Treasure hunt begins in England

Chapter 866 Situation
The piece of land assigned to Liang En and the others is located not far from the sacrificial pit named Pit No. 15 that they found before, and the distance between the two is no more than [-]m.

Of course, the current excavation work does not need to be carried out by Liang En and Joan of Arc. After all, one day is enough for those scholars to mobilize enough people to take charge of this work.

So what Liang En and the others have to do next is also very simple, that is to complete the exploration and excavation work with the help of these people, and to survey and map the possible local existence.

"The soil is a bit abnormal." Just after digging down to more than 1m, Joan discovered that the soil here was somewhat different from ordinary soil.

The soil here is firstly a thin layer of soil like fine sand, and then a thicker layer mixed with black humus and small stones.
"It's very simple. The difference you found came from a flood." Liang En smiled and said, "This huge Shudu Plain was not the Land of Abundance from the very beginning."

In the early days, the Shudu Plain was actually an area prone to floods and droughts. For those who had to live by the river to survive, a flood or drought was likely to destroy their years of accumulation.

To give the simplest example, Sanxingdui archeology proves that the ancient Shu people’s settlements in this area were abandoned due to huge floods, and now it seems that the reason for Jinsha’s abandonment is probably also due to floods.

The reason for this is that the upper reaches of the Minjiang River flowed through the steep mountains, and when it reached the Shudu Plain, the water speed suddenly slowed down, and a large amount of silt and rocks were deposited immediately, silting up the river course.

As a result, when the rainy season comes every year, the water potential of the Minjiang River and other tributaries surges, often flooding; and when the rain is insufficient, it will cause drought.

This situation was not resolved until the end of the Warring States period. King Qin Zhao of the Qin State appointed Li Bing, who knew astronomy and geography and lived in seclusion in Min'e, as the governor of the State of Shu.

After Li Bing took office, he first made up his mind to eradicate the floods of the Minjiang River, develop agriculture in western Sichuan, benefit the Chengdu Plain, and create an economic foundation for the unification of China by the Qin State, so he built Dujiangyan after summarizing the experience of his predecessors.

The Dujiangyan in the narrow sense that everyone talks about today often refers to the drinking water diversion device located in the center of the river at the Guanjiangkou, but in fact this system should include a complete set of irrigation systems on the Shudu Plain.

And when this set of projects was built, the Shudu Plain changed from the disaster-prone place in the past to the land of abundance called "Floods and droughts follow people, don't know famine, and fertile fields are thousands of miles away, which is called Tianfu."

It’s just that people’s previous records of this land were limited to the history after Qin’s destruction of Shu, and there were only a few legends passed on by word of mouth in the history before that, such as Li Bai’s sentence “Silkworms and fish Fu, how at a loss was the founding of the country."

After entering modern times, people gradually learned about these stories lost in history through archeology, and sorted out the history of Shu before the Warring States Period from them.

"It turns out that the name of the Land of Abundance comes from here." Joan of Arc said in a strangely accented Chinese, "I hope we can go well this time and find something valuable."

Perhaps because of Joan’s blessing, the excavation went very smoothly. They only dug down a distance of more than two meters before they saw something new. The first thing that caught their eye was an ivory full of cracks.

It is very interesting that ivory appears here, because there are no elephants in this area now, and the only elephants in China are in the very southern Yunnan province.

However, at the time when this relic was located, elephants were widely distributed in China. Confucius once said in the "Book of Songs": "Looking forward to the Huai Yi, come to offer the cherries."Yuan tortoise ivory, a big bribe to Nanjin.

The verses in this "Book of Songs - Lu Song - Panshui" mean that the barbaric Huaiyi have surrendered to our country, and they hurriedly come to present treasures to pay tribute. These treasures include beautiful jade, giant tortoise and ivory, and a large amount of gold produced in the south.

Considering that the so-called Huaiyi at that time were located in the Huai River Basin, but they were able to use ivory as their own specialty, this is enough to show that the distribution area of ​​​​elephants in that era was more northerly than today.

Archaeological finds have also justified these records. In [-], a jade statue and some elephant bones were unearthed in the Yin Ruins of Yu Province in the far north. From this, it can be speculated that there should be elephants in Yu Province during the Shang Dynasty;
So at that time, there were naturally more elephants in Shu, which was further south. At the same time, both "Shan Hai Jing" and "Mandarin Mandarin" mentioned that there were elephants and rhinos in Shu.

However, the number of ivory found in this ruins is still far beyond everyone's previous guess. They found more than 60 ivory in just two pits. Those huge and precious ivory were piled up at the bottom of the pit like fagots.

"I have a little problem." Joan of Arc said, looking at the ivory being cleaned out little by little, "These ivory should be very precious things in ancient times."

"Yes, it is indeed precious." Liang En nodded and said. "Especially more precious than it is now. Although elephants were not rare at that time, hunting elephants with cold weapons was definitely a life-threatening job."

"Then why do you think there are so many ivory here?" Joan of Arc looked at the ivory in puzzlement and said. "The place doesn't look like it used to have a lot of high-grade buildings."

After traveling around with Liang En and seeing so many things, Joan of Arc also learned a lot about archaeology, which included the observation and analysis of wild ruins.

After checking here, she quickly realized that the situation at this location was a bit abnormal. At least from what was found, there were not many traces of ground buildings left on the surface.

According to Joan's idea, since there is a high-level sacrificial pit here, theoretically there should be a large number of similar sacrificial buildings around, but it doesn't look like this now.

"I guess this is a special kind of sacrifice." Liang En talked about his analysis. "In the ancient Chinese tradition, there is a practice of using ivory to pray that floods will not break out. This should be the case."

Although there is a saying in archaeology, that is to call things that are not known religious objects, but in this place, Liang Enke is not simply guessing, but has evidence.

In fact, as a country whose history has been passed down to today, China's ancient civilization has a strong inheritance, such as when worshiping gods related to floods.

Like the Dragon King Temples in China today, they are often located in relatively low-lying places. According to the simple religious theory here, if the Dragon King Temple, which manages the flood gods, is placed in a place prone to floods, the gods will stop flood.

Of course, this method may not be effective. For example, we often hear that a place called Dragon King Temple is soaked in water after a flood, but in ancient times when there was no other way, having a spiritual sustenance is not a bad thing .

While Liang En and the others were chatting, the excavation work was proceeding rapidly. With the continuous progress of the excavation work, some trinkets that were originally hidden in the gaps in the ivory began to be gradually found, revealing the truth from more aspects. Here's the situation.

(End of this chapter)