Methods and skills of grave robbery and treasure hunting
China has been excavating ancient tombs for a long time. The earliest recorded mausoleum in history is Shang Tang, the first king of Shang Dynasty. 3600 years ago, grave robbery first appeared in the late Western Zhou Dynasty more than 2770 years ago. Someone got a jade seal from the excavated ancient tomb with a cross on it, and no one could recognize it.
Laws and methods of grave robbery
There are two kinds of grave robbers. One is official thieves, such as Dong Zhuo and Sun Dianying in the Republic of China. They are all armed to the teeth. They use a large number of soldiers to carry sticks with fire, and the other is a large number of civilian thieves distributed all over the country. It is concentrated in the surrounding areas of Henan, Shaanxi and Changsha, Hunan.
Professional thieves usually commit crimes in partnership with two people. Many gangs have fewer people, and even fewer people go it alone, because one person can't take care of them. One person needs to dig, one person needs to keep watch and clean up the soil, then one person enters the tomb and the other person picks up the items on it. Two partners can be friends or relatives, but father and son rarely cooperate. When looking for a partner, you need to be very careful to prevent anyone from becoming greedy.
These people have been engaged in grave robbery for a long time, and they are experienced, good at camouflage and very good at anti-theft organs. After the goal is determined, if the small tomb will not take too much effort, it will be dug in a few nights, and the items will be taken out and left. If it is a large or medium-sized tomb, they will plant corn sorghum and other things around it in the name of farming, and cover up their two-month grave-robbing activities with green curtains. Second, they will build a house next to the grave to hide their eyes and ears.
Four-word decision on tomb robbery in Changsha
There is much water in the south, and Luoyang shovel is not very good. The ancients summed up many experiences and came to the conclusion that a decision must be made.
I hope to see feng shui, that is, grave robbers often have feng shui, and judge the size of the cemetery through feng shui.
Second, smell is the skill of smelling and playing with the nose. A handful of dirt can tell which generation of tombs you belong to. You are surprised by this letter. There is a legend that a grave robber robbed the tomb for three generations and developed a skill. But he was arrested in the' 80s and should be dead. But because of his skill, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and worked for the archaeological cause all his life.
Most of the three questions are eloquent people who travel around the country and talk with the elderly about the past and the present in order to obtain tomb information.
Four-finger pulse-taking. There are three kinds of statements. One is to judge the age and size of the tomb according to the soil layer. The other is to touch the objects of the deceased in the coffin of the grave, from the head to the anus and finally to the feet, as an undifferentiated pool. Must be delicate. The third is to judge the value of the unearthed objects by touching them with your hands.
Tomb-raiding and treasure-hunting have existed since ancient times, and they are even more brilliant today. Its methods, techniques and tools have developed to be more modern, collectivized and intelligent today. They use military compasses for detection, detectors, detonators, explosives, chain saws, cars for transportation, and mobile phones for communication. So if you want to learn this technology, it is complicated and arduous, and there is a long way to go.
Modern grave robbers have developed grave robbing tools. ...
Anti-tomb robbery: the origin of the legend of "suspected tomb"
The most common way to prevent grave robbery is to hide the grave so that the grave robbers don't know where it is. It is said that one of the main starting points of ancient tombs is to prevent illegal excavation, not to seal trees, and not to set obvious signs on the ground.
Tomb raiding in the Three Kingdoms period at the end of the Han Dynasty led to the emergence of so-called "suspected tombs" and "virtual tombs" in various forms of anti-tomb raiding, that is, the situation of confusing tomb robbers with true and false tombs. Among them, the "suspected tomb" set by Cao Cao is the most famous. According to folklore, there are as many as 72 suspected tombs of Cao Cao, some of which even stand in the water. Quanzhou folks once said that General Shi Lang had seven "virtual tombs", which were located at the gates of several ancient cities in Quanzhou.
The traditional anti-tomb-raiding methods include solid stone walls and iron walls, anti-theft chisels accumulating sand, and crossbows killing tomb raiders with poisonous smoke.
