''The Twenty-Four Histories are not histories, they are just genealogies of the twenty-four surnames. ''——Liang Qichao's "New Historiography"
The Twenty-Four Histories is the official history of the ancient Chinese dynasties. It records in detail the history from the ancient times to the seventeenth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty. Later generations published it in the "Manuscript of Qing History" It is included in it and together with the original Twenty-Four Histories is called the Twenty-Five Histories. But why did Liang Qichao say that the Twenty-Four Histories are just "the genealogy of the twenty-four surnames"?
Because these history books spend a lot of space recording the main deeds of the twenty-four imperial families, and detail them They narrate the rise and fall of the dynasties created by the imperial families, but most of these history books mention the development of science and technology and the living standards of the people. To put it bluntly, they only focus on the princes and generals, but ignore the development of society.
This means that if we now want to study the forging, smelting, textile and other technologies of the ancients, most of the time we can only conduct relevant research through excavation of tombs, and we have no way of knowing how they did many of the technological achievements of the ancients. .
For example, the 19 mysterious bronze swords from the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum that I want to introduce to you today, especially the 19th one, were originally thought to be damaged "waste products", but they turned out to be. It has exerted unexpected and wonderful abilities. Is this because the level of technology is far superior to modern times or is there another hidden reason?
Everyone knows the location of the Qin Emperor’s Mausoleum, but it was discovered after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The issue of not excavating imperial tombs for archeology has actually been debated countless times by relevant experts. A group of people led by Guo Moruo made up their minds that they must open imperial tombs. In their view, these deceased emperors of feudal society should be the ones who are today.
But there are also many scientists who believe that our archaeological work should be based on rescue excavation. What is rescue excavation? We should not touch those intact tombs. It is only responsible for those that were damaged due to special reasons, such as earthquakes and other natural disasters that caused damage to ancient tombs, or tomb robbers who broke ground and the cultural relics department had to take over.
But the arm could not twist the thigh. At that time, Guo Moruo and others were in history. Guo Moruo's original intention was to take the lead in opening the imperial tomb of Yongle Emperor Zhu Di, despite everyone's dissuasion. Unfortunately, Emperor Yongle's mausoleum was too strong to be opened anyway.
At this time, a small piece of Emperor Wanli's Ming Dingling mausoleum suddenly collapsed and was discovered by Guo Moruo. The excavation of the tomb is still a major pain in the archaeological community. Due to the lack of protective measures and the fact that the equipment at the time did not meet the preservation standards, many precious treasures inside were instantly reduced to ashes when the door of the tomb was opened.
The preserved cultural relics were not flattering either. The experts at that time did not know how to cherish cultural relics at all. Not only did they damage many cultural relics, but even the remains and coffins of Emperor Wanli himself were discarded. Later, due to the reasons of the times, The archaeological work was put on hold, and the poor Wanli Emperor was burned by nearby villagers, and the coffin boards were used as firewood.
Not counting Dingling, Guo Moruo set his sights again. As for Wu Zetian's Qianling Mausoleum and Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum, everyone disagreed with anything at this time, and specially formulated a rule not to open any more imperial mausoleums for 100 years, so these famous imperial mausoleums were preserved.
Someone may be asking, isn’t it said that digging imperial tombs is not allowed, so how did Qin Shihuang’s terracotta warriors and horses come from? What a surprise. In 1974, when villagers in Xiyang Village were digging wells to fight drought, they accidentally dug out some "Waye Tou". What is Wa Ye? Those statues enshrined in ancient temples. At first, everyone was quite scared. Only a farmer named Yang Zhifa read some books and realized that something was wrong, so he walked around to the cultural relics department with his head, and found out that this was the famous Terracotta Warriors and Horses pit.
After excavating the world-famous Terracotta Warriors and Horses, scientists also found a batch of very mysterious bronze swords.
