A discovery that shocked the world

In the spring of 1929, a Sichuan farmer named Yan Daocheng, toiling in his fields in Guanghan as usual, stumbled upon a cave, uncovering a trove of over three hundred jade artifacts.

Two years later, in the spring of 1931, keen-eyed British missionary Vivyan Henry Donnithorne, while preaching in Guanghan county, noticed the peculiar nature of these jade treasures and alerted David Crockett Graham, curator of the West China Union University Museum of Archaeology, Art, and Ethnology.

The spring of 1934 saw David Crockett Graham assemble an archaeological team. Led by Luo Yucang, county magistrate of Guanghan, they undertook the inaugural excavation of the Sanxingdui site. The dig yielded a plethora of uniquely crafted objects, leaving archaeologists confounded. Yet, the onset of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931–1945) suspended the work indefinitely.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, archaeological work at Sanxingdui was restarted. The 1980s witnessed a surge in discoveries, unearthing thousands of precious artifacts, including the world's earliest and largest bronze divine tree, a gold scepter symbolizing regal and divine authority, and the iconic "King of Bronze Figures" statue—astounding the world with their presence.

In 2020, a new round of archaeological exploration at Sanxingdui was initiated, yielding remarkable findings. Nearly 13,000 artifacts emerged from six sacrificial pits, featuring golden masks, jade vessels with divine tree motifs, turtle-shaped grid patterns, bronze dragon ornaments, altars, and colossal bronze mythical beasts.

These unearthed artifacts from Sanxingdui attest to a civilization of advanced productivity. Yet, it remains a mystery why the rich tapestry of historical and literary texts within Chinese civilization failed to chronicle this flourishing bronze civilization in the Yangtze River Basin.

Who were the enigmatic figures of Sanxingdui?

This striking bronze mask, boasting its imposing size, has very big eyes and ears, which are so exaggerated as to live up to their great power of seeing and hearing from faraway. Its enigmatic, smiling countenance features two pillar-like eyeballs jutting outward.

Confronted with this enigmatic bronze mask, observers suddenly grasped that Sanxingdui wasn't ignored, but rather, past historians often dismissed its accounts as mere fables and legends. For instance, the National Chronicles of Huayang Kingdom: Chronicles of Shu by Eastern Jin historian Chang Qu, notes: "There was a lord in Shu named Cancong, with protruding eyes, who was the first to claim the title of king." Isn't this bronze mask in the likeness of "protruding eyes"?

The discovery of Sanxingdui has prompted archaeologists to revisit the legendary tales chronicled in literature. So, are the custodians of Sanxingdui culture epitomized by the ancient Shu kingdom, represented by Can Cong? Where did the "ancient Shu kingdom" originate? How long did it endure? What ties did it maintain with the dynasties of the Central Plains?

The dating of the Sanxingdui site unfolds across four periods:

Sanxingdui Phase I (4,800–4,000 years ago):

The first phase aligns with the Baodun culture—a significant branch of the Neolithic archaeological culture on the Chengdu Plain—and reflects a localized cultural identity.

Sanxingdui Phase II (4,000–3,600 years ago):

The subsequent phase roughly coincides with the Xia Dynasty (c.2070–1600 BC) era. It manifests pronounced influences from external cultures, including facets of the Erlitou Culture, such as pottery vessels for warming wine, tall-handled vessels (a prevalent pottery style in the Ba-Shu region during the Warring States period and Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River), and bronze adornments.

Sanxingdui Phase III (3,600–3,200 years ago):

This phase corresponds with the Shang Dynasty era in the Central Plains. Bronze artifacts begin to proliferate, showcasing evident influences from the bronze-crafting techniques of the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 BC).

Sanxingdui Phase IV (3,200–2,600 years ago):

This Phase aligns with the Shi'erqiao Culture—a site located in present-day Chengdu, Sichuan Province, dating from the late Shang Dynasty to the Qin (221–206 BC) and Han (206 BC–AD 220) dynasties—which shares temporal and cultural similarities with the Jinsha culture.

Regarding the relationship between Sanxingdui and Central Plains culture, clearer insights have emerged. Consider the awe-inspiring bronze divine tree: standing nearly 4 meters tall and weighing close to 800 kilograms, it boasts three tiers of branches, each adorned with a golden crow—nine in total, with the lost crow from the tree top accounting for the tenth. In the widely known ancient Chinese myth of "Hou Yi Shoots the Sun", ten suns light up the sky, and Hou Yi successfully shoots down nine of them. Could this bronze divine tree be the "Golden Crow Mount" described in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, where the sun is said to rise and set?

Sanxingdui has unearthed a plethora of yazhang scepters ("牙璋" in Chinese), precisely mirroring the central ritual vessels of the Xia Dynasty—the xuangui. As quintessential components of Central Plains ritual paraphernalia, yazhang scepters gradually faded from prominence with the evolution of Central Plains culture but were embraced and preserved within ancient Shu culture.

Moreover, Sanxingdui's bronzeware repertoire includes zun (wine vessels, "尊"in Chinese) and lei vessels (wine vessels, "罍"in Chinese), emblematic ritual articles from the Shang Dynasty in the Central Plains region. Their presence vividly underscores Sanxingdui's assimilation of Central Plains cultural elements.

In 2012, during the analysis of Sanxingdui's bronzeware vessels, the Archaeological Laboratory of the University of Science and Technology of China stumbled upon a peculiar constituent—radioactive lead isotopes, dubbed "high radiation lead." Comparisons with bronzeware from the Jinsha site and the Hanzhong site yielded no such discovery. However, this distinctive radioactive trace surfaced in bronzeware excavated from the Wu Cheng site in Jiangxi. Intriguingly, in close proximity to the Wu Cheng bronzeware site, archaeologists uncovered an expansive, well-equipped ancient copper mine. Within the smelting slag of this ore deposit, archaeologists likewise encountered "high radiation lead."

These assorted research revelations gradually unveil the interplay and interconnections between Sanxingdui and the diverse regional cultures at that time.

Source: Becoming the Chinese Nation: The historical memories of multi-ethnic Chinese Nation in 100 cultural relics

Liu Xian /Editor    Deng Zhiyu /Translator

Yang Xinhua /Chief Editor    Liu Xian /Coordination Editor

Liu Li /Reviewer

Zhang Weiwei /Copyeditor    Tan Yujie /Image Editor

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