The ancient tomb was stolen seriously, and the losses caused were incalculable. Take thousands of Han tombs that have been excavated in China as an example. It is reported that only three tombs have survived.
"When we excavated the ancient tomb, what we were most worried about was that the ancient tomb was looted by grave robbers." A scholar who has been engaged in archaeological work for a long time said this.
"From an archaeological point of view, the ancients regarded death as life, and ancient tombs became important cultural relics for studying ancient society. The cultural relics in the ancient tomb represent the historical imprint left by a long civilization. In order to record the historical and cultural information fed back by ancient cultural remains most completely, archaeologists do not dig ancient tombs at will according to their own preferences, but carry out scientific cleaning, recording and drawing, and then analyze, compare and date them, so as to maximize the information fed back from ancient tombs for future research and use, so as to supplement or enrich history. Grave robbery, to be honest, interferes with and destroys archaeological work.
China has a long history of robbing ancient tombs. The earliest recorded tomb in history is the tomb of Shang Tang, the first king of Shang Dynasty, about 3600 years ago. Robbery first appeared in the late Western Zhou Dynasty more than 2770 years ago. Someone got a jade seal with a cross carved on it from the excavated ancient tomb. Nobody recognized it at that time.
Rules and excavation methods of grave robbers
There are two kinds of grave robbers. One is official thieves, such as Dong Zhuo and Cao Cao in the late Han Dynasty, Wen Tao in the Five Dynasties and Sun Dianying in the Republic of China. , are famous. They often use a large number of soldiers to do this with burning sticks. There is also a kind of human thief, which is distributed all over the country and has a large number. They all secretly dig graves and coffins, take out the buried property and treasure, and make a fortune. Most of them are concentrated in places with many ancient tombs, such as Luoyang, Henan, Guanzhong, Shaanxi, and Changsha, Hunan. Before liberation, these full-time grave robbers were usually two people in partnership. Many people form gangs, and one person does less. There is a simple reason. One person can't manage it, but two people can do it together: at first, one person digs a hole, and the other person cleans the soil while watching the wind; Later, one person dug the grave, and the other person picked up the pit soil and funerary objects. Most of these two people are related by blood (many good friends), but strangely, there is less relationship between father and son. This may be because the business of robbing tombs is ultimately shady. Even if I do this disgraceful thing, I will maintain my image as a father. I was embarrassed to take my son with me. My son later found out and pretended not to know. Why do two people want to find blood relatives when they are partners? This is to prevent people who pick up jobs at the mouth of the cave from fighting for money. That is to say, when the person under the hole finishes his work and passes everything, he will clap his hands or pull the rope to signal the person at the hole to pull him up. If the people in the hole are motivated by money, when the people in the hole come up quickly, they will suddenly loosen the rope, and the people under the hole will suddenly fall from a distance of more than four or five meters, and they will be unable to move because of fractures and injuries. People at the mouth of the cave will quickly bury the pit soil under the hole, and the people below will die.
These people have robbed tombs for a long time, accumulated rich experience, are good at camouflage, and have a set of methods to deal with anti-theft organs in tombs. After the goal of robbing the tomb is determined, if the small tomb doesn't take much effort, it will be dug in a few nights, so make a quick decision and take out the funerary objects and leave. For large and medium-sized tombs, the following measures should be taken: First, in the name of land reclamation, tall crops such as corn and sorghum should be planted around the tombs to cover up their excavation activities for one or two months. The second is to build a house next to the grave to hide people's eyes and ears, and then dig a tunnel from the house to the grave. You can't see any problems from the outside, and the ancient tomb has long been ransacked. Third, while building a fake tomb on the edge of the ancient tomb, secretly dig tunnels and enter the ancient tomb to steal property.
