西安半坡博物馆英文导览词

Banpo Museum Guiding Remarks

1001. My dear friends, welcome to Banpo Site.

Xi’an Banpo Museum is a pre-historical site museum of China. It was built on the basis of archeological excavation at the Banpo site. In the museum there are still historical sites, some developed and some not. According to the analysis, in this area, a primitive matriarchal clan society prevailed over 6000 years ago.

Now you are coming to the Banpo relics exhibition, where you will learn the production activities that Banpo people undertook for survival and their contribution to the human history. This picture shows the geographic location of Banpo site. Banpo site was at the second step on the eastern bank of Chanhe River in the east suburb of Xi’an, 800 meters away from the current Chanhe River bank and 9 meters higher than the river. The ancient Banpo village was situated behind Chanhe River, in front of Bailu Plain, to the north of Zhongnan Mountain and to the south of Weihe Valley. Because of the good geographic location and the rich natural resources, Banpo people chose to settle here and started to create the great primitive culture.

1002. Banpo site has three parts: Living area; Pottery making area and Grave area. With a total area of 50000m2, Banpo site was discovered in 1953 and witnessed 5 large-scale excavations from 1954 to 1957. A total of 10000m2of the site has been developed and 3000m2is now open to visit, which has marked brown on the map. On April 1 1958, Banpo Museum, China’s first New Stone Age Site Museum opened officially. In 1961, Banpo site became one of the first cultural relic areas that were given the special state protection. In 1997, Banpo Museum was listed by Central Government Publicity Department as one of the first 100 national patriotic education demonstration bases.

1003.In the primitive society the first problem the people would face if they would want to survive and develop is to find food. Banpo people’s food mainly came from agriculture, hunting, fishing, as well as gathering and raising stocks. As agricultural production is the most critical production activity, we will come to it first.

The two pottery pots before you were used by Banpo people to store seeds. One is for grain and the other is for vegetable. According to our research, the grain seed belongs

to millet. Millet can stand drought, grows fast and is easy to store. It was one of the earliest grains in Northern China and is still popular now. The vegetable seed came from Chinese cabbage or mustard, showing that Banpo people grew both grain and vegetable.

1004. Stoneware was used by the primitive human being and Banpo people used stones, especially the ground stone to produce tools. However, the discovery of forged stoneware at the site demonstrated that Banpo people had moved into New Stone Age. This polished stone axe with hole was greatly made with a hole placed appropriate. If a wood handle is fixed, this tool is very good for chopping down trees. The axe shows the great development of productivity at that time.

Most tools in agricultural production are made of stone, bone and wood. Stone shovel and hoe are the tools for agricultural production. The agriculture at Banpo was very extensive and coarse. The Banpo people first chopped down the trees and burned them up together with grass; second, they loosened the soil with stone shovel and hoe and buried the ash underground as natural fertilizer; in the end they dug the small pits with the sharpened sticks and places the seeds in them. When the crops matured, they harvested with stone or pottery knife. The invention of stone sickle improved the production efficiency. The stone millstone and frotton were used to get rid of the shell and crush the grains. We can detect from the deep groove that the millstone had been used for a long time.

1005. Hunting is one of the oldest ways to acquire food. The hunting tools of Banpo people include pottery ball, stone ball, stone spear, rope-stone and arrow. Rope-Stone consisted of two stone balls connected by a tendon, rope or cane. The hunter would catch one ball and rotate the other above the head and toss the device towards the game. Due to the centrifugal force and inertial property, the device would continue the rotation and hit the game and bound it.

Arrow appeared in the late Old Stone Age and was the most effective hunting device. At that time people made the bow with tree branches; string with animal tendon or rope and arrow with sharpened stone or animal bones. Thanks to the invention of arrow and stone-rope, the hunting became more efficient and the hunters didn’t have to get near to the games and risk their lives.