Although the site where the remains of wooden buildings were found has been buried underground for thousands of years, the houses in those years have already collapsed and abandoned, and we can't see the situation of the houses in those years from this photo of the site.
But from the dense piles and scattered components on the ground, we can still imagine the past scenes of these houses. Hemudu people live in these wooden houses.
7,000 years ago, Hemudu people planted rice and ate rice, which shows that they are no longer homeless, wandering around, or living in caves and Woods like prehistoric tribes, relying solely on gathering or fishing and hunting for a living. So, where do Hemudu people live? What kind of house do they live in?
7000 years ago, the ancestors of Hemudu lived in Ganlan buildings, which has long been concluded in the archaeological community. According to archaeological excavations in our country, among the numerous ruins of Ganlan buildings, the oldest is the long house of Ganlan found in Hemudu site, which has a history of 7000 years.
Interestingly, this form of building houses by mountains is still preserved in the mountainous areas of southern Zhejiang. In a set of ordinary stamps of "China Dwellings" issued by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications a few years ago, one set of patterns selected as "Zhejiang Dwellings" is this kind of dry fence house. Starting with one family.
At the restoration site of archaeological excavation, people saw such a spectacular scene: large pieces of original building wood components were cleaned by archaeologists, and the horizontal wooden boards were dense and almost all over the excavation area; Vertical circular piles and sheet piles are arranged in rows and criss-crossed; Numerous column holes, column bases, ground keels, beams and slabs, etc. Scattered everywhere. There is no doubt that this is the remains of the houses built and lived by Hemudu people at that time.
What kind of house is this? Architects and archaeologists infer that this is a dry-column building with an overhead building foundation, based on many columns and other components found on site. Gan Lan architecture is an architectural term and a very old architectural form. How did Hemudu people think of building such a house?
In fact, Gan Lan architecture is a semi-nested form, which evolved from primitive nesting. Therefore, when it comes to houses built by Hemudu people, we should start with the Youchao family, which is said to be the ancestor of the invention of "nesting".
In ancient times, you Chao was the leader of a tribe, because at that time, human beings lived in a sinister environment, not only to guard against the attacks of wild animals, insects and snakes, but also to resist the invasion of wet boils. So Youchao invented a house made of trees, which looks like a big bird's nest from a distance, so it is called nesting.
The earliest mention of a home with a nest is Han Fei's Note: "In ancient times, there were fewer people and more beasts, and the people were invincible. There are saints, wooden nests, to avoid group harm, and the people are pleased to be the king of the world. posthumous title has a nest. "
Is this record credible? Did a saint named Youchao invent "nesting" in history? Most people think these are just legends. However, some people think that the legend of Youchao tribe is not groundless, and Youchao tribe did exist in ancient times. Surprisingly, according to his research results, this so-called Youchao tribe is actually our Hemudu tribe! Of course, this view has not been recognized by most people.
No matter whether there is really a Chao family in history, people in hot and humid areas have indeed built such houses in the human living pattern of ancient and modern China and foreign countries. As early as the Paleolithic Age, primitive people lived in trees for quite a long time. They use stone tools to cut branches to build nests, which can not only avoid the invasion of wild animals, snakes and scorpions, but also escape from the wet ground. This may be the origin of nesting later.
Ethnographers found through investigation that the earliest form of nesting was to frame trees, spread branches, stems and leaves on the branches of a single tree to form a living surface, and cover the top with thatch to shelter from the wind and rain. This is the "nest" mentioned in the Book of Rites. Later, people learned to erect branches on two or four adjacent trees to build a simple house. The "cave" in hieroglyphics is obviously the epitome of nesting image. Up to now, the Kenoi people on Palawan Island in the South Pacific and the tree houses inhabited by primitive people in some remote areas of Oceania are the remains of nesting. From living in a nest to living in a dry house.
Primitive people have always lived in trees, which is of course inconvenient. Later, with the development of society and the progress of productivity, primitive people began to learn to build houses on the ground and gradually "moved" their homes from trees to the ground.
Living on the ground is convenient, but it also has many disadvantages. For example, wet ground is harmful to health. At the same time, we should guard against the invasion of wild animals, insects and snakes. In this way, a dry column building with the advantages of nesting and ground building was born.
Gan Lan-style houses have the same effect as wooden nests. Gan Lan style house is built according to the principle of nest house, which is the development of the nest, but it breaks the geographical restrictions, can be built anywhere, and is more spacious and convenient.
