Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 833 Excavation

After switching to a probe, the search speed suddenly slowed down a lot.Fortunately, the area of ​​this grassland is not too big, so when they were about to eat lunch, they successfully found some unusual things.

The first person who found something wrong was Joan. When she inserted the probe in her hand into the soil again, she felt that the tip of the probe had touched something hard.

At the beginning, she thought that she just bumped into a certain rock as before, but after checking with the probe in her hand, she realized that the thing below should not be the rock she hit before.

Because this is a small island located in the center of the lake, the soil on the hillside naturally became soft due to absorbing a lot of water. In just ten minutes, Joan dug a hole more than half a meter deep.

After realizing that she was less than 10cm away from the thing her probe touched just now, she quickly put down the big shovel in her hand, then lay down on the edge of the shallow pit full of mud and took out a plastic shovel to clean up the bottom of the pit little by little. soil.

"I seem to have dug up a stone statue." After digging a few shovels, he jumped up suddenly, and said to Liang En next to him.

"What?" After hearing Joan's shout, the three of Liang En and the others immediately leaned up together, only to see a white stone under the big pit.

After carefully digging out the stone, everyone found that it was a part of a white marble statue. Although it was only a small part of the statue, it could still be seen that it was probably a remnant of the hand of a humanoid statue.

"It seems that there is indeed something hidden here." Liang En examined the fragments of the statue carefully. "This is marble from Carrara, and the statues that can be made with this kind of marble are basically high-quality goods."

Carrara marble is named after the small city of Carrara at the foot of the Apuan Alps. This city is known as the "Hometown of White Marble" and "The Capital of Marble". It is a world-renowned marble trading and processing center.

But when it comes to the history of stone mining, it can even be traced back to the ancient Roman era.Even the city's name "Carrara" means "stone mine" in Latin.

The earliest marble buildings in history actually appeared in Greece, which can be regarded as an example of the Greeks using local resources, and this custom spread to the entire Mediterranean Sea with the colonization of the ancient Greeks.

Later, with the rise of the Roman Empire, Roman sculptors began to search for mineral veins around the capital of their country. As a result, they discovered Carrara’s marble veins on the Italian peninsula, and called them Luni (Carrara’s name at the time) marble.

Since then, Carrara marble began to be widely used in Roman buildings, and eventually replaced the Greek marble that required thousands of miles of sea transportation to obtain.

At that time, the ancient Romans did not hesitate to pay a high price to mine the stone here in order to build landmark buildings of imperial power: the Pantheon, the Colosseum, the Temple of the Sun at Balbec, etc.

The founding emperor of ancient Rome, Gevis Octavius ​​Augustus, once proudly declared that he inherited a city of stone but left a city of marble.

Of course, what the emperor said was just propaganda. It should be the recognized tyrant Nero who actually marbled the city of Rome on a large scale in history, but because of well-known reasons, it is not easy to publicize.

In the 13th century, the sculptor Nicola Pisano used Carrara marble for the seats of the local baptistery, the seat of the cathedral.Since then, many art masters followed suit one after another, competing to choose this kind of marble as the raw material for creation.

In the 16th century, Michelangelo also used Carrara marble to create the "Statue of David" and "Mourning for Christ", which made Carrara marble even more famous.

"From the beach of any of the nearby towns, the marble tops of snow-capped mountains are clearly visible when looking up."

More than 500 years ago, when the young Michelangelo Buonarroti moved with his father to this small city of Carrara at the foot of the Apuan Alps, he made such a sigh.

Michelangelo, known as one of the three masters of Renaissance art, was the key figure who made Carrara marble famous all over the world. His sculptures, such as the famous David statue, were made of Carrara marble.

He came here with his stonemason father who owned a mine since he was a child and got in touch with the mine deeply, which also became an opportunity for him to learn sculpture.

But it really became famous all over the world after World War II. Since the 1950s, the miners of Carrara marble have gone abroad to start trade activities.

On the one hand, it is for the export of local marble, and on the other hand, it is for the import of other stones, such as onyx, black marble, etc.All of a sudden, Carrara became a stone market, increasingly international.

Even in the far east, you can see many advertisements linking Carrara marble with high-end products. Of course, the price is several times more expensive than domestic marble.

The reason why this kind of marble is favored is also very simple. Unlike other marbles, this kind of marble has a slightly rough structure and a sugar-like structure, which is easier to cut than other marbles. At the same time, it is obviously very delicate after polishing.

But this also caused many problems for Liang En's excavation. One of the most important problems is that the structure of this marble sculpture is more fragile, so it will be more severely broken after encountering external force collisions.

Because the people present were Liang En and the others, they dug out a total of nearly [-] cubic meters of soil before dark with the help of extraordinary power, and found hundreds of white marble fragments from it.

"A very important discovery. These fragments obviously come from 3 to 4 life-sized humanoid sculptures, and they are very exquisite purely from the perspective of carving technology. They can definitely be called exquisite works of art."

Looking at the sorted white marble fragments, Liang En quickly found some important clues from the wreckage.

"More importantly, when we excavated, we found that the soil was obviously filled in later. At the same time, we found a stone wall on the other side of the big pit, and there were traces of artificial carving on the stone wall."

"Compared with these sculptures, I think more attention should be paid to the artificial traces." Elizabeth said on the side at this time, "because it means that there are likely to be some artificial spaces below."

"For your point of view, I only support part of it." Mary said as she walked to the edge of the pile of wreckage, and then pointed to one of the fragments. "There are some very famous ones in these sculptures."

She pointed to a stone disc with a hand sculpture, and then spoke seriously. "For example, this should be the famous statue of the discus thrower."

"To be precise, it should be a replica of the discus maker. The original version of this sculpture is bronze." Liang En naturally recognized what this sculpture was, because this sculpture is so famous.

"Because of this thing, I am now more interested in the space that may exist under the pit. Think about it, what can be put together with these famous sculptures from the ancient Roman era will definitely exceed our expectations."

(End of this chapter)