How did ancient people transmit information?

The ancients mainly used the following methods to transmit information: flying pigeons, bonfires, fast horses, code words, sign language, letters, flags and so on.

China is one of the first countries in the world to establish an organized information dissemination system. As early as 3000 years ago, there were records of information transmission in Shang Dynasty. Riding by is an early organized way of communication. The "Hou" sculpture in Jiayuguan Railway Station Square is based on the mural tomb of Wei and Jin Dynasties in Jiayuguan. There are bamboo slips and documents on the post station, and the post horse touches the ground on all fours, which is very fast. This brick mural was created in 1982.

The appearance of ancient information transmission can not be separated from the Great Wall, which has been up and down for 5,000 years. The word "Great Wall" first appeared in the documents of the Warring States Period. In ancient times, the architectural forms of different dynasties were different, so the names of such defense projects were different, such as: Liecheng, Fangcheng, Fortress, Linluo, Jiegou, Side Wall and so on. In fact, they all refer to the "Great Wall" in a broad sense.

In the process of building the Great Wall in past dynasties, the basic principle was "adapting measures to local conditions and adapting them to risks". First, build the project according to the base type. Second, make full use of geographical and natural disasters to defend against the enemy. The Great Wall is mainly composed of city walls, including ramparts, passes, barracks, health stations, piers, towers, observation, communication and other comprehensive functions, forming the most stringent military defense system in ancient times. Among them, it is located in the Great Wall.

In the Western Zhou Dynasty, in order to guard against the enemy's invasion, the "bonfire tunnel" was used as the contact signal for border defense emergency. In the ancient history book "Zhou Li", it is recorded that "on the passage from the frontier to the hinterland of various countries, a beacon tower is built at intervals, with oranges on the stage and a cage full of firewood on the orange head. When the enemy invades, it is called "bonfire" to transmit the information to the leader's desk with a torch, and it is called "embarrassment" to ignite the firewood piled up on the desk during the daytime warning. In order to make the smoke straight without bending, so that it can be seen from a distance, the ancients often used wolf dung instead of firewood, so it was also called "wolf smoke". According to the Zhou Dynasty, when emperors everywhere raised bonfires, they must immediately lead troops to rescue them. It means that a huge and perfect military information contact network appeared as early as the Zhou Dynasty. Archaeologists in China obtained more than 30,000 wooden slips of the Han Dynasty through excavations in Juyan 1972 to 1976, and excavated the beacon tower site, which provided us with abundant information about the beacon tower of the Han Dynasty. According to the wooden slips, in the Han Dynasty, from four counties in Hexi (now Wuwei, Gansu), its scale was very large and its management was extremely strict. Known as the "beacon tower across Wan Li", it is said that it is "Wuli beacon tower, Shili pier, Sanli fortress and Baili fortress". Day and night are different. There is smoke during the day and fire at night. In addition, it also uses various secret codes to indicate how many people the enemy is invading, and the enemy puts a beacon tower below 500 people. Put two bonfires more than 500 miles away, and so on. In the unearthed "Firefighting Products on the Plug", the provisions of the imperial court at that time, namely the "defense convention", were recorded. This article stipulates the type, quantity, transmission mode, error correction and even details of each plug when the Huns invaded different parts, quantities, time, intentions, changes and abnormal weather.

The bonfire quickly delivered the message. In BC 1 19, General Wei Qing and Huo Qubing led hundreds of thousands of troops to attack separately, taking the bonfire as the marching signal. In just one day, this signal spread from Hexi to Liaodong thousands of miles away. Due to the rapid and timely warning of the bonfire, it has been used until the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Yantai City, Shandong Province set up Wolf Yantai there because of the Ming Dynasty.

Although the bonfire transmits military information quickly, it can't fully express the profound and complicated military content. With the development of society and the needs of politics and military affairs, the communication mode of transmitting information by animal power has gradually occupied a dominant position, forming a more rigorous delivery system for transmitting government documents and cooperating with beacon early warning.