These swords were carried on the backs of the pottery figurines, so they were called "sword-carrying figurines". There were 19 swords in each, but the 19th one was bent into a corner by the fallen pottery figurines, and the rest were bent into corners. The swords are all well preserved.
Many people may not know the status of bronzes in the world of cultural relics. After all, we usually watch some treasure appraisal programs, including watching antique markets, and they are basically either ceramics or gold, silver and jade, and there are no bronzes at all. In fact, this is not because the bronze is not valuable, but because it is too valuable.
The "Cultural Relics Law" clearly stipulates that bronzes are not allowed to be sold, especially bronzes from the pre-Qin period. Therefore, these bronze swords immediately captured the attention of the experts present as soon as they appeared. As experts conducted further research on these Qin swords, they discovered that the secrets hidden in these swords were beyond everyone's imagination.
Experts measured the appearance of these Qin swords and found that the blades of these swords have eight facets. The error between the facets is less than one millimeter. The shape of each sword is perfect. Completely unified, comparable to standard equipment produced on modern industrial assembly lines, this skill is already amazing enough, but something even more magical is yet to come.
The Qin Dynasty has been more than two thousand years ago, but these Qin swords, which use copper as the main raw material, actually have no trace of rust or corrosion on their bodies. How did the Qin people achieve such a small error between each sword? It may not be possible to verify this until further documents are unearthed. Therefore, experts focused their research on the anti-rust technology of the Qin sword, hoping to solve the mystery of the fact that the bronze sword has not rusted for more than 2,000 years.
After research, it was found that there is a layer of chromium metal compound on the surface of the Qin sword with a thickness of less than 0.6 microns. It is under the action of this chromium that these Qin swords have remained incorruptible for thousands of years. In modern history, the metal chromium was only officially discovered by humans in 1797. Although the people of Qin did not know that this metal was called chromium, they used it more than two thousand years earlier than modern people.
What’s even more incredible is that the melting point of chromium is 1970 degrees Celsius, and various data show that with the smelting technology of our ancients, we can only obtain a high temperature of 1300 degrees Celsius at most. So how did the ancients manage when the temperature was not enough? What about the cases where chromium is used for forging swords? Or maybe the Qin people had some mysterious technology that could achieve temperatures above 2,000 degrees Celsius? However, historical records basically say nothing about all this.
However, scientists have studied how the Qin people chromium plated their swords. They used a technique now known as the chromium salt oxidation method, in which the sword body was soaked in a compound containing chromium salts and heated to give the sword corrosion-resistant properties. This technology was not used by Germany until World War II, and was later patented by the United States. But looking at these bronze swords, my country's chromium salt oxidation oxidation technology is more than 2,000 years ahead of them.
The biggest surprise among these bronze swords comes from the mysterious 19th sword, which is the one that was bent. What's so magical about this 19th sword? When the scientists moved the sword out of the terracotta warriors and horses, the originally bent sword slowly rebounded to a straight state! This situation directly stunned everyone present.
Modern science has a technology called memory metal, which can actually achieve this similar function, but how could the Qin people master this technology two thousand years ago? It's really incredible. It is not necessarily that technology is far ahead of modern times, but it is certainly far ahead of a hundred years ago. As for how the Qin Dynasty possessed such magical technology, perhaps all the mysteries can be answered in the underground palace of the Qin Emperor's Mausoleum.
The Qin Dynasty was the first feudal unified dynasty in ancient my country. The unearthed Qin Jian strongly proves the Qin Dynasty’s strong national power and advanced technology. As more cultural relics about the Qin Dynasty are unearthed, we will learn more interesting stories and allusions about the Qin Dynasty in the future. In fact, some people still can't understand why Qin was the country with the worst position among the Seven Heroes of the Warring States Period, so why did it end up sweeping the Six Kingdoms?
After you truly understand the history of the Qin Dynasty, you will find that none of the previous monarchs of the Qin Dynasty was defeated. They worked hard from generation to generation and achieved the feat of unifying the world.