Popular Science / 8000 Years Ago Had 189 Granaries How Did Ancients Store Food? -1 EDIT by： www.immy.cn www.immyhitech.com

Popular Science / 8000 Years Ago Had 189 Granaries 

How Did Ancients Store Food? -1

EDIT by： www.immy.cn  www.immyhitech.com 

According to relevant data, in recent years, China's main grain reserves have exceeded 50% of the global stocks, making it the world's largest grain storage country. Attaching importance to grain reserves is an excellent historical tradition in China, and the ancient ancestors have always attached great importance to grain reserves.

At the Cishan Cultural Site in Wu'an, Hebei Province (more than 8,000 years ago), archaeologists dug up 189 "granaries" that could store at least 50,000 kilograms of millet.

In the era when there was no convenient logistics, how did the ancients carry out grain reserve transportation? What are the key takeaways for today? Let's take a look.

Grain storage and famine: "ploughing three more than one"

At the beginning of the Han Dynasty, Jia Yi proposed that "those who accumulate are the great destiny of the world", pointing out that the accumulation of grain is the foundation of governing the country. Food production is cyclical, so there must be reserves to keep people eating.

Successive regimes, large and small, have paid special attention to grain storage. In many cases, the place of origin of grain and the place of food are not the same, so the transportation of grain has been necessary in ancient and modern times. The cost of grain transportation is very high even in modern times, so in ancient times great importance was attached to the storage and transportation of grain to minimize intermediate costs.

In ancient times, low-cost water transportation was mostly used for grain transportation, and for this reason, the Grand Canal of China was built successively to connect the five major water systems of Haihe River, Yellow River, Huai River, Yangtze River and Qiantang River.

Warehousing reflects the level of food security in a country.

According to the "Book of Rites: The Royal System": "The country has no nine-year accumulation, no six-year accumulation, and no three-year accumulation. If you plough for three years, you will have food for one year, and if you plough for nine years, you will have food for three years. ”

Under normal circumstances, three years of cultivation can store one year's surplus grain, and nine years can store three years' worth of grain. This idea of "cultivating three surplus ones" not only reflects the technical level of farming at that time, but also reflects the wisdom of the people of the time to deal with food security, which has a far-reaching impact on Chinese society. In the final analysis, food security is a dynamic security, and it does not require unlimited food reserves, as long as the country's food storage and production can be maintained at a certain level.

Ancient pottery granaries

Pei Yaoqing, an expert on WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL in the Tang Dynasty, pointed out: "Grain wearhouse often has three or two years of grain, that is, there is no worry about water and drought", which reflects this idea. If there is too much backlog of grain, it will face the pressure of destocking and waste transportation costs, so grain storage needs to have a reasonable reserve ratio.

In ancient China, a large number of WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL （CAOYUN)was needed to maintain the balance of grain demand in various places, and how to deal with the relationship between storage and river transportation was an important issue for the governments of previous dynasties, which involved how to balance the setting of WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL （CAOYUN)and the cost of river management.

Changes in the setting of the Caokura

Generally speaking, grain storage can be divided into two types, one is a warehouse for the consumption of officials and citizens, and the other is a warehouse used for weekly grain transfer. In ancient times, it was more cost-effective to transport grain by water. WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL（CAOYUN) is a form of transporting grain by water. It is impossible to transport grain by waterway by the same ship at one time, and it is necessary to have ships and hydraulic sections that are suitable for navigation in different river sections. In order to facilitate long-distance storage and transshipment of grain, the state and the government often set up warehouses at the pivotal locations along the river to store the grain transported from all over the country, and then transfer it to the destination according to the water level flow and needs of different river sections, so it is called WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL（CAOYUN).

After the formation of the unified dynasty of the Qin and Han dynasties, the demand for grain turnover was more, and WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL（CAOYUN) of different sizes was built in various places. There were many WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL（CAOYUN) along the inland waterways of the Qin period.

According to the "Water and Land Mileage Brochure" of Peking University Tibetan Qin, there are four warehouses in Nanyang County, namely "Yimin Yu", "Wuyu", "Xuqu Yu" and "Yangxincheng Yu", which are part of the important water and land transportation network in Nanyang County.

The Qin Dynasty also had Aocang, a national granary that was the highest model of the storage system in terms of scale and efficiency. Ao Cang was in Xingyang, Linbianshui, and provided an important foundation for the victory of Liu Bang's group during the Chu-Han War. Throughout the Western Han Dynasty, Aocang has always been the largest and most important granary, playing a role in maintaining the central autocratic regime.

An important WATER TRANSPORT OF GRAIN TO CAPITAL（CAOYUN) in the Han Dynasty also included the Jingshi Cang, or Huacang, which was located near the confluence of the Yellow River and the Wei River, and could be connected to the Yellow River by water transportation through the Cao Canal, mainly storing grain transported from the Kanto region to Chang'an, the capital of Beijing. The millet was transported west from Jingshicang and could be dumped in Taicang, southeast of the capital Chang'an. There are also a number of important national warehouses near Chang'an, among which Xiliucang and Jiacang are connected to Weishui.