Gan Lan, formerly known as Liao Ren, was first named in Liao Biography of Shu Wei: Liao Ren lived on a tree block, hence the name. The size of the dry aperture depends on the number of its families. The reflection of the Three Kingdoms, Wu Dong, mentions the "settled people" in southern Zhejiang today, and "building a house like a building on a stack and living by a mountain".
Judging from the architectural relics, this kind of dry-column residence built by Hemudu people is quite strange.
Because the stakes exposed from the ground are incomplete, it is difficult to know its original length. According to a group of wooden stakes, the length of 23 meters has not yet seen the end, and the original length is of course longer. The arrangement of these piles is regular, and most of them are thin piles with a diameter of 10 cm, which are driven into the soil about 50 cm deep. There are several large piles with large diameter and equal spacing in each row, which are driven up and down the raw soil 1 m. These large piles should be the main load-bearing piles, which crisscross the ground keel and ground beam.
How big was the house then? According to the existing relics, the average house has four rows of piles with a total distance of 7 meters. Excluding the front porch with a width of about 1 m, the depth of the house is about 6 meters. As for the area width of each room, if calculated according to the distance between three bearing piles, it should be 2.4m-3m. According to the row of 23-meter-long wooden stakes mentioned above, this kind of house has more than a dozen rooms, which is also considered as a "long room". As for the height of this kind of building, it is estimated that the total height of this kind of dry-column building, including its underframe, is about 3.6-4 meters from the remaining height of existing wooden piles and the thickness of cultural accumulation.
Because Hemudu is close to the swamp and very humid, wild animals, insects and snakes on Nanshan are also harmful to people and animals in the clan. Therefore, when building houses, Hemudu people drove a large number of wooden stakes into the soil to raise the living area. Estimated from the height of the remaining stake, the height is about 1 m. Then the ground beam is placed on the front and rear bearing columns respectively, and the floor is laid on the ground beam to form an empty living base. Then set up beams on the pedestal to form a set of simple wooden frames. Between the two groups of parallel wooden frames, the upper ends of the columns are connected by rectangular beams, and then purlins are placed on the top of the columns. Then, spread mats, mats or leaves on the purlins, and tie branches, bark or boards to the walls.
These descriptions were inferred by archaeologists and ancient architects through the analysis of cultural relics unearthed from the site and then through scientific research. Of course, this is just the general situation. Specific to all aspects of building, there are still many intriguing phenomena.
For example, how are these criss-crossing beams and columns connected? In the Stone Age, there was no shadow of iron. How did Hemudu people solve this problem?
You can take the joint between the wooden stake and the ground keel as an example. They have two ways to deal with it. One is to skillfully make a lot of "Ya"-shaped trees, put the ground keel directly between the branches, and then tie it up with rattan and other things for reinforcement. Another method surprised the world, they actually adopted advanced mortise and tenon technology!
In the ruins, it is found that there are still rectangular or concave mortises at the upper ends of some wooden stakes, and some ground keels or beam ends have chiseled tenons, which can be inserted into mortises on wooden stakes and nested with each other. The roof truss components found on site mainly include columns, beams, purlins and so on. Many of these components are engraved with tenons and mortises. For example, the tenon of the stigma foot, the tenon of the beam head, the tenon with pin hole, the tenon of "flat column", the tenon of "corner column" at right angles to each other, and so on. Judging from these mortises and tenons, mortise and tenon technology was widely used in the roof truss structure at that time.
This is a great achievement! It is not surprising that mortise and tenon technology has become commonplace in modern architecture. However, there is an old saying: "If you want to do a good job, you must sharpen your tools first." As the saying goes, "A clever woman can't cook without rice." In Hemudu era, metal technology did not appear. What tools were first used in Hemudu, and how to process these mortises and tenons?
In addition, archaeologists found some relics in the site, which are considered as decorative parts of the building. For example, a hexagonal pottery block is carved with a pot of five-leaf plants, and the other is shaped into a small beast looking back. From the size and shape analysis of these pottery sculptures, they may be placed in some important parts of the building. In addition, we also found some carving decorations on wooden components, such as carving two symmetrical double circles on a wooden board with small tenons at both ends, and carving a pattern composed of straight lines and diagonal lines on the inside of the double circles. On another wooden component, there is a pattern composed of plant stems and leaves.