Evolution of tools for robbing tombs in the old society
On the one hand, stealing ancient tombs depends on people's skills and experience; On the one hand, it is operated by tools. In the old society, the tools of poaching were shovels, picks, shovels, axes, torches and candles. Before the Ming Dynasty, grave robbers did not have special detection tools, and iron cones began to be used in the Ming Dynasty. Its appearance makes grave robbers only take tombs with obvious signs on the ground (such as sealing soil and tombstones) as objects and never return. Grave robbers use a special iron cone to explore the unmarked underground on the ground. Once they find the ancient tomb, they can dig a hole directly and steal it according to the metal smell brought up on the cone. Wang Shixing in Ming Dynasty said in Guang Zhi Yi: "Luoyang is rich in water and soil resources, and burying people is not as good as spring." "However, although buried, thieves can still smell it. If there are gold, silver, copper and iron, they will make (dig)."
From iron cone to Luoyang shovel, it is a leap for grave robbers in the north to use underground detection tools. The north, especially Luoyang and Guanzhong, is located in the loess plateau with deep water and thick soil. The shovel clamp of Luoyang shovel is only 2 inches wide and is in a U-shaped semicircle. The upper part of the shovel is equipped with a long handle. Every time you drill, insert this shovel into the ground, you can go down three or four inches deep, and when you lift it up, you can bring out the ground trapped in the semicircle intact. In this way, the grave robbers continued to drill deep underground and analyzed the soil structure, color, density and various inclusions of different soil layers. If it is cooked soil that has been touched by later generations, there may be ancient tombs or ancient buildings underground. If ceramics, iron, copper, gold and wood are found in inclusions, the nature and layout of underground collections can be inferred. Experienced grave robbers can judge the underground situation by the different sounds made by Luoyang shovel hitting the ground and the feeling on their hands. For example, compacted walls are naturally very different from hollow tombs and tombs.
There is a story about the origin of Luoyang shovel in Luoyang:
In Ma Po Village, Mangshan, Luoyang, there was a farmer named Li Yazi, who made a living by robbing tombs since he was a child. One day in the 12th year of the Republic of China (1923), he arrived in Mengjin County, more than ten miles away. An acquaintance in Magou Village, Yanshi County is building a shed to sell fried steamed bread. When the two sides met and greeted each other, he saw that the man was busy digging a small vertical round hole in the ground with a tile-shaped shovel with short handle to insert the shed column. This man used this shovel to poke into the ground, and when he lifted it, he brought out a lot of soil, which immediately triggered his "inspiration": this guy is lighter than the shovel in digging stolen holes, especially using the original soil, which is conducive to judging the situation of different underground strata. So he found a piece of paper, drew a big original pattern with a shovel clip, and immediately found a blacksmith to build it according to the picture after returning home. Really handy, the effect is good. Later, other grave robbers followed suit, so they were widely "promoted".
After liberation, the department of cultural relics and archaeology improved it, and used it for the investigation and drilling of whether there are cultural relics underground, which made a contribution to the archaeological work of cultural relics. However, in recent years, in the national grave robbery frenzy, it was used by grave robbers and went astray again.
In Ma Po Village, Mangshan, Luoyang, there was a farmer named Li Yazi, who made a living by robbing tombs since he was a child. One day in the 12th year of the Republic of China (1923), he arrived in Mengjin County, more than ten miles away. An acquaintance in Magou Village, Yanshi County is building a shed to sell fried steamed bread. When the two sides met and greeted each other, he saw that the man was busy digging a small vertical round hole in the ground with a tile-shaped shovel with short handle to insert the shed column. This man used this shovel to poke into the ground, and when he lifted it, he brought out a lot of soil, which immediately triggered his "inspiration": this guy is lighter than the shovel in digging stolen holes, especially using the original soil, which is conducive to judging the situation of different underground strata. So he found a piece of paper, drew a big original pattern with a shovel clip, and immediately found a blacksmith to build it according to the picture after returning home. Really handy, the effect is good. Later, other grave robbers followed suit, so they were widely "promoted".
After liberation, the department of cultural relics and archaeology improved it, and used it for the investigation and drilling of whether there are cultural relics underground, which made a contribution to the archaeological work of cultural relics. However, in recent years, in the national grave robbery frenzy, it was used by grave robbers and went astray again.
