Basic information:

The archaeological site of Yin Ruins, the capital of China in the late Shang Dynasty, is located in the northwest suburb of Anyang, a famous historical and cultural city in China, across the north and south banks of Huan River. It is well-known at home and abroad for its large number of unearthed Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronzes. It is the first ancient capital site recorded by Oracle Bone Inscriptions and confirmed by archaeological excavations in the history of China, with a history of more than 3,300 years.

Name source:

Yin Ruins, located in Xiaotun Village, northwest of Anyang, Henan Province, is the capital site in the late Shang Dynasty, which is also called "Northern Mongolia" and "Dayi Merchants" or "Yi Merchants" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions. According to ancient documents, it was once the capital of Pan Geng to Di Xin.

Around 1300 BC, Shang King Pan Geng moved to Yin, which was then the capital of Yin. After Zhou destroyed Yin, Wu Geng, the son of Zhou, waited for an opportunity to rebel. Duke of Zhou crusaded eastward, pacified the unrest and moved to Yin. Yin ruins gradually deserted and became ruins, so it was called Yin ruins.

Unearthed cultural relics:

Oracle Bone Inscriptions:

Oracle Bone Inscriptions is a representative of the early mature Chinese character system. For more than 3,000 years, although it has undergone changes such as inscriptions on bronze, seal script, official script and regular script, the characters and basic grammar characterized by form, sound and meaning have been used to this day.

Bronze ware:

The late Shang Dynasty, that is, the Yin and Shang Dynasties, was the heyday of the Bronze Age in China. Many bronzes unearthed in Yin Ruins are masterpieces of China's bronze age, which fully shows that the smelting technology at that time has developed from ore mixed smelting to copper, tin and lead mixed smelting in proportion, and its unique casting technology integrates art, sculpture and painting into one, reaching a high level.

It proves that China is one of the earliest countries to enter the bronze age, and bronze civilization appeared as early as 3,000 years ago.

The important value of Yin Ruins:

Cultural inheritance:

The value of Yin Ruins itself is first of all the value of words. Of the four ancient Chinese characters in the world, only Oracle Bone Inscriptions survived the evolution and became the present Chinese character. Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins is one of the three oldest writing systems in the world, and it is the origin of Chinese characters used by more than one billion people in China today.

It not only proves the root vein of Chinese characters, but also provides independent word-making rules such as pictographic characters, knowing characters, pictographic characters, phonetic characters and loanwords in ancient China, which has a fundamental impact on China's culture, thinking and aesthetics. The ancient Chinese character system in China, represented by Oracle Bone Inscriptions in Yin Ruins, has evolved and is still in use today. It is the only one of the four known ancient Chinese character systems.

Cultural phenomenon:

Some cultural phenomena displayed in Yin Ruins are unique in a certain period of China's history. The rarest of these cultural phenomena is the mass killing and sacrifice in Shang Dynasty. More than 2,000 sacrificial pits were found in the tomb area of Yin Ruins alone, with a total population of over 1 10,000.