The "mountain people" who lived in Dunli 9,000 years ago knew how to "renovate"? !

Recently, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage released the latest progress of archaeological excavations at the Huangchaodun site in Quzhou, Zhejiang at the important progress meeting of the major project "Archaeology China": the site first discovered rice fields from the middle and late Shangshan culture to the Kuahuqiao culture period, which is the earliest rice field discovered in the world so far, and completes the chain of evidence for the origin of rice farming in the Shangshan culture. The Huangchaodun site is currently the best-preserved moated settlement site from the middle and late Shangshan culture to the Kuahuqiao culture period.

What was life like for the “mountain people” more than 9,000 years ago?

Who lives in the eight-story "building"?

"The greatest significance of the archaeological excavation of the Huangchaodun site is that the ancients left us a complete 'landscape settlement' that is early and very complete, including residential areas, production areas, and even surrounding water conservancy projects." said Xiang Fangming, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, who is also the excavation leader of Huangchaodun.

The Shangshan culture was named after the Shangshan site in Pujiang, Jinhua. The latest data shows that 24 Shangshan culture sites have been discovered, with the Jinqu Basin as the center and spreading to the Cao'e River Basin, Lingjiang River Basin and the coastal areas of eastern Zhejiang. Among them, there are 4 sites in Quzhou, namely Huangchaodun, Hehuashan, Qingdui and Xiaku.

The Huangchaodun Ruins also belong to the Shangshan Culture, dating back to about 9,300 to 8,000 years ago. From the Shangshan Culture to the Kuahuqiao Culture, "two generations" lived here for 1,300 years and had been growing rice.

This is a moated settlement site, which was the residential and production area of ​​the ancients, with a total area of ​​about 55,000 square meters, and a total of 70,000 square meters including rice fields.

The main part of the site includes two terraces and a moat. The terrace is the residential area, which looks like a big pit and a piece of soil to modern people, but all the clues are in the stratigraphic section.

The strata are very similar to buildings, both are vertically distributed, but the numbering is reversed, from high to low, with the first floor of the stratum being the highest. In archaeology, there is also a term "breaking", just like when an earthquake collapses a building, you can no longer tell which floor is which.

It is clearly visible that there is no collapsed building in the two residential areas of Huangchaodun.

Terrace No. 2 has 8 floors, and the bottom 3 floors are all "inhabited" by people who climbed the mountain. Their discarded domestic garbage was unearthed, as well as a large number of sandy gray pottery, red pottery fragments, as well as stones and stone tools. The identifiable types of tools include pots, jars, flat-bottomed basins, stone millstones, stone millstones, stone rings, etc.

Then, the people of Kuahuqiao seamlessly moved in and "moved in" to the upper five floors. The "garbage" they threw away included sandy gray pottery, red pottery fragments, grinding stones, grinding rods, etc.

Archaeologists discovered that this platform was continuously piled up and used, indicating that people came to live here again. Not only were some Han Dynasty relics discovered sporadically, but also tombs from the Tang and Song dynasties.

People who go up the mountain also do "decoration"

During the middle and late stages of the Shangshan culture development, moated settlements appeared.

A moat is a circular ditch that is the boundary of an ancient settlement or a specific area. It is like a large circle around a village or an important place. It is usually dug by humans and serves as a protective measure. For example, at the Yujiashan site of the Liangzhu cultural site in Yuhang, six moats were discovered, where six clans of Liangzhu people lived.

The moat of Huangchaodun completely surrounds the two terraces in the north and south, separating them at the same time, like a gourd.

The moat is like a "building", and both the Shangshan people and the Kuahuqiao people used it. Looking at the "floor" distribution, from top to bottom - the 2nd to 5th floors are from the Kuahuqiao culture period, the 6th to 7th floors are from the transition period from Kuahuqiao to Shangshan, and the 8th to 10th floors are from the Shangshan culture period.

Moreover, the Shangshan culture and the Kuahuqiao culture are superimposed on each other, and there is a strong source-flow relationship between the artifacts. This is also one of the significances of the discovery of the Huangchaodun site: it is of great value to studying the evolutionary relationship between the Shangshan culture and the Kuahuqiao culture and to improving the Neolithic archaeological cultural sequence in Zhejiang Province.

