How did caves in Shanxi come into being?

The earliest human habitation was "taking trees as nests" or using natural caves, mainly natural caves. As a living room, the earth-digging kiln is a form of cave dwelling, and its origin is very old. Li Yun records that the former king had a palace in the Song Dynasty and lived in a cave in winter and a nest in summer.

Mencius under Teng Wengong also recorded that when Yao was in power, the water was retrograde, flooding in China, where snakes and dragons lived, and the people refused to lift it. Below is a nest, and above is a camp.

The "camp cave" mentioned here is the dug cave, which is the living room where ancient humans lived before they learned to build houses with civil structures on the ground. Cave dwellings in Shanxi have a history of thousands of years.

The rooms excavated by primitive people on the Loess Plateau were originally completely modeled after natural caves. Natural caves once provided shelter for early primitive humans from cold, rain, snow and wild animals, but after all, there were not many suitable natural caves, which could not meet the living needs of the increasingly prolific primitive humans.

So, when the loess layer was formed, they tried to dig holes on the sunny slopes and ravine cliffs of the plateau, and made arched horizontal caves by using the soft and sticky structure of loess.

This situation is reflected in Mozi's Ci Guo Pian, which states that "the ancients ... lived in graves and caves".

Cave dwelling in Shanxi is the most distinctive of Shanxi folk houses, and it is an ancient living form. Shanxi is located in the east of the Loess Plateau. The Yellow River flows through most areas, and the loess plateau along the coast criss-crosses. Shanxi ancestors built many unique caves because of the situation.