Archaeologists found that as early as ancient times, ancestors lived in more than 20 caves along the Lijiang River in Guilin, such as Baoji Rock, Bamboo Skin Rock, Jiaozi Rock and Dangui Rock.
Guilin was then a peak forest valley with a warm and humid climate. There are dense virgin forests and deciduous evergreen plants in the mountainous area, and there are freshwater lakes and swamps nearby. Nature endows animals and plants with abundant resources, wild animals flock in droves, and subtropical wild fruits are everywhere.
Ancestors ate wild fruits and hunted animals to satisfy their hunger, drank cool river water, and dressed themselves with leaves, bark or hides to resist the cold wind.
They live in limestone caves in Guilin, warm in winter and cool in summer, and walk through vast virgin forests and dense bushes. They use primitive stone tools as weapons and labor tools to fight wild animals, and use baked pottery to process food, where they work, live and multiply.
They created the history of human civilization in Guilin.
During the period of 1979, archaeologists unearthed two human tooth fossils, a batch of forged stone tools, and mammalian fossils such as saber-toothed elephants, macaques, cattle and sheep. Appraised by experts from China Academy of Sciences, Baoji Mountain in Guilin is a cave site in the late Paleolithic period, about 30,000 years ago.
Among the unearthed relics, there are two human molar fossils, milky white, belonging to the same old individual. They belong to the late "Homo sapiens" fossils and were named "Baoji Rock Man".
This is the earliest remains of ancient ancestors found in Guilin so far.
The discovery and excavation of Baoji Rock made up the missing link between Liujiang people and Zan Piyan people in Guangxi.
Among Guilin cave sites, the excavation of Maopi Rock is an important achievement of China archaeology, and it is the best preserved cave site with ancient cultural relics found in China at present. It belongs to the early Neolithic Age, about 7500-9000 years ago. It is an important cave cultural site in the south of China, comparable to the "caves" in the north.
Zhupiyan is located in Dushan, the southern suburb of Guilin, 9 kilometers away from the city center.
Dushan is a limestone isolated mountain about 60 meters high, surrounded by beautiful peaks and open valleys.
The hole is about 5 meters above the surface, which can not only avoid floods, but also prevent the intrusion of wild animals.
The bamboo skin cave is 8 meters high, 13 meters wide and covers an area of about 200 square meters. The ground is relatively flat, the airflow runs through and the lighting conditions are good.
On one side of the cave, there is also a water cave, and the underground river flows all the year round, ensuring that the ancestors in the cave have water to drink.
Sunlight, air and water are necessary conditions for the survival of animals and plants. The ancestors of Guilin had foresight. They took this cave as their living room and took a fancy to this ecological environment.
Limestone caves, after long-term erosion of calcium carbonate condensed by water seeping from crevices, gradually accumulate into hard calcified plates, sealing the ancestral remains of Guilin people underground, which has never been known.
In the silent cave, the figures and voices of ancestors disappeared, but their remains survived.
The water droplets oozing from the cracks have been dripping for a long time, and the sound of dripping is endless, conveying a mysterious message similar to the time code of power generation ... 1965, the Guilin cultural relics investigation team, which was jointly composed of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Museum and the Guilin Cultural Relics Management Committee, finally discovered the natural residence of Guilin ancestors in this ancient time.
During the period of 1973, archaeologists of Guilin Cultural Relics Management Committee excavated the Zhupiyan cave site.
When the diggers uncovered the solid cover, they saw a large number of human relics, remains and remains. From the bottom of the cover plate to the bottom of the cave, there is a light gray "cultural layer", the thickest of which is more than two meters.
Archaeologists carefully searched, excavated and unearthed more than 30 human bones and 40 animal bones, and found a large number of remains of pottery, bones, mussels and various wild animals in caves.
Ancestor relics are articles for production and daily use, mostly stone tools, and there are a large number of stone tools used for chopping and knocking.
There are few grinded stone tools, mainly stone axe and stone hairpin, and there is a groove in the middle of the stone axe.
According to experts' research, this groove is used to hold wooden handles.
Most of the unearthed bone implements are darts, trowels, cones, needles and other tools made of animal bones.
Among them, 3 spicules are used for sewing, and they are commonly used according to their smoothness.
Surprisingly, a bone needle is only as big as a grain of rice.
You know, they didn't know how to use metal at that time, and they were able to drill such fine works with stones, which showed that they had a pair of skillful hands at that time.
Bone needle is a sewing tool. Is this tool used for sewing? Experts infer that the ancestors here used bone needles to sew clothes and animal skins. At that time, they knew how to pursue beauty and resist the cold, and began to wear clothes instead of being naked as in the past.