If these conjectures are true, then we should be impressed by the houses built by Hemudu people: don't think that they are just simple thatched cottages, but they are actually very elegant! Later generations often use "beauty" and "carving beams and painting buildings" to describe the glory of architecture. From this point of view, their origin can be traced back to the Hemudu era 7000 years ago. Stone axes hewed out thousands of houses.
An archaeologist who has personally participated in three excavations (including trial excavations) of Hemudu Site used the title "Stone Axes Chop Out Thousands of Households" in a book entitled "Hemudu Visit to Ancient Times", which made people feel very vivid and appropriate, so this article was also borrowed here.
Indeed, stone axes played an important role in the construction of houses by Hemudu people.
Let's talk about logging first. Hemudu people need a lot of wood to build wooden houses. At that time, in the south of the village, the mountains were green and the forests were dense. Oak, Castanopsis fargesii, Liquidambar formosana and Cyclobalanopsis are all good building materials. But the question is, how did Hemudu people who lived in the Stone Age cut down these logs?
From the facts of archaeological excavations, the main tool for people to cut down trees at that time was a stone axe. In addition, stone tools such as stone chisel and stone hairpin are also used to assist in processing logs. At that time, the stone axe was used for logging, and the working principle was similar to that of modern folk logging with iron axe. The cut section of the wood is slightly pile-pointed, and the tip is slightly inclined to one side, which are all traces left by the chopping of the stone axe. The section of the stump left behind is the stubble plane, which is the proof that the tree was finally pushed down or pulled down.
If it is a huge tree, it is difficult to cut it down with a stone axe or even an iron axe. What can be done in this situation? According to ancient documents, Sichuanese did not cut down the big tree when they entered the mountain, but took some wood from the big tree with an iron wedge. In remote areas such as Tibet and Gansu in China, in the absence of iron saws, modern folk chopping boards are also processed by splitting wood vertically with wedges. Hemudu people probably adopted a similar method, because a stone tool similar to a wedge-a stone wedge was unearthed in the fourth cultural layer of the site.
We modern people can't imagine how Hemudu people cut down trees with these crude stone tools. Fortunately, archaeologists have done an experiment. It takes about ten minutes to cut down a small tree with a diameter of more than ten centimeters with a stone axe. Hemudu people need hundreds of cubic meters of wood to build a long wooden structure. It's not hard to imagine how hard it takes to cut down so much wood with a stone axe!
After the big tree is cut down, according to the need, some trees should be sharpened into stakes, some should be processed into pieces of boards, and some should be chiseled with wooden components with tenons or mortises. So how do Hemudu people process different components such as piles, columns, beams and slabs?
Wooden stakes are probably the easiest to process. Cut the log to the required length and sharpen one end with a stone axe. The method of cutting logs should be similar to logging. However, because the log is placed horizontally, the stone axe can be cut into grooves along the circumferential corner of the quasi-broken line during operation (logging needs to master its dumping direction, so it cannot be cut evenly at the corner) and then broken. In this way, both ends of the cross section are in the shape of pile tips. If this wood is long enough, these are two ready-made stakes.
It's easy to process some narrow boards. All you need to do is chop the smaller wood with a stone axe, and then cut the circular section flat with a stone axe and spear, and it becomes a square board. However, if a wide board is needed, it is difficult to split it on a large log by longitudinal splitting.
How do Hemudu people chop wood? A tool called "stone axe" unearthed in the site provides us with the answer.
The processing of tenons and mortises on wooden components is more complicated. Who would believe that a large number of mortises and mortises on such tough wood were actually chiseled with some clumsy stone tools and bone tools if they were not the relics and relics that they saw with their own eyes?
Tenons are mainly cut with stone axes. It is proved that there are obvious stone axe marks on some tenon glossy surface along the fiber, and axe marks on the rough surface of the transverse fiber. The method and sequence are as follows: first transverse cutting, then longitudinal splitting. Mortise is dug with stone chisel, bone chisel and angle chisel, and the operation method is probably similar to cutting wood with stone wedge and chisel with mallet. The cutting edges of bone chisel and angle chisel are narrow and sharp. If the wood is not very hard, you can also dig mortises directly. In modern Australia, the aborigines also used the bones made of Turkish femur to dig the sockets of wooden components, which can be said to be "walking with the ancient Hemudu people", and they thought of walking together. The invention of the oldest wooden well is closely related to the development of settled life and agricultural production. It is impossible for a wandering prehistoric tribe to have leisure to "dig wells and drink water". Coincidentally, the well found in Hemudu is also made of wood.