Tomb raiding and treasure hunting have existed since ancient times, especially today. Its methods, techniques and tools have developed to be more modern, intelligent and collectivized. Military compasses and detectors are used for detection, detonators, explosives and chainsaws are used for excavation, and cars, motorcycles and mobile phones are used for transportation and communication. Therefore, the struggle against excavating ancient tombs and selling smuggled cultural relics is more complicated and arduous, with a long way to go!
Historical and Cultural Investigation of Grave Robbery Phenomenon
The ancient tomb is the last freeze at the end of life, and it is also a treasure house for storing some cultural information of the owner's life. Overlapping ancient tombs have experienced vicissitudes and are often destroyed for various reasons. The most common form of destruction is intentional excavation. Tomb-robbing is quite common in history, and it has even become a local custom in some areas, a means of livelihood for some families, and an industry feature of some social groups.
Grave robbery is a social and cultural phenomenon with a long history. Archaeological data of the Neolithic Age can already see the remains of conscious destruction of tombs. After the social change of "bad manners, happy collapse" in the Spring and Autumn Period, the wind of reburial rose, so grave robbery prevailed. Shaanxi Fengxiang 1 Qin Cemetery is the largest tomb in the pre-Qin period discovered so far, and it is also the largest tomb excavated by scientific archaeological methods in China at present. A total of 247 stolen caves were found in this ancient tomb, of which 10 was a stolen cave, which directly entered the tomb.
Sima Qian wrote about the customs of Zhongshan and noticed the universality of "digging graves". Although it was a kind of rape to dig a grave and rob a tomb, at that time, some people made a fortune because of it. In the Western Han Dynasty, lawless aristocrats committed many evils, and robbing tombs was actually a hobby game of arrogant and fierce people, so there was a situation of "all domestic burials were dug up" and "countless tombs were built". Some serious social unrest in the Han Dynasty, such as the rebellion of Wu Chu in the Seven Kingdoms, the riot that overthrew the Xin Mang Dynasty, and so on, all recorded large-scale grave robbery. During the Han and Wei Dynasties, there was a grave robbery climax. It is said that Cao Cao's military clique even set up official posts called "Faqiu corps commander" and "Captain Mo Jin" to direct grave robbery.
The so-called poems in the Tang Dynasty, such as "thieves swarmed with mosquitoes and flies", "the sound of hoeing in a deserted grave", "the skull was half out of the ground" and "the bones crisscrossed", also reflected the popularity of grave robbery. In Tang Daizong, Guo Ziyi's father's tomb was stolen. Some people suspect that it was directed by Yu Chaoen. And Guo Ziyi when it comes to this matter in the headquarters, admitted that he was at the head of the army also has many acts of destruction of the mausoleum. According to historical records, from the end of the Tang Dynasty to the beginning of the Five Dynasties, except Tang Gaozong and Wu Zetian, the tombs of the Tang Emperor in Guanzhong were stolen one by one, and no one was spared.
The history of robbing and destroying tombs in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties is unique. As a kind of government behavior, the most typical event is the massive destruction of two Beijing tombs by the pseudo-Qi regime supported by the Central Plains Jin Dynasty. Liu Yu once set up officials in charge of tomb excavation, namely "Taosha official in Henan" and "Taosha official in Bianjing". Monks trusted by Mongolian aristocrats in Yuan Dynasty robbed tombs in Southern Song Dynasty. During the Wanli period of Ming Dynasty, Chen Feng, the eunuch, handled the case that Li's wife Yang's tomb was robbed by the people, and was lured by the information of "seizing a lot of gold", and even "learned about the tombs in China". Wuchang citizens opposed his evil deeds and once set off a fierce wave of protests, almost forming riots.
The prevalence of grave robbery has left a deep historical memory in every dynasty, so there is a saying that "from ancient times to now, there are no immortal people, and there are no people who leave graves."