As the saying goes, "if a worker wants to do a good job, he must sharpen his tools first", and the ancestors also understand this truth. They gradually learned to manufacture and process various practical tools from their labor practice, and learned how to use stone tools with ease to improve labor efficiency.
This fact also shows that labor has created people, improved people, educated people and promoted human civilization and progress.
Among more than 30 bones of men, women and children unearthed from cave sites, experts determined from the skull characteristics that they are similar to Liujiang people and have obvious inheritance relations, belonging to "South Mongolian race".
Judging from the remains of our ancestors, there was a kind of burial custom at that time, which was rare "burying with bent limbs" and "burying with bent body". This posture is very strange, which is completely different from the "straight limb burial" that prevailed in the Yellow River, the Yangtze River basin and the southeast coast in the Neolithic Age.
Why do we have to do that？ Some people speculate that it may be a primitive religious belief, meaning that the soul can not die and can be reincarnated.
Some people think that this is imitating the posture of life or sleep.
Some people say that it imitates the posture of the fetus in the mother's womb, reflecting an Oedipus complex.
The burial custom of "squatting and burying" was popular all over the world in the Neolithic Age, and it was a primitive burial custom.
Cave sites in the late Paleolithic or early Neolithic period were also found in Jiaoziyan, Guilin, and the burial custom in caves was "crouching" more than 1000 years ago.
It is also found that there is a custom of "second burial" in the cave, that is, women and children are buried together: a woman is buried after her death, and a child buried first moves from other places to be buried with her.
Among the unearthed tombs, there are hematite powder scattered by the remains of two adult women, which was a very grand funeral at that time, exactly the same as the custom of cavemen.
There are indications that Zhu Piyan's ancestors were in the matriarchal social stage, and women enjoyed the supreme social status at that time.
Judging from the fact that no obvious funerary objects were found in the cave, the level of productivity at that time was low, and there were not many surplus labor products and private property, which also proved the social nature at that time.
Judging from the pottery, mussel ornaments, mussel knives, mussel spoons and other objects in the cave and the fire pits and the remains of the fire pits, although the production technology of the ancestors was somewhat rough, they also began to have their own artistic pursuits and learned to cook and store food.
Those fire pits and fire pits are the places where our ancestors cooked food, fired pottery and surrounded the stove.
What remarkable progress mankind has made.
Twenty-five kinds of animal bones, including cloven-hoofed animals, carnivores, rodents and primates, were found in the rocks piled up in caves.
Of the 67 pig bones found, 40 can be dated, and the front teeth of the pig are obviously thinner than those of the wild boar, so it is inferred that the ancestors of Zambezians had primitive domestication activities at this time.
Due to the large number and variety of animal remains found, the Chinese Academy of Sciences identified them and officially named them "Zhupiyan Site Fauna". One of the new genera and species of Cervidae, which is endemic to Lijiang River valley in Guilin, is specially named "Beautiful Lijiang River Deer".
Bamboo skin cave site is listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit.
From 65438 to 0979, Guilin established the "Guilin Bamboo Cave Site Exhibition Hall", which was opened to the outside world.
Because there was no detailed excavation stage at that time, and the specimens unearthed in limestone area were too old, the archaeological community debated the age of Zhupiyan cave site.
This problem was not solved until the second excavation in 200 1.
On June 5438+February 1 1 day, 2003, more than 70 archaeologists from China, the United States, Britain, Australia and Hong Kong, China participated in the "International Symposium on Prehistoric Archaeology in South China and Southeast Asia-Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of Bamboo Piyan Excavation" held by China in the southern suburbs of Guilin.
Liu Qingzhu, director of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the Bamboo Piyan Site has laid a prehistoric cultural sequence in Guilin, even in South China and Southeast Asia.
Taking Zhupiyan site as a yardstick and referring to other prehistoric sites in Guilin, the framework of ancient culture development in northeast Guangxi from 35,000 to 3,500 years ago can be preliminarily constructed.
1965 was discovered and first excavated in 1970s. This paper draws a general conclusion that the upper age of this site is about 7500 years ago and the lower age is about 9000 years ago.
In 200 1 year, the archaeological research and local cultural relics department of China Academy of Sciences carried out the second excavation and made significant archaeological discoveries. According to the determination, the "plain sand pottery" about 12000 years ago is one of the oldest pottery unearthed in Chinese mainland.
This provides an important basis for studying the origin of China pottery industry and the beginning of the Neolithic Age.
Pinpi Rock is also the Neolithic human cave site with the largest number of human bones found in Chinese mainland.
According to the excavation and research, the Zhupiyan site was the life center of Guilin ancestors from/kloc-0 to 7000 years ago, which was more than 3000 years earlier than the original estimate of 9000 years ago.
Experts also have to sigh: a cave has thousands of years of civilization, which is rare in the world.