In the Western Zhou Dynasty, in order to meet the needs of the communication between the king of Zhou and the princes, a post station was set up every 30 miles on the avenue, which was responsible for delivering official documents, receiving officials and transporting goods. Confucius once said: "the popularization of virtue is faster than the delivery of mail." This means that the moral theory he advocated spreads faster than the delivery of orders by mail. It can be seen that postal communication at that time was not only quite complete, but also quite complete.

A whole set of evacuation system was formed in Qin and Han Dynasties. Especially in the Han Dynasty, the delivered official documents were divided into different grades, and the official documents of different grades should be delivered by special personnel and special horses in accordance with the prescribed order and time. The sending and receiving of these documents should be registered, the time should be indicated, and the responsibilities should be clearly defined.

During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the postal service developed unprecedentedly. In the Tang Dynasty, the official postal transport line centered on Chang 'an, the capital city, radiated in all directions and reached the frontier, and there was a post station about 30 miles away. According to the Six Codes of the Great Tang Dynasty, there were 1639 post stations in the whole country in its heyday, and there were more than 20,000 people specializing in postal services, including postal soldiers 1.7 million people. Stations are divided into land stations and waterway stations.

In the Tang Dynasty, there were also explicit provisions on the itinerary of the post station. Lu Yi's trotters walk six posts a day, that is, 180 Li, and then there are about 300 Aliri, and the fastest requirement is 500 Aliri. Pedestrians travel 50 miles a day; Sailing against the current, the river is forty miles, the river is fifty miles, and the other six miles; When the water is good, it is required to be within 100 to 150. The poet Cen Can wrote in the poem "Judge on the way to Longshan for the first time" that "the stations are one after another, and the stations ride like stars; Pingming sent Xianyang, and the curtain opened the Longshan Mountain. " Here, he compared the post station to a meteor. On November 9th, 14th year of Tianbao, An Lushan rebelled in Fanyang. At that time, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty was in Huaqing Palace, which was three thousand miles apart. Within six days, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty learned the news, which spread at a speed of 500 miles a day. It can be seen that the organization and speed of post office communication in Tang Dynasty reached a high level. In the Song Dynasty, all official documents and letters were sorted out. And a "courier shop" appeared. The horse collar of the express post is tied with a bronze bell. When running on the road, he rang the bell during the day and lit a fire at night, killing irresponsible people. The shop was changed to a horse, and several shops were changed, rain or shine, and the journey continued day and night. Yue Fei, a general who resisted gold in the early Southern Song Dynasty, was forcibly recalled to Lin 'an by Song Gaozong with 12 gold medals. This kind of gold medal is a gold-lettered signboard handed over by the express shop, which contains the meaning of being in a hurry.

The post station is the communication agency of the government and can only deliver official documents. Except in the Song Dynasty, senior officials were allowed to attach letters from home, and private letters could only be sent by people. 1975, archaeologists excavated two wooden slips from Hunan tomb, the first one was written to Zhong by Heifu and Jing. The second letter, written by Jing to Zhong, is the earliest known letter from home in China. It is estimated that these two letters were brought home by fellow villagers who returned home after serving in the army. This shows the difficulty of ancient communication.

It was not until the Ming Dynasty that there appeared a special communication agency to deliver letters to the people. During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, the immigrants who moved to Xiaogan Township, Macheng County, Hubei Province for reclamation, because they missed their hometown, made an appointment to elect fellow villagers to return home several times a year, bringing souvenirs and letters back and forth. Over time, a fixed organization named "Maxiang Agreement" was established. Later, a professional People's Information Bureau was established.

Postal communication played a certain progressive role in frontier defense and economic and cultural exchanges, and became the main form of information transmission in ancient China. Over the years, those ancient ways of information transmission have been replaced by modern convenient and fast communication methods.