In the early morning, a middle-aged farmer was walking on the ridges of the fields humming a song.

He passed by his own field and glanced at it. He was so shocked that his body tilted, his feet stirred for a while, and fell to the ground.

"Who is an unethical person who digs my land!"

He lay on the ground and saw a big hole dug in his own field!

This is too immoral, and crops are planted in the field!

The farmer cursed and looked around, stomping his feet in anger.

Not only this piece of field, but also the surrounding fields were destroyed, and the crops were crushed by the mound of digging soil.

The farmer walked around the fields and soon found slanted holes in several places.

Compared with the largest deep pits, the soil holes are only about four or five meters deep, and it seems that they are just tentative excavations from all angles.

"Ah? This is not a tomb robber, is it?"

Have you never eaten pork and seen pigs running? The farmer instantly thought that these were thieves. His first reaction was to quickly get into the hole and groping.

He was so upset that he was not taking anything.

He didn't give up and changed another hole, but still didn't. Then he went to the biggest deep pit, jumped down and searched, but still found nothing.

"This piece of land has been farmland for generations, how could there be a tomb?" The farmer laughed at himself, then climbed up with great difficulty, and quickly reported to the village chief.

Soon everyone in the village gathered and talked about who had met foreigners recently.

The village chief jumped into the pit, but it was obvious that the surrounding soil was incorrect, as if it was burnt kiln soil.

He asked someone to take a shovel, dig a few more times, and found a corner of jade in a piece of dry black mud.

"There is something!" Someone saw it on it and immediately shouted.

Everyone immediately gathered at the entrance of the cave to see that the village chief stripped the piece of soil, which was exactly the size of a palm-sized jade.

Of course, they didn't know that this was a jade gui, but they only knew that it was a piece of jade with sharp upper part and straight lower end, with clear raindrop patterns on it.

"Is it an antique?" someone asked above.

The village chief continued to dig downwards, but instead used his hands, and soon a large number of pottery, stone, jade and bronze ware appeared from the soil.

When he saw that there were so many, he stopped and asked someone to pull him up.

"Why don't you dig? Dig again!" someone cheered.

"No one is allowed to go down!" the village chief shouted: "Old Li, this is your field, call the Cultural Relics Bureau."

He was not worried about the little clever ghosts in the village, so he could only guard the scene himself.

After hearing this, the farmer threw away the hoe, ran home.

Everyone was happy to see him, and some people were envious, because if the underground was full of antiques, the government would have to take back the right to use this large area, and Lao Li would receive considerable compensation.

"Didn't that professor come to survey twenty years ago? Why didn't he find it? He even let the tomb robbers discover it first."

"My family's field is not far from here, will there be one too?"

Some people saw that the village chief was here, so they could not have any bad thoughts, so they immediately dispersed and digged in their own fields to try their luck.

Choose a piece of land, pull out the crops that have been planted, swing a shovel and start digging.

As a result, when the people from the Cultural Relics Bureau arrived, more than 20 deep pits where cultural relics were discovered were dug out by villagers within a radius of several miles.

The staff of the Cultural Relics Bureau immediately realized that this was definitely not a cemetery, but a large area of ​​ruins. They immediately notified more people to come and urgently stopped the villagers and told them not to dig again.

The matter continued until the afternoon of the same day, when a large number of staff controlled the scene, they learned about the situation.

"What? You found out that there were several holes here before?"

There is no doubt that it was not the farmer who first discovered the site, but someone else who dug several thieves in the middle of the night and left at dawn.

In this way, things will be very difficult, and tomb robbers may have already understood the distribution of cultural relics underground.

So they immediately hired local villagers to help protect the scene. Because the scope was too large, it was impossible to bear to rely on a small number of staff.

"A preliminary judgment is a city ruin." A professor wearing glasses went deep into the pit and surveyed it.

"What? Is there a city? I understand. Lao Fang, tomb robbers discovered this place earlier than us. Because they were in other people's fields, they dug at night. After digging something, they soon discovered that it was not a tomb, so they evacuated it." Another expert above said.

Professor Fang crawled out and said, "It is definitely not possible for tomb robbers to dig a city. They can only try their best not to leave empty space. Many precious cultural relics were found on the scene. It is conceivable that they must have taken away a lot of them. However, several of the robbery holes were not dug to the ruins level at all. Maybe it was not allowed to continue digging."

"It can be speculated that the group of tomb robbers had rich survey experience. Professor Wu took someone to survey this place twenty years ago. At that time, he just tried it with a Luoyang shovel and left." Another expert said.

Professor Fang smiled and said, "What are the conditions twenty years ago? Luoyang shovels are not omnipotent. However, this group of tomb robbers is indeed powerful. The soil and moisture content under the farmland is so large that there are sites that can be found?"

Everyone laughed. This is a typical situation of tomb robbers stimulating archaeology, which was very common decades ago.

