro in the Indus River Valley is only 2.5-5 square kilometers.

The area under the jurisdiction or influence of Liangzhu Ancient City is also very broad, ranging from northern Jiangsu in the north to central Zhejiang in the south. No other Liangzhu city can compare with it (such as Sidun and Fuquan Mountain, the area of ??the former is Only 0.9 square kilometers, the latter is 1 square kilometers, only small and medium-sized cities are counted). According to research, almost all high-end jades in the Liangzhu area are distributed from the ancient city of Liangzhu - which must reflect a political affiliation. In fact, the traditional pottery handicrafts found in various places in Liangzhu were probably provided by the ancient city of Liangzhu. Even if Liangzhu Ancient City is not the absolute political center, it is certainly the commercial center of the entire Liangzhu region. In fact, the influence of the Liangzhu people extended further north to Shandong, and these influences may have been caused by commercial exchanges.

However, the prosperity of the ancient city of Liangzhu was also coveted by the people of the Central Plains. In 2400 BC, the Zaolutai people in southeastern Henan expanded into the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions. They first seized Tenghualuo from the Dongyi people. The ancient city, then went south and invaded the ancient Liangzhu Kingdom. In 2300 BC, the Liangzhu culture was influenced by the Zaolutai culture and transformed into the Qianshanyang culture. However, at this time, Liangzhu Ancient City was still in use, and the fin-foot tripod unearthed in the southwest of the ancient city confirmed this fact.

However, as the invasion of Taiwanese invaders intensified, the political situation in Liangzhu changed dramatically, and Qianshanyang culture transformed into Guangfulin culture. At this time, the ancient city of Liangzhu was abandoned. The ancient Liangzhu Kingdom was also declared destroyed. Perhaps the legend of "Yu Zhu Fangfeng" is related to this incident. However, the ancient Liangzhu Kingdom was much more advanced than the hinterland of the Central Plains during the Yao and Shun era (except for the ancient city of Taosi in the northern Central Plains). In Fanshan tombs, "royal tombs" containing a large number of jade and lacquerware were discovered, which shows that the ancient Liangzhu country was already a developed class society with strict hierarchies. It was not until the early Shang Dynasty that such a sharp class differentiation appeared in the hinterland of the Central Plains.

After the fall of the ancient city of Liangzhu, the Taihu Lake Basin was repeatedly troubled by floods and sea intrusions. The conquerors of the Central Plains could not withstand the threat of floods as successfully as the Liangzhu people, and the urban culture in the region collapsed. Then 100 years later, the Tanshishan people, descendants of the Hemudu people in southern Zhejiang, launched a large-scale attack on the Taihu Lake Basin and captured the area formerly controlled by the Liangzhu people, forming the Maqiao culture. After that, the population in the Taihu Lake Basin dropped sharply, the cities ceased to exist, precious jade and lacquerware were no longer produced, and the Liangzhu civilization declined.

However, the plowing technology of the Liangzhu people was passed down, and the pottery making technology of the Liangzhu people was also carried forward by the later Maqiao culture. At the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, the ancestors of the Taihu area combined bronze technology with plowing technology, invented the bronze plow, and spread them to the Central Plains, becoming the foundation of Chinese civilization that has stood firm for thousands of years. The black leather pottery technology of the Liangzhu period was also transformed into primitive porcelain technology by the Maqiao people. Later, the emergence of "Yue Kiln" in the Han Dynasty marked the maturity of ceramic technology. With the export trade of primitive porcelain and the gradual recovery of agriculture, the Taihu area became prosperous again. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the ancient city of Mudu emerged in the northern part of the Taihu Lake Basin and became the largest city in the Yangtze River Basin at that time. The rise of this ancient city also marked the rise of the Wu Kingdom; after that, the Yue King Gou Jian imitated the Wu capital and built the city of Kuaiji, kicking off the Wu-Yue struggle for hegemony. At this point, the ancient civilization of Taihu Lake ushered in its new era.