Who can tell me some stories about Longyou Grottoes?

Yun Fan (pen name)

There is a Longyou county in the west of Zhejiang Province. At the foot of Fenghuang Mountain, 3 kilometers north of Qujiang in Longyou County, there is a mysterious underground giant cave group. Cave group is called "the ninth wonder of the world" because of its profundity, grandeur and exquisiteness, which has attracted extensive attention of experts and scholars at home and abroad.

When four villagers drained the bottomless pool, they discovered an amazing secret. ...

There is a Shiyanbei village on Fenghuang Mountain in Xiaonanhai Town at the intersection of Qujiang and Lingshan River. There are many small rectangular pools scattered in the village. These pools accumulate dark green water all the year round and are the only living water source for the villagers.

All along, the local villagers only know that the water in the pool is not shallow, the water does not overflow, it is inexhaustible and unfathomable, and it is called "bottomless pool".

On June 9th, 1992, four local villagers, including Wu Anai, raised funds to rent four water pumps out of the whimsy of "developing caves to make money for tourism" and decided to pump out the water from one of the pools. After pumping water continuously 17 days and nights, they were stunned by the spectacle in front of them: under a small hole of 20 square meters, it turned out to be a magnificent and strangely constructed artificial stone cave. The grottoes are more than 20 meters high and cover an area of 12 square meters, which is equivalent to a large cinema.

This discovery attracted the attention of the local government, and six adjacent caves were quickly developed one after another. These grottoes are all inverted dustpans. Each hole has a stone ladder cut to the ground, and there is no source of spring water in the hole. The whole grotto has a uniform texture on the ceiling, bottom and stone pillars. The roof of the cave extends at a 45-degree angle, and each hole is generally supported by a triangular column. Each hole has an area of several hundred square meters, and the largest is more than 2,000 square meters. The largest building has an area of 1000 square meters and an incomplete height of about 30 meters. If the measured silt with a thickness of 5 to 8 meters is removed, the maximum space can be as high as 40 meters.

After further exploration, 24 similar underground grottoes were discovered within a few kilometers of Fiona Fang, the northern village of Shiyan. These grottoes are independent and do not interfere with each other, even if they are close to each other. From the five grottoes opened later, it is found that the two grottoes are separated by a stone wall with a thickness of only half a meter, and both sides of the stone wall are completely parallel, which shows that the construction survey and positioning are accurate.

Compared with the huge cave space, the entrances and exits of these grottoes are very small, and the openings are at the top of the southwest corner of the grottoes. When the sun is strongest in the afternoon, the cave is full of light and quite bright. The inner wall of Cave 1 is near the top, and it is carved with horse, bird, animal and other reliefs. The high wall at the entrance of Cave 2 has line-carved symbols similar to flowers and plants.

According to experts' investigation, these grottoes are the largest underground buildings discovered in China so far, and they are also the largest underground buildings in the world. This miracle in China and even the world has been in a state of "no one knows her" for a long time since it was discovered by villagers. It was not until recent years that it was gradually known to the world through the organization of expert research and the intervention of some media.

When did the grottoes form? There is no record in historical materials, and there is no legend and word of mouth among the people. ...

The geometric shape of the caves and the linear stripe decoration on the inner wall show that they are not natural caves, but artificially excavated. In the local dialect, "rock" means "cave", which shows that the name of Shiyanbei village is related to underground caves. However, so far no one knows the origin of the name of Shiyanbei Village. It is puzzling that when such a strange underground cave group was formed, there is no historical record, no related folklore or word of mouth, and the villagers who have lived by it for generations know nothing about it, which is very mysterious.

The characters found on the cliff in the grottoes are recorded earlier in the literature and belong to the "Cuiguangyan" cliff. Zhang Zhengdao, a poet at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, wrote a poem "Cuiguangyan", in which there is a sentence "A thousand years of waves and dew are still there." It can be seen that this kind of grottoes has been considered as an eternal mystery in the Southern Song Dynasty.

Judging from the excavation traces of the grottoes, there is no doubt that the grottoes were built with metal tools. After investigation by experts, it is believed that the supporting fishtail stone pillars in all caves obviously belong to the Han Dynasty style, and only the smelting technology of the Han Dynasty produced advanced excavation tools such as steel, chisel and hammer, so the cave group may have been formed in the Han Dynasty. Some experts also believe that most of the grooves cut in the grottoes are arc-shaped, and there are few angular grooves left by the edge of the flat chisel. In other words, the tools used in construction are easy to wear even if the processing texture is soft. The unoxidized red sandstone is soft in texture. In the words of local villagers, mining is like "cutting tofu", so it can be speculated that this tool may be made of copper instead of steel. In other words, caves may be relics of the Bronze Age.

Some experts believe that the hieroglyphics of "Cuiguangyan" stone carving are in the transitional period from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to Qian Chao, and they are deeply impressed by the original hieroglyphics. Therefore, the formation of Longyou Grottoes should be in ancient times before Qin and Han Dynasties.

Due to the lack of sufficient historical data, the exact excavation age of these China's unique artificially excavated caves is still a mystery.

Quarry? Ancient storage? Mausoleum? Gu gong? Or an alien masterpiece ...

Why did the ancients dig such a large group of underground caves? In September, 1997, Longyou county government invited domestic experts to demonstrate. Because no corresponding historical records have been found at present, and no unearthed cultural relics have been found in the grottoes that have been opened for sightseeing, there are different opinions on the causes of the grottoes.