Zhupiyan site represents the "indigenous culture" on both sides of Lijiang River.
Chinese experts and scholars suggest that primitive pottery pieces unearthed in Guilin, Guangxi are related to prehistoric people's eating habits of snails.
Lingnan people have long known how to cook their prey with fire, and began to knead pottery to cook snails and other snacks.
At that time, rice culture had not been introduced into Lingnan area, and Lingnan people ate a lot of wild plants such as taro, deer and wild boar, and a large number of snail shells remained in each layer of the cave.
Snails can easily separate the shell from the meat only after they are cooked.
On-site evidence also shows that the appearance of ceramic fragments is almost synchronous with the appearance of a large number of snail shells.
There are many snail shells on each floor of Zhupiyan site in Guilin, Guangxi.
Mr. Fu said that snails at that time were much bigger than today, with a diameter of about 3-5 cm.
Hundreds of millions of years ago, Guilin was submerged at the bottom of the sea. After the waterline dropped, many rivers and lakes were left, which were rich in various snails.
The pottery that appeared in that period was mostly shallow hemispherical with large openings, all of which were used for cooking.
For a long time, Chinese and foreign archaeologists have been arguing about the origin of pottery.
Some think it is used for cooking, some think it comes from the change of lifestyle, and some think it is related to the construction of mud brick houses.
But some experts questioned that eating snails produced the earliest pottery in China.
Canadian archaeologist Richard Pearson believes that it is also possible for local people to eat shellfish through barbecue.
The excavation and study of Zhupiyan also showed that Zhupiyan people could make large-scale pottery as early as 12000 years ago, and the pottery pots found in the site proved to be one of the most primitive molded pottery in China. Experts speculate that Guilin may be one of the cradles of pottery.
Mr. Fu, an expert from the Institute of Archaeology, China Academy of Sciences, who was in charge of the second excavation of 200 1, said: "In the past 30 years, one of the greatest achievements of Oujieyan archaeology is to solve the mystery of its age.
"The pottery fragments found by experts and scholars at the Biyan site are the most primitive known in China, with a history of 12000. They lamented: "Guilin was the most suitable place for human habitation 10,000 years ago.
He pointed out that the Piyan people on both sides of the Lijiang River have been breeding here for 5,000 years. More than 7,000 years ago, because the earth's climate entered a warm and humid period, the rock wall at an altitude of about 1 m became wet and watery. The ancestors here finally walked out of this cave and built houses with trees.
The excavation of Baojiyan and Zhupiyan cave sites is of great significance and has extremely important scientific research value in anthropology, zoology, sociology, geology, history and other disciplines. It provides valuable information for studying the development of primitive society in Neolithic Age, especially the social conditions of ancestors in southern China at that time, and it is also a platform for historical materialism education.
Mr. Yang Guoliang and Mr. Zhou Zuoming wrote in the article "A Study of Guilin's Historical and Cultural Tourism": Following the footsteps of Baoji Rock People, after 20,000 years of climbing mountains and mountains, archaeologists discovered the early Neolithic Miao Yan cave site about 10000 years ago in Lijiatang Village, Yanshan Town, Yanshan District. This period is the embryonic period of primitive handicraft technology. The ancestors of Guilin mastered the seven-hole technology and the burning and cutting technology of sandy coarse pottery.
Archaeological excavations have proved that the Neolithic Age was Guilin. From the sites of Zhupiyan (7500-9000 years ago), Jiaoziyan (early Neolithic Age), Danguiyan (early Neolithic Age), Xiangshanding (Neolithic Age), Ziyuan Xiaojingzhai hillside (Neolithic Age) and Quanzhou Duliyuan hillside (Neolithic Age).
The ancestors of Guilin moved to the hillside, from relying on natural caves to creating rooms, people's production and life were enriched ... It shows that Guilin in Neolithic Age has developed from fishing and hunting era to rice planting era.
These cave sites in Guilin are historical and cultural treasures of the cultural city.
The objects in the treasure house prove the human activities that have happened in the Lijiang River basin, and show the picture of a group of sons and daughters of Lijiang River who fought against nature and grew up in the struggle in ancient times.
They live a matriarchal clan commune life with gathering, fishing and hunting as the mainstay, supplemented by agriculture and domestication. In a tough environment, they rely on the collective wisdom and strength to resist the attacks of wild animals, poisonous insects and various natural disasters, so as to survive and develop. With tenacious will and hard work, they opened up a new way of life, entered the era of rice planting and ushered in the dawn of Lijiang civilization.
This ray of dawn penetrated the long night and the long historical tunnel, and gradually gave birth to the brilliant sunshine of civilization.
Thus, there is the glory of Guilin, a famous historical and cultural city.