Sea burial was a type of burial thod unique to the coastal peoples, but unlike the Vikings sea burials, the sa land burial custom was perford when constructing ancient undersea tombs here. In fact, it was just burying ancient tombs on the bottom of the sea.
Throughout history, there were many people who used underwater ancient tombs for burial. The more famous ones were Concubine Chens Water Tomb in Jinxi and Shen Wansans Underwater Tomb in Yinzibang.
The one I was most interested in was actually Cao Cao's (1). He had seventy-two fake tombs, one of which was rumored to have been found in the Qinglu River in Xuchang.
There were a few legends, and the first two still had clues that could be followed, but you could only get clues to the second one from Pu Songlings Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (2). After reading it, I felt like there was so basis to it, because the content didnt sound like sothing that people at the ti could make up.
Cao Caos tomb in Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. The original text of "Cao Caos Tomb" is as follows:
Outside Xucheng, the river was turbulent, and the water near the cliff was deep and gloomy. In midsumr, soone entered the river to bathe and was suddenly cut by an axe; their broken corpse floated up from the water. The sa thing happened to another person, which startled people.
Upon hearing this, the town governor sent people to cut off the upper flow of the river. Once the water was exhausted, they saw a deep hole under the cliff, where a wheel with blades as sharp as frost had been placed in the middle.
They removed the wheel and broke in. There was a small tablet inside the hole, with characters written in the style of Chinese seal script. Looking closely at the words, they found that it was the tomb of Cao ngde. They broke open the coffin, scattered the bones, and took all the gold and treasures.
The writers notes said (3): A poet once said that there would definitely be a real tomb among the seventy-two fake ones, but who knew that the real one wasnt among the seventy-two graves at all? Cao Cao was really cunning! But after more than a thousand years, he still couldnt keep his bones intact. What was the point of being cunning? Alas, Cao Caos wisdom was his own foolishness!
The translated content was very legendary. The general aning was that soone was swimming in the river by a cliff and suddenly seed to be cut in half by a knife. The corpse erged from the water, and the sa thing happened to the next person.
They felt that there was sothing strange at the bottom of the river, so they stopped the flow of the water to check what was going on, and saw a deep hole in the lower part of the cliff that had been subrged by the water. There was a wheel full of blades at the entrance of the cave, and inside was Cao Caos tomb.
I had seen many strange chanisms in ancient tombs, so I knew that it wasnt difficult for ancient people to make sothing like this. The difficulty was finding the driving force that could rotate the wheel. This was probably the reason why this tomb had been built in the water.
In order to have a chanism that could be used for a long ti, a source of power that could operate continuously for thousands of years was essential. The river was the perfect source, but Wang Zanghai thought much further than that and utilized the ocean currents and tides at the bottom of the sea.
However, there were flaws in this legend. I highly doubted that the millennium-old blades were as sharp as ever, considering how the underwater environnt was very unsuitable for tal preservation. Unless these parts were all made of gold, which wasnt impossible.
Another flaw was that it was more reasonable to close the ancient tombs entrance by so ans than to install a chanism.
If the person hadnt been hurt while bathing, then the ancient tomb wouldnt have been discovered. Nevertheless, if you made a wheel that could hurt people, there would always be a day of accidental injuries, and soone would inevitably go down to see what happened. The skilled craftsn who could make this kind of chanism should have been able to think of this, so why would they make such a mistake?
I was afraid that there was another hidden story. The Central Plains had developed at the cost of soil erosion. The Qinglu River in Cao Cao's era shouldve had more water, so the ancient tombs should be deep underwater. By Pu Songling's era, the water level dropped a lot, which ant that the ancient tombs at the bottom of the river could be infiltrated with human power [Note: sic].
These floating corpses were probably grave robbers who tried to explore the tomb at that ti, and were either killed by the chanism or started killing each other for profit, which caused the tomb to be exposed.
To be honest, this information had given a lot of inspiration. I had been thinking about how Wang Zanghais undersea tomb was built, because the human and material resources at that ti made it almost impossible to utilize other thods in watery environnts besides the shipwreck tomb. But this information did give an idea.
It was possible that Wang Zanghai had built a dam in the seabed area to form a roundabout and then drained the seawater to roughly form a dry piece of land. After that, he dug a huge pit and released the water so they could sail the ship. He then pumped the seawater out again, let the tomb ship could slowly sink into the pit as the water level dropped, and then destroyed the dam to allow the seawater to return.
From the floor plan, the structure of this undersea tomb was very complicated. If they didnt use this thod, then they must have used calculus to figure out how to accurately sink the tomb to the bottom of the sea. But that was probably impossible. I couldnt help but think, if the ancients could stop a river from flowing, why couldn't they build a roundabout on the seabed?
I went back and checked the textbook and found that there was a problem ancient people didnt know how to deal with water seepage.
The sand at the bottom of the sea was too perable, and the manpower and material resources needed to build this kind of dam were several tis more than that of the sunken ship.
When I asked an old professor who had taught before, he thought about it carefully and said that the key should be the huge stone anchors. The stone anchors were distributed in a wide area of the sea, and must have served the sa function as cable-tie structures. The countless stone anchors played a role in regulating the ships balance as it sank to the bottom of the sea.
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TN Note:
(1) Cao Cao, courtesy na ngde, was a Chinese warlord, statesman, poet, and one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms Period. Wiki link
(2) Refresher: Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio or Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, also called Liaozhai Zhiyi in Chinese, is a collection of Classical Chinese stories by Pu Songling, comprising close to five hundred "marvel tales".
(3) The writer here refers to Pu Songling, the author of Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. He sotis added notes under the tale he recorded.
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