Speaking of wells, you may think that this is a very common thing. People who used to live in old walls may have a well in their yard. But if I told you that this well found in Hemudu site is the oldest wooden well found in China so far, would you still think it is normal?
It is said that China started digging wells from the legendary Yellow Emperor, and it is also said that it was Boyi in summer. However, the discovery of Hemudu water well advanced the history of China water well by thousands of years. If we want to "think of the source by drinking water", the invention patent of this well should also be awarded to Hemudu people 7000 years ago.
The remains of this well were discovered under the second cultural layer when the Hemudu site was first excavated. It is located in the middle of the 34th and 7th exploration areas. It opens under the yellow-green soil in the second cultural layer and breaks through the third and fourth cultural layers at the bottom, which shows that it has a long history.
Unexpectedly, this ancient well is made of wood, with a square wellhead and a side length of about 2 meters. According to the analysis of unearthed cultural relics, it consists of more than 200 piles and long logs with sharpened bottom. It is estimated that this place used to be a puddle at the bottom of the pot, and people usually take water for drinking by the pit. Perhaps in the dry season or the year of severe drought, the water level keeps falling and it is difficult to get water. Later, Hemudu people dug wells with piles and logs.
The construction method is as follows: in the middle of the original water pit, four rows of dense directly buried piles (square piles-wooden walls are formed by thick piles at the corners) are vertically driven against the pit walls on both sides, and then the soil in the middle is dug. At the same time, in order to prevent the row piles from dumping into the well, 28 logs with a length of 196cm and a diameter of 15- 18cm (six of which have forks at one end and 1 root has a cross) are used to reinforce the wellhead or derrick. Together, they form a vertical axis with a square in the middle. In this way, a well was built.
From the analysis of relics, this well is only about 1.35 meters deep. Pottery and tools have been unearthed in the well, which should be left over from drawing water or drilling wells. Because fence posts, radial logs and residual reed mats were found around the well, it is speculated that there may be a simple well pavilion on the well at that time.
Intriguingly, the shape of Hemudu well is particularly similar to that in Shang and Zhou inscriptions. The word "well" in bronze inscriptions is like a suspender, with four long logs intersecting vertically and horizontally, and the midpoint is like an earthenware urn that draws water. The two are indeed traceable.
Since we are talking about the word "hmm", we might as well go deeper. In China's Chinese characters, the word "Jing" starts from Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Jinwen, and ends in seal script, official script and running script, which is one of the square characters with the least changes in font strokes. From the word formation analysis, it obviously belongs to hieroglyphics. But as for what it looks like, the explanations given by ancient exegetists in China are mostly specious, which has become an eternal unsolved case in the history of Chinese characters.
More detailed records of water wells were first seen in Zhouyi three thousand years ago. Xiang Ci in Zhouyi is said to be a poem written by Duke Zhou. His definition of "well" is: "There is water on the wood, well." Such a simple sentence, but let the later generations of exegetics circle for thousands of years, arguing endlessly, but let people die. Some people say that the shape of the word "well" is a wooden fence on the well, while others say it is the shape of a pulley for drawing water on the well. There is no agreement.
In fact, it is no wonder that the ancients, even imaginative people before the discovery of Hemudu ancient well, could not have imagined that water would flow out of this "wood" like this. The discovery of this well ended the debate on the shape of the word "well".
Water has always maintained the survival of human beings and animals. As early as the Paleolithic Age, our ancestors often chose to live near water sources. Neolithic people are no exception. Hemudu has developed intensive farming and lived a settled life of "land to the tiller and food to the eater", so it is not surprising to "dig wells to drink water". There is a lot of circumstantial evidence. In the ruins of Qiu Cheng, Huzhou, excavated in 1957, two small canals were found beside the houses with low cultural level, which were specially introduced into the houses by our ancestors for the convenience of drinking and washing. About 5,000 years ago, wells in the late Songze culture were also found in Songze, Qingpu, Shanghai, and Tangmiao Village, Songjiang County.
The invention of Hemudu well was based on the development of settled life and agricultural production at that time, which had an immeasurable impact on the evolution of human society. In addition, in the third and fourth cultural layers, a large number of leaves of Lauraceae plants have been unearthed, many of which are similar to medicinal plants. At that time, it was probably used to repel insects and prevent diseases. This is like digging a well, which improves the sanitary environment and is of great benefit to the health of our ancestors.