From 1928 to 1937, a large number of human skulls were unearthed from the sacrificial pits near the Shang mausoleum. Only in the xibeigang sacrificial pit, 398 human skulls were found.
In the spring and summer of 1976, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the archaeological team of Anyang area excavated a large number of sacrificial pits near the mausoleum of King Shang in the north of Wuguan village. Most of them were headless sacrificial pits buried collectively, which corresponded to the above-mentioned sacrificial pits for human heads in xibeigang. The records of killing and sacrificing in oracle bone inscriptions of Yin Ruins are even more shocking. Mr. Hu houxuan once found a large number of oracle inscriptions about human sacrifice from 90 kinds of books and periodicals describing oracle bone characters, as well as the oracle bone materials he had collected for many years. There are 673 oracle bones and 1006 oracle inscriptions in the period of King Wuding of the Shang Dynasty. 9021 people were sacrificed, and 531 people were not recorded. At most 500 slaves were sacrificed at one time.
Why did Shang kill slaves in large numbers for sacrifice?
Sacrificing ancestors and killing living people as offerings is called "human sacrifice". Human and animal originated from primitive society. Man evolved from animals. Early humans did not distinguish between humans and animals. In order to survive, they not only prey on animals, but also devour human flesh. Of course, it is mainly the captured people of other tribes, namely the captives. Since primitive people eat human flesh, they believe that ghosts and gods also eat human flesh. As a result, with the development of religion, the captives and livestock were often slaughtered together to worship their ancestors, which led to the emergence of human and animal. After the disintegration of the primitive society, human and animal did not perish immediately, and its tail was dragged into the slave society.
A large number of slaves were slaughtered in the Shang Dynasty for sacrifice. There are two main reasons: one is that the source of slaves in Shang Dynasty is abundant, and there are a large number of slaves; the other is that Shang Dynasty superstitiously worships gods and ghosts, worships ancestors and makes sacrifices.
Shang was a big country in the world at that time. It had many slaves. Most of these slaves were prisoners of war. According to oracle bone inscriptions, there are three prescriptions in Shang Dynasty: the one for conquering ghosts in the north, the one for seeking tigers in the south, the one for conquering barbarians in the East and the one for felling Qiang in the West. This is a war between merchants and big powers. "Yi Gua Yao Ci" said: "Gaozong (Wuding) cut ghost prescription, three years to overcome." In addition, small countries such as Tu, Lu, Ku, long, Ma, Shu and Yu were often attacked by Shang. According to the statistics of the oracle inscriptions compiled in the textual research and interpretation of the Yin Ruins (Revised Edition), there were as many as 26 times of the Shang Dynasty's bitter prescriptions. The scale of the war, in terms of the amount of troops used by the Shang Empire, could be 3000, 5000 or even 30000 at a time, and the number of enemies killed at a time could reach 2656. The scale of the war is not small.
The Shang Empire constantly launched wars against neighboring countries and tribes, whose main purpose was to plunder slaves. There are many records in oracle bone inscriptions, such as "holding captive" and "capturing Qiang", in which the largest number of captured people is 30000. According to the Da Shi, King Wu of Zhou said, "there were hundreds of millions of barbarians in Zhou". The so-called "hundreds of millions of barbarians" were the captives of Zhou in the war of conquering the barbarians. In the battle of Muye, King Zhou suddenly armed 170000 slaves, which proved that King Wu's words were true. Relevant experts have made scientific identification of the human head bones unearthed from the sacrificial pits of Yin Ruins. They believe that the animal race is not single. Among them, there are various lineages similar to modern North Asia, East Asia and South Asia under the Mongolian race. This shows that the animal race comes from different nationalities in different regions and they are alien prisoners of war in the vicinity of yin and Shang Dynasties. It was easy for the Shang Dynasty to capture foreign people as slaves through war, so they had many slaves. Since the source of slaves was abundant, it was not enough to kill more slaves, which provided a prerequisite for the mass slaughter of slaves for sacrifice.
Shang superstitious ghosts, that after the death of living people, into a ghost. The world of ghosts and gods is the same as the real world. The living nobility of slave owners in the present world will become the nobility of slave owners in the ghost world after death. In the eyes of merchants, ghosts and gods are more powerful than living people. The difficulties and blessings that can not be solved by living people, such as human life and death, disease, weather, victory and defeat of war, good and bad luck of hunting, etc. We should ask our ancestors for enlightenment and blessing through divination.
Therefore, businessmen worship their ancestors and attach importance to sacrifice. The living slaveholders and nobles worked groups of slaves and lived a luxurious life. Out of filial piety, they were also considerate that their ancestors needed slaves to serve them, so it happened that they slaughtered slaves and sent them to the ghost world for their ancestors to enjoy. The word "servant" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is like a man holding a dustpan full of dung. There is a tail under his hip. It is obviously an alien costume. It can be seen that servants are family slaves used by merchants to engage in disabled service. They were transformed from alien prisoners of war. In addition, the economy of Shang Dynasty was dominated by agriculture. Because the productivity was very low at that time, agricultural production was greatly affected by nature, so the worship of nature was common. Mountains, rivers, wind, rain, thunder, sun, moon and stars are deified. Sacrificing to the gods of nature, merchants often slaughtered slaves. The next 744 pieces in the oracle bone sequel is an Oracle inscription of burning female slaves to pray for rain. There are 2992 oracle inscriptions in the first edition of Yin Ruins, which record that the king of Shang slaughtered 30 Qiang people to sacrifice the river god. It can be seen that the number of slaves slaughtered by gods who sacrifice to nature is also very large. The merchants believed in ghosts and gods, which was the subjective reason why they killed slaves in large numbers for sacrifice.