Those who hold the view of the official large underground quarry site in wuyue during the Five Dynasties believe that the stone section of the grottoes is more in line with the shape of quarrying, the walls of the grottoes are steep and angular, which is in line with the characteristics of quarrying and taking materials, and the grottoes are close to Yajiang, which is convenient for stone transportation. The collected stones were transported to Hangzhou to build stone ponds for Qian to guard the sea. Only this huge mining project was a "national key project" at that time. People who disagree with this view think that the grottoes are carved with linear stripes on the walls, which are extremely standardized and serious, and the cleanliness is meticulous. The bamboo poles on the fish back are also decorated with lines carved with stripes. The function of these chisels is to cut out the surface roughness artistically to enhance the weathering resistance of red sandstone, which is a technical measure to prevent the surface from falling off. These carefully designed and decorated caves can never be quarries. Moreover, in the cultural relics of the Western Zhou, Warring States and Han Dynasties unearthed in Longyou, we can find that the two methods are exactly the same by comparing their representative ornamentation with the linear stripes in the grottoes.

People who hold the view of ancient cellaring believe that there is a tradition of cellaring in most areas of China. The cave hangs deep and the temperature in the deep layer is constant, which is beneficial to the storage of products. At that time, Longyou was the largest political, economic, cultural and shipping center in western Zhejiang, and its prosperity was unprecedented. Due to the high temperature in the south, some products are easy to deteriorate and rot. As a shipping center, there must be a place to store goods.

People who hold the view that ancient wuyue emperors and princes built tombs before their death think that dragons swam across the land in Xiamen and Shang Dynasty, were despised in the Spring and Autumn Period, and then returned to Yue State, and returned to Chu State after the destruction of Chu State. Because the top of the grottoes is inverted, it conforms to the characteristics of some emperors' underground bedrooms before the Han Dynasty. Most of the tombs of ancient kings are star-shaped, and the seven caves excavated in the center of Longyou Grottoes are in the shape of the Big Dipper.

People who hold the view of the ancient palace think that the top of the cave is engraved with large arc fish scales, and the fish scales are also "Long Lin", which is probably difficult to master in large-scale construction, but it reveals some information about the original intention of digging holes (building the "Dragon Palace"). Historically, Longyou was "ancient contempt for the city". From the field observation, the grottoes should be from survey, design to construction in one go. The construction of such a huge project is king. Moreover, the domes at the top of the grottoes are all carved with "five divisions of water", which can ensure no dripping. The huge space seems to be supported by triangular columns with the least space. The pottery unearthed in Quzhou in the Western Zhou Dynasty is closely related to the pottery unearthed in Tunxi at the same time. It should be a great historical witness of the rice group, and there must be ancient sites in an ancient country.

Some bold hypotheses believe that there are many mysteries in the formation of such a huge cave group, such as the narrow entrance to the cave, the dim light in the cave, the absence of electric lights during the excavation period, and the absence of traces of oil smoke on the walls and ceilings of the cave. How to solve the lighting problem when digging? The caves are close to each other, but the caves are never connected. Even today, it is difficult to dig underground with the most advanced underground detection instruments. How can the ancients measure and dig so accurately? The caves are all in the southwest, and the seven caves in the center of the whole fan-shaped cave group are in the shape of the big dipper. What does this layout mean? And so on, so these giant caves may be the masterpieces of aliens visiting the earth.

In addition, there are other reasons for the formation of grottoes, such as the theory that quarrying is not the only purpose, the theory that Gou Jian, the king of Yue, hides soldiers, and the Taoist theory that "the cave is blessed with heaven".

The world is boundless and the grottoes have changed dramatically. Grottoes left a series of mysterious mysteries for future generations. Because all the developed grottoes have silted eluvial soil with a thickness of 5 to 8 meters, the answer is likely to be buried under the mud. However, in order to remove these silt and scientifically search for precious cultural relics that are likely to be buried in the silt from an archaeological point of view, the local government still lacks financial resources and professionals in all fields. Once the silt in the grottoes is removed, the mystery of the ages may be uncovered, and a "Millennium underground museum" may be presented to the world.

One thing has been confirmed by identification: the "stone dice" everywhere on the cave wall are Cretaceous dinosaur eggs and dinosaur bones. ...

In the mysterious Longyou Grottoes, a little attention can be found that there are many wrapping materials scattered in the cave walls, which are called "Shi Ding" by the locals, and the walls of No.3, No.4 and No.5 caves that have been developed and visited abound. According to the investigation and appraisal by geological experts, this kind of "Shi Ding" is actually a dinosaur egg and dinosaur skeleton fossil in Cretaceous.

In the local area, dinosaur eggs have been unearthed sporadically before. For example, in 1992, more than a dozen relatively complete dinosaur eggs were unearthed in the exposed rock layer above the grottoes (next to the playground of Xiaonanhai Town Middle School). These dinosaur eggs are now in Longyou County Museum. However, the dinosaur egg exposed on the cave wall is extremely dense and few in number.

Experts believe that the stones mined in Longyou underground grottoes belong to Cretaceous red sandstone, which was accumulated in various basins from Jurassic to Tertiary continental red rock series. This kind of rock formation was caused by lake deposition, about 70 million years ago to 654.38+0.3 billion years ago, which was the heyday of dinosaur life. At this time, the local climate and geographical conditions are suitable for the massive reproduction and survival of dinosaurs, leaving extremely rich dinosaur fossil remains. Its discovery provides valuable physical data for studying the geological history of the Yiyuanqu Basin, enriches the cultural connotation of Longyou Grottoes, and adds immeasurable tourism value, so that people can appreciate the vicissitudes of life while exploring seclusion.