Wang Kaihao
century-16th century BC) was China’s first united central kingdom with vast lands due to the lack of supporting archaeological evidence such as written characters. And Yu the Great, or Dayu, even before Xia Dynasty was also widely considered as a legendary person rather than a real ruler.
Sun Qingwei, a professor at Peking University, says the inscriptions show that people from the Zeng state recognized Xia and Yu as real history, shedding new light on the origins of the Chinese civilization.
“We can see that Xia and Yu become a symbol indicating the identity of Chinese culture at the time of the Zeng state,” Sun says.
At the Zaoshulin site, as many as 54 tombs of Zeng state rulers and three pits of funeral horses and chariots were excavated. More than 1,000 sets of cultural relics have been unearthed, according to Guo, and numerous more bronze musical instruments, ritual objects are being cleaned up for further studies.
According to Fang Qin, director of the Hubei Provincial Museum, the findings fill a void in archaeological evidence of the Zeng state from the mid-Spring and Autumn Period.
Since Marquis Yi first got known in 1978, 13 Zeng rulers’ tombs have been found, but the second peak of discoveries only came in the last decade. Archaeological evidence since 2009 have unveiled a brilliant bronze civilization with a complex system using ritual musical instruments and found where the original material for metallurgy came from.
“We’ve gradually built up a continuous chain of how the Zeng state formed and developed,” Fang says. “It’s like putting puzzles together. The forgotten state will lead us to a much bigger picture of how vassal states worked then.”
In 2018, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage launched a program called Archaeology China for a comprehensive study of early Chinese history through wellplanned excavations.
“Chinese archaeology has a tradition of attaching great importance to historical files,” says Song Xinchao, deputy director of the administration. “It’s a good thing to prove what is recorded through excavations.”
But there are still many questions that the records fail to answer.
“That requires us to unveil a panorama of early-stage China through original work. Studies on the Zeng state can set an example for other projects to follow.”