-Visit Wannian Fairy Cave
In late September 2004, on a typical rainy day in the south of the Yangtze River, the ears of rice on both sides of the highway began to turn yellow, and the top of Daheshan Mountain, less than 300 meters high, was covered with dark clouds. Standing on the hill named "Douhuan", Zhao Zhijun, a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, looked at Dayuan Basin under drizzle for a while and turned to me and said, "This place has not changed much since 10 years ago. At that time, the Sino-American joint archaeological team almost missed the barrel ring. There are many caves in this area. We investigated the Fairy Cave and the nearby Bat Cave. When we came back and passed the Douhuan, Wang Bingwan, our tour guide and curator of Wannian County Museum, said to us: Do you want to stop and have a look? I once picked up pottery fragments on the top of the mountain. Then we stopped to have a look. That's great. We found rice planted 14000 years ago. Finally, there are more things excavated here than the fairy cave hundreds of meters away. We guess this is the' slaughterhouse' of Xianrendong people. " The cultivated rice 14000 years ago (or just "12000 years ago" according to the "conservative" practice of archaeologists) is the earliest cultivated rice found in the world so far. In other words, it may be that the ancestors around Xianren Cave and Douhuan planted the world's first kind of rice, and this wonderful crop was sown from this small basin of several square kilometers in northeast Jiangxi. Born as a fairy cave, Jiangxi Province, with only tens of thousands of people in ten thousand years, is holding the first rice culture tourism festival and the fourth agricultural archaeology academic seminar. Not all the scholars attending the symposium agree that "10,000 years is the origin of cultivated rice in the world". In the eyes of scholars, the development history of rice agriculture is even more confusing. The fruitful excavation of immortal caves and fighting rings in the past ten thousand years is only 10 years. There will be many arguments and new materials about the origin of cultivated rice and rice cultivation in the world. However, in recent years, the importance of Wannian Xianren Cave and Douhuan Site has undoubtedly been recognized by academic circles, and it has been rated as one of the major archaeological discoveries of China 100 in the 20th century. Tens of thousands of years of cultivated rice silica and tens of thousands of years of pottery have been unearthed here, as well as a large number of stone tools, bones, animals and plants in various stages from the late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic. Yan Wenming, an authoritative archaeologist and professor of Peking University in Neolithic Age, once pointed out that Wannian Xianren Cave and Douhuan Site are the most complete and clear places for the transition from the late Paleolithic to the early Neolithic in China. Dr. Manis, a world-famous archaeologist and an American who discovered the origin of corn planting, participated in the joint excavation of the site between China and the United States in 1993 and 1995. He believes that in Wannian Xianren Cave and Diaotonghuan ruins, "many previously unknown things have been discovered, which is the earliest evidence of human planting rice discovered by agricultural archaeology", and "through international cooperation investigation" is located in Wannian County on the southeast bank of Poyang Lake, which belongs to subtropical humid climate and has been called the hometown of rice since ancient times. In dongxiang county, not far from Wannian, the northernmost wild rice was found. Since the Ming Dynasty, there has been a kind of "Ten Thousand Years Gong Mi" enjoyed by tribute emperors. The rice grain is slender, fragrant but not greasy. It is said that the shapes of barns used in some rural areas today are still exactly the same as those recorded in the Han Dynasty. From the county to the northeast, walk along the country road for about 10 km and enter Dayuan basin. "There is a bumper harvest in the fragrance of rice and flowers, and you can hear frogs." A billboard with pastoral poems stands among the green rice fields, crosses the rice fields and the green Dayuan River, and walks to the foot of the south mountain of Xiaohe Mountain. You will see the residence of Xianrendong people 1 10,000 years ago. These ancestors who invented rice cultivation were really smart, and the "Feng Shui" of Xianren Cave was undoubtedly first-class. Xianren Cave is a limestone cave with warm winter and cool summer. The depth is about 40m, the bottom is 19m wide, the arc top is 14m high, and the entrance is 2m wide. In front of Xianren Cave is the flat bottom of Dayuan Basin, and Dayuan River meanders through it. 800 meters to the right from the mouth of the cave is a slightly higher bucket ring. In Wannian County, where there are "six mountains, one water, two fields and one road", hills surrounded by buckets can be seen everywhere. On the top of the mountain, there are a pair of giant stones such as Lux, which form a natural roof of rock buildings, and people can shelter from the rain and walk under it. It was named "Bucket Ring" because it looks like the handle of a bucket used by local people to carry water. Experts speculate that the bucket ring may have been a closed cave before, but later it partially collapsed and became a walkable corridor; People in the immortal cave may live in a bucket circle first, and then move to the immortal cave below after the water level recedes, and use the bucket circle as a production place for processing prey and gathering. Most ancient human sites found in the world are in karst caves. China's famous ancient human fossils, such as Beijingers, Liujiang people, Maba people, Jinniushan people, Hexian people and Neanderthals, were all found in limestone caves. Before primitive humans learned to build houses, they all chose limestone caves that were warm in winter and cool in summer. Da yuan xiang, where Wannian Fairy Cave is located, and Pan Ling, which is nearby, have many limestone caves. There is also a big cave called Shennong Palace in Dayuan. In China ancient books and folklore, Shennong was the ancestor who invented rice cultivation. Is there a Mijia in the world? 