There are basically only three roads for the discovery of archaeological sites. The state issued an archaeological project and was found by professionals on their own initiative.

Farmers dig wells, or engineering teams accidentally dig it.

Finally, there are tomb robbers, who use their superb skills to dig it first.

They were talking, and on the other side, a young doctor came over quickly, holding a square tripod that had been rusted into pieces.

Professor Fang took it and was stunned: "Old Chen, isn't this a ruin from the early Neolithic era?"

Professor Chen frowned and went up to see. As soon as he came, he went to the local villagers to learn about the situation. He heard that there were a large number of stone and jade artifacts, so he first judged it as a Neolithic site. In fact, he had not had time to carefully study the cultural relics found.

At this moment, I knew something was wrong. Although the bronze ware in front of me was rusted into a lump, there was no patina in part, revealing exquisite patterns. It can be seen from the tip of the iceberg that it should have been very exquisite.

In other words, this is a Shang site that uses bronze and stone in combination, and at the latest it was from the Xia Dynasty.

"Professor, all the cultural relics dug by local villagers have been recycled, with a large number of jade and bronze ware." said the young doctor.

The two of them hurriedly followed and saw hundreds of jade pendants, jade walls, jade shovels, copper tripods, copper tripods, copper spears, copper bells, and copper hanging ornaments on the ground...

Among them, the jadeware is extremely exquisite, and the artistic style is very different from the Longshan culture and Erlitou culture of this generation, with very different patterns.

"Hurry up and get the emergency approval document, we must do rescue excavation as soon as possible." Professor Chen quickly called the director and said.

The director said: "Old Chen, why are you anxious about?"

Professor Chen said: "Bronze ware has been discovered, how can I not be anxious? Judging from the degree of rust, the site should have been soaked in water for a long time, and there are tomb robbers who are targeting me, so I don't think there is any need to wait."

"I understand, the approval document will come down soon." When the director heard this, he knew that the site must be excavated as soon as possible.

That night, in order to prevent tomb robbers from digging holes from nearby, all the staff stayed on site to guard and hired local villagers to patrol.

After a night passed, we were at peace. The next morning, the Provincial Archaeology Institute arrived and conducted a preliminary exploration of the entire site.

Three days later, the land use rights have been transferred, the approval documents have been sent, and the site has been cleaned up.

The professional archaeological team in the province began the first phase of rescue excavation.

After working for four days, the pits grew bigger and bigger, and there were more and more cultural relics. A large number of jade, pottery and bronze ware were excavated every day.

Among them, the largest number of pottery was, and in a short time, it was as high as 200,000 pieces!

Secondly, there are more than 16,000 bronzes, and most of them are weapons.

What is heartbreaking is that most bronzes are seriously damaged, not because they are artificially damaged, but because they are water-eroded!

And geologically, the site was covered with mud and sand.

Fortunately, it is precisely because it is instantly covered that the building complex is well preserved!

The entire city is under the mud and sand as a whole. With careful excavation, the appearance of the entire city can be restored.

However, as the excavation progressed, everyone was confused again.

Because the ruins of the workshops that cast copper and pottery were excavated on site, 200,000 square meters have been discovered!

The scale is rare in the world!

It once made archaeologists wonder if this was an ancient city ruin? If it was a city, why were it all smelting and production buildings?

"This is very likely a city specializing in forging and production, and it must not be a capital of a certain culture."

"Is this the industrial center of the Xia Dynasty?"

"It may also be a military center, which cannot be dated for the time being. From a cultural perspective, it does not belong to Erlitou or Longshan culture. This may be a vassal culture in the Central Plains..."

"Villager? You have no basis for this. This is Xinzheng, located in the heart of the Central Plains. Judging from the jade, it is very similar to Longshan culture, and it must be a transitional culture between Yu and Xia."

"Where is the transitional culture between Yu and Xia? Judging from such a strong bronze productivity, this should be a culture of the same period as the Xia Dynasty."

Archaeologists argued endlessly until someone excavated a bronze sacred tree from the ruins...

"Ah? No, right? It actually belongs to the same type as Sanxingdui culture?"

"This is a major discovery! Sanxingdui is not an independent or isolated culture, it has branches and leaves!"

"The Central Plains are far away from Shu, but they have extremely intimate communication. People in this city are very likely to be in the culture of the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin at the same time, so this is why."

"So...is it Zhuanxu?"

All the big guys present were the ones, and soon thought of Zhuanxu. Because of the literature, Zhuanxu's ancestors were enfeoffed to Shu. After several generations, Zhuanxu became the lord of the Central Plains.

Therefore, the era when the Central Plains and Shu were in the Shang Dynasty, the most closely communicated was probably the era of Zhuanxu.

"Is this Zhuanxu's capital Diqiu? If it is true, then the emergence of bronze technology has been moving forward for at least five hundred years."
To be continued...