More than 2,000 years ago, ancient Chinese historian Sima Qian trekked his way into the areas of what are known today as southwest China's Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces.

After the fact-finding trip, Sima wrote in Records of the Historian that the largest community in what is Yunnan today was called "Dian."

In the Kingdom of Dian, local residents wore their hair knotted on top of their heads, settled in villages and were engaged in agriculture, Sima wrote.

In addition, the areas were also frequented by nomads with long plaited hair, whose ancestors could be traced to thousands of miles away.

Today, we must marvel at Sima's authenticity when we enter the reproduction of an ancient hall of Dian on exhibit at the National Museum of China (NMC) in downtown Beijing. There, one can browse through the 179 artifacts made from bronze, jade and other materials from Yunnan which date back to the time when Sima made his visit.

Just take a look at one bronze cowrie container with a scene of battle on the lid dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24) and examine the victorious general on horseback in the center. The victor is depicted with his hair in a topknot and the defeated enemy chief who'd fallen off from his horse, his helmet on the ground to reveal his long plaited hair.

"We couldn't help being amazed at the accuracy of Sima Qian's accounts and at the handicrafts of the ancient sculptors," said Yi Xuezhong, a research fellow with the Yunnan Provincial Museum, which has curated the current Exhibition of the Relics of the Ancient Kingdom of Dian in co-operation with the national museum.

Opened on January 14 and continuing through March 25, the exhibits -- the cream of the countless artifacts brought to light over the past 40-some years -- offered "a relatively comprehensive picture of the ancient Kingdom of Dian more than 2,000 years ago," said NMC President Pan Zhenzhou during the opening ceremony.

Heyday of Bronze Age

Throughout the four decades of studies, archaeologists have located numerous ancient Dian settlements and cemeteries that are spread over 70 counties and cities in Yunnan.

It was an ancient culture with its heyday in the fascinating Bronze Age.

In terms of world history, the Bronze Age is considered one of the most important eras that witnessed great transformations.

Along with the use of bronze for tools and weapons, specialized craftsmanship appeared, exchange and trade increased, and social stratification and political organization grew. It was during the Bronze Age the first writing in Europe appeared, thus giving birth to European recorded history.

In Yunnan, among the unearthed relic pieces from the ancient sites of the Kingdom of Dian, there has been a high concentration of bronze ware, numbering more than 10,000 pieces.

The bronze sculptures feature vivid scenes of local farming, hunting, weaving and dancing and the spectacles of ritual ceremonies and battles. They have been found on the lids of cowrie containers, the covers of the bronze drums and other decorative wares and models.

Although no indigenous pictographs or writings have been found among the Dian ruins so far, the bronze ware, which falls into 90-odd categories ranging from agricultural tools to weapons, offers telltale links to the ancient kingdom.

It was a kingdom that had extensive connections with various areas in today's Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia.

Among the numerous bronze figures, there are not only the local Dian people sporting topknots or the nomads with long plaits, but some also depict elderly men with long beards and robes hanging down to their feet.

A number of dancers with deeply set eyes and exaggerated noses wore long-sleeved blouses and long pants, a sharp contrast to the local Dian people who only wore tunics and shorts. They must have come from the prairies farther west of Yunnan, from non-sub-tropical areas, Yi said.

According to Yi, the area's exchanges with Central China could have started during the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BC), which had entered the Bronze Age a few centuries before the earlier people in the Dian communities started to make use of bronze.

The findings have been provided by scholars of metallurgical history, who have analyzed ritual bronze ware unearthed in Yinxu Ruins of the late Shang period in what is now Anyang, Central China's Henan Province. The researchers believe the ore must have come from Yunnan.

In the historic annals of the Qin (221-206 BC) and Han (206 BC-AD 220) dynasties, Yunnan was frequently referred to as one of the major ore suppliers for bronze-making in Central China.

On the lid of a cowrie bronze container was the sculpting of a panorama of local rituals involving 129 participants.

Yi said he believed the scenes correspond to the documented rituals in the ancient annals of pre-Qin and Han dynasty periods -- offering evidence of further exchanges between Dian's communities and those in Central China.

In the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), Yunnan was already considered one of "frontier" areas for imperial expansion.

In 1955, researchers discovered an ancient cemetery for royalty and aristocrats from Shizhaishan in Jinning County, no more than 50 kilometres south of Kunming, Yunnan's provincial capital.

From the No 6 tomb there, they uncovered a golden seal bearing the four Chinese characters carved in official Han court scripts: Dian Wang Zhi Yin, meaning the Seal of the Dian King.

Along with the golden seal were other objects reserved for the royals of the Han court, which included a scattered number of jade pieces, a set of chime bells and even a bronze model of an ancestor's temple.

"All these reflect the fact that the King of the Dian and the hosts of the funeral attached great importance to having the great Han emperor confer upon them the royal titles, and how they followed the Han Dynasty's funeral customs and rules," Yi said.

According to Yi, bronze-making in the ancient Dian area reached its height during the 1st century BC, then started to decline soon thereafter.

Meanwhile, as NMC Vice-President Dong Qi wrote in the preface of the exhibition, the Dian culture began to lose its grip on the locale during the first few decades of the 1st century AD.

The Kingdom of Dian finally disappeared altogether in the 2nd century AD, as the locale became integrated into the Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-220).

Origins

Despite the discovery of a huge number of relics from the ancient Kingdom of Dian, researchers still find it hard to pinpoint the origins of the Dian people.

Over the years, researchers have put forward a number of speculations.

For instance, the Dian people were predominantly aboriginal, or were descendants of the Chu and Pu people who once lived in areas of what are today's Hunan and Hubei provinces. Some are also believed to have descended from the Yue people from areas of what is now Guangxi and Guangdong in South China, while there is speculation that nomadic tribal people from the grasslands in the north also lived in the area.

Yang Fan, a researcher from the Yunnan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, suggests that Dian people came from multiple ancestries, judging from the funeral customs shown from the unearthed tombs dating back to different historical periods.

One ancestral group might have been the ancient Qiang people, who migrated from areas of what is now Gansu and Qinghai provinces in Northwest China south to Yunnan.

The relics from the late New Stone Age through the middle of the Shang period more than 3,000 years ago, which have been unearthed in the northwestern part of Yunnan, show great similarities to those unearthed in western parts of Sichuan Province and southern parts of what are today's Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

The burial customs were especially similar, Yang said, featuring such rituals as decapitation.

But the tombs dating back to the middle of the Spring and Autumn periods (770-476 BC) found in Yunnan displayed a funeral system popular in the areas to the farther north end of Yunnan which was then under the rule of the Chu state. The Chu reign predominantly controlled territories in what are today's Hunan and Hubei provinces.

Yang said that during the wars the Qinshihuang waged to unify China and establish the Qin empire, the local Dian people living in parts of what is now Shaanxi and Gansu provinces also had to migrate down to Yunnan in the south.

Apart from these migrations from the north and west, Yang pointed out there must have been aboriginal ethnic groups who had extensive links with their cousins in South and Southeast Asia, as many of today's ethnic groups still speak the tongues that have their historical links to those areas.

Wherever the Dian people came from, they in turn created a splendid local culture which flourished for several centuries, as the 179 relics in the exhibition demonstrate.

So much so that the Dian King once proudly asked Sima Qian: "Who is more powerful, the Han Emperor, or me?"

Performance Details

Dates: January 15 - March 25

Venue:  the National Museum of China

Ticket Price: 20 yuan

(China Daily January 29, 2004)