1 1 years ago, Zhao Zhijun appeared as a doctor of plant archaeology in the University of Missouri, USA, at the excavation site of the immortal cave and the bucket ring. Today, he has revisited his hometown by the "Ten Thousand Years Rice Culture Festival" and the "Fourth Symposium on Agricultural Archaeology" and has become a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As a participant in two important excavations in 1990s and an appraiser of cultivated rice as silica in the cultural relics unearthed from the site, Zhao Zhijun can be said to be the most concerned person in this agricultural archaeology seminar. He reminded reporters of the difference between the origin of "cultivated rice" and the origin of "rice farming". In an interview with the American magazine Science on 1998, Zhao Zhijun put forward the view that there is still a long process from the initial subconscious rice farming behavior to the formation of rice farming. The emergence of cultivated rice does not mean the emergence of rice farming, and the formation signs of rice farming also include production tools, main production methods and rice farming. "We found more and more cultivated rice planted with silica in the strata closer to the site of the immortal cave and Douhuan in ten thousand years, indicating that the proportion of cultivated rice is increasing, but at the same time, we also found a large number of animal bones and fish bones, indicating that the production mode of the immortal cave people is still dominated by fishing and hunting, so I can't say that the cultivated rice here is the origin of rice farming. The large amount of rice discovered 7,000 years ago in Hemudu, Zhejiang Province has a different meaning, because it seems that rice cultivation has become their main food source. " "To be sure, the earliest cultivated rice discovered at present is in Wannian Xianren Cave and Douhuan. Therefore, two-thirds of the human beings in the world who live on rice should thank the Xianrendong people. " Zhao Zhijun laughed. "But I don't think all the rice in the world comes from the same place. I tend to say that rice has many origins. Today's cultivated rice is divided into japonica rice and indica rice. Japonica rice is suitable for northern temperate climate, with long growth cycle and short and fat grains. Indica rice grains are slender, suitable for subtropical climate in southern China, and its growth cycle is short. Through genetic analysis, it is found that the difference between japonica rice and indica rice is greater than that between them and wild rice, so they are likely to have their own origins and have been distinguished from wild rice. " There are also many people who insist on the monism of the origin of rice in the world. They believe that from wild rice to cultivated indica rice and japonica rice, there is a trend that the grain shape becomes shorter and fatter from slender, and the adaptation area is wider and wider. The variation ability of wild rice is very strong, and it is entirely possible to develop different varieties such as japonica rice and indica rice. Researcher Zhu Naicheng of the Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences put forward the theory of "central origin and marginal development" of rice, which is quite popular. It means that cultivated rice originated in a central area, and then gradually spread to the surrounding areas to develop and mature. The focus of the debate is which central origin is "whose flowers have fallen" The excavation of the immortal cave and the bucket ring site since ten thousand years is considerable. The most powerful competitor for the invention right of cultivated rice is Yuchanyan, Daoxian County, Hunan Province, which is also a limestone cave where the ancients lived. Cultivated rice was also discovered tens of thousands of years ago, and rice (three and a half meters) was discovered, not just planting silicon dioxide. There is also wild rice in Jiangyong County near Daoxian County. Therefore, some researchers in Hunan strongly advocate that Dao County should give priority to planting rice. Wannian in Jiangxi and Daoxian in Hunan belong to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, so some scholars have designated the origin of cultivated rice as "the middle reaches of the Yangtze River" or "the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River". This view tends to be mainstream. But in fact, many scholars know whether the origin of cultivated rice is unitary or pluralistic, what is the relationship between rice in different places, and whether cultivated rice will be found earlier. These problems have not yet been finalized. I saw 20 thousand microscopic samples in those two years and mentioned the