A piece of raised, loose, red soil appeared in front of us. The archaeologists took a look and got excited, thinking it was red roasted soil.

Zhou Dongya from the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology said that the red-burned soil may have originally been the walls of the building, which was oxidized and turned red after being burned. This shows that people at that time intentionally built and decorated the slope of the moat.

Found the "fingerprint" of ancient rice fields

Carbonized rice, rice husks, and evidence chains related to rice cultivation, harvesting, processing, and utilization were commonly found at the Shangshan cultural site. So, are there ancient rice fields, and where are they?

During the early exploration, the archaeological team found a very flat low-lying area on the east side of the moat, with an area of ​​about 15,000 square meters. The bottom was particularly flat, and the soil was relatively sticky. There were also two obvious ridges on both sides of the depression, which just blocked the depression and looked very much like a rice field.

"Could it be a rice field?" Zheng Yunfei, a researcher and plant archaeologist at the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, shared the same feeling.

Rice is a high-silicon plant, and during its growth and development, it needs to absorb a large amount of silicon from the soil. The physical and chemical properties of silicon and silicides are very stable, and even if everything rots, plant silicates can still remain in the soil for a long time.

Soil is like a sponge, absorbing all memories. Phytoliths are like fingerprints, marking different plants. Rice phytoliths are fan-shaped with fish scales, bamboo is long saddle-shaped, and reed is shield-shaped.

After testing, it was found that the rice phytolith content in the soil of "Block A, 6th Floor" exceeded the standard data of 5000 grains/gram for determining rice fields. When tested again in "Block B, 6th Floor", the rice phytolith content exceeded 7000 grains/gram, which is even denser.

The rice fields were confirmed, and the only thing left was to determine the age of the strata. Because there were no suitable carbon-14 dating samples, the optically stimulated luminescence dating method was used to "verify the authenticity" this time. This method was also used to determine the age of the Liangzhu Dam, which did not even have a single piece of pottery.

How to explain this scientific testing method in a popular way? To use an Internet slang: "Death in the light." This means that when our ancestors built dams and reclaimed rice fields, the soil they turned over last saw the light of day.

The staff set up more than 20 luminescence sampling points here, and the dating results showed that the age of "Building A on the 6th Floor" and "Building B on the 6th Floor" was basically between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago.

Where did the rice grown by our ancestors come from?

"Terrace + moat + rice fields" has a clear structure and rich content, but the archaeologists obviously do not intend to end this story.

What else is there besides the moated settlements? What kind of natural environment did our ancestors live in 9,000 years ago?

The archaeological work at Huangchaodun also has a "new" aspect. Archaeologists want to connect human society with the surrounding natural environment to see if they can restore ancient human society and reconstruct the behavioral patterns of humans in transforming and utilizing the natural environment.

People today cannot see the moon of the past, but this moon once shone on the ancients. Archaeology is about finding the fragments of history that have passed but not disappeared, and then piecing them together.

The archaeological team conducted further exploration outside the moated settlement and discovered an ancient river channel about 500 meters west of the site. This is an ancient river channel left behind by the diversion of Zhixi River in history. Zhixi River is a tributary of Qujiang River in the upper reaches of Qiantang River. It flows through Lianhua Town and other towns and flows into Qujiang River near Huangdun Village, 1.2 kilometers away from the site.

In addition to the ancient river channel, the exploration also found an important clue. There is a low-lying area of ​​more than 30,000 square meters on the periphery. This is an ancient pond, and it is connected to the ancient river channel.

A thick layer of humus, or plant remains, was found below 1 meter when drilling a hole. Most importantly, some holes found what appeared to be wild rice spikelets (the part where rice grains connect to rice stalks). This sentence may seem ordinary, but archaeologists and botanists say: Exciting - it means this may be the distribution area of ​​wild rice.

A simple logic: without wild rice, there would be no way to talk about the origin of rice. With wild rice, people could domesticate and cultivate it, and finally form rice farming.

This provides clues to the settlement environment and rice domestication in the early Neolithic period. Zhou Dongya said that he would open several more trenches and collect more samples for phytolith and dating tests to see if he could find more traces of wild rice.