difference between phytolith and rice. It's time for Dr. Zhao Zhijun to introduce some technical details. Archaeology is a subject that integrates various means and methods and combines speculation with practice. Good archaeologists are interesting people. They use their left and right brains, which is often beyond the imagination of outsiders. Plant archaeology is a bit mysterious. How many clues do you think rice can be found after being buried in the stratum for tens of thousands of years? Moreover, it is necessary to distinguish wild rice from cultivated rice! ? Zhao Zhijun said that the so-called phytolith refers to the fossilized cells formed during the growth of plants, because plants will constantly absorb liquid silica from the soil and fill it into the cells, forming a structure similar to "gallstones" in animals, and finally the whole cells will be fossilized and die (such as the cells in the outer layer of rice husk). These phytoliths can keep the cell morphology intact, or they may be preserved in the stratum. Phytoliths are also formed in the inner cells of plants, but mostly in the outer epidermal cells. A plant may form different types of phytoliths, and different plants may have some similar phytoliths, so it is very difficult to identify the plant types in the stratum by phytoliths, but it can play a powerful and unique role, which is a research hotspot in archaeology in recent years. "When I was at the University of Missouri, I spent two or three years observing the phytoliths of different plants. I saw more than 4000 kinds of plants and 20000 microscopic samples. The purpose is to find out how to identify the phytolith of rice plants. First, rice plants are separated from Gramineae plants, and then wild rice and cultivated rice are distinguished in rice. " How difficult is it to distinguish wild rice from cultivated rice? "The phytolith is only 50 microns, which is equivalent to 1 mm 1/20. It is actually the epidermal hair cells of rice husk. We can only see one point under the microscope with magnification of 100 times. We observed it under a microscope with a magnification of 400 times. The rice plant silica has a characteristic double peak. For each kind of plant silica, we need to measure five data, such as peak height and bottom width, and then substitute these data into a statistical discriminant formula to make a judgment. The accuracy of distinguishing wild rice from cultivated rice is over 90%. " This identification method was established by Zhao Zhijun when he was doing his doctoral thesis at the University of Missouri. It can be said that without this method, there would be no great discovery of cultivating rice in fairy cave and bucket ring. Because at first they used the "flotation method", Zhao Zhijun worked with two migrant workers for two months and found nothing. This is a job of looking for a needle in a haystack. In the bucket ring, their deepest probe dug nearly 6 meters underground; After digging and screening hundreds of cubic meters of soil with bamboo poles, Zhao Zhijun and his team finally "captured" more than 600 rice silica plants from 40 samples. Unsolved mystery: Where did the immortal caveman come from and where did he go? In the newly officially opened "Exhibition Hall of Immortal Cave and Barrel Ring Site", the reporter saw the head of the Immortal Cave man restored according to the remains. It seems that she is a middle-aged woman with slightly longer cheeks. Her appearance and temperament are quite similar to those of today's locals. I don't know if it's because of psychological hints from reporters or restorers. According to Chen Wenhua, a researcher who participated in the preliminary excavation of Xianren Cave in 1960s (now vice president of China Agricultural History Society), they dug up the remains of this woman and two children under the big stone at the entrance of Xianren Cave. They analyzed that there might have been an earthquake-like disaster at that time, and the mother and her children were killed by falling rocks when they fled the entrance. There are still many unsolved mysteries about the sites of Xianren Cave and Douhuan. The most suspenseful possibility is: Where did the immortal cave people come from more than 20,000 years ago? Seven or eight thousand years later, where did the Xianrendong people suddenly go? Zhao Zhijun told me that more than 5 meters were excavated at the site of the Barrel Ring, which was in the late Paleolithic period more than 23,000 years ago. In fact, we can still dig down, and we can see that there are still things below, but Mr. Yan Wenming, who presided over the excavation, said: Don't dig, leave it to the people who will do paleolithic research in the future. Because Mr. Yan mainly studies the Neolithic Age, he is afraid that we will destroy the underlying strata, not be sure. Therefore, there is an older part of the story of Xianrendong people still buried deep underground. The excavation also found that the underground remains of Xianren Cave and Douhuan suddenly appeared faults after 7000-8000 years, and there was a gap between 8000 years ago and Shang and Zhou Dynasties (Wannian County has a large number of cultural remains since Shang and Zhou Dynasties). In the meantime, for thousands of years, did the immortal Neanderthals become into thin air? Or, where did they move? Does their migration have anything to do with the spread of cultivated rice? This is a long story, with links that have been missing for thousands of years, waiting for us to regain and supplement.