Archaeologists are hailing the Jinsha Ruins as one of Sichuan's most important archaeological finds after the discovery of the Sanxingdui Ruins. Like Sanxingdui, the Jinsha Ruins were discovered by accident.

On February 8 this year, builders from a local real estate development firm were working at a construction site in Jinsha Village. Suddenly they found ivory and jade ware amidst the mud dug out by two excavators.

Soon, the police arrived and closed the site. Since then, archaeologists have excavated more than 1,000 precious relics, including gold, jade, bronze and stone wares as well as nearly 1 ton of ivory.

Most of the pieces date back some 3,000 years. Many of the relics bear strong resemblance to those at Sanxingdui. For example, a gold mask and a bronze statue of a person standing might immediately remind first-time visitors of the bronze masks and big bronze statues at Sanxingdui because of their similarity in style.

The decorative patterns on the gold ribbon unearthed at Jinsha are also quite like those on the gold scepter at Sanxingdui, which was the symbol of royal power of the Shu king (Shu was the ancient name for Sichuan).

Like the scepter, the ribbon has designs of a human head and birds on it. Unlike the scepter, it also has the design of an arrow piercing through a bird. According to Wang Yi, director of the Chengdu Institute of Relics and Archaeology, the patterns on the ribbon are most likely to be the emblem of a certain ethnic group.

Judging by its size, the ribbon might have been the headwear of the Shu King at that time, he said. Many of the jade objects unearthed at Jinsha are priceless. One piece, which has a square column on the outside and a round hole inside, was called cong by ancient Chinese.

It is 22 centimeters tall. Under a microscope, you can see many exquisite decorative patterns on it, or ancient miniature carvings. The cong has a carved human figure on it which has never been found on any unearthed jade cong in China before, Wang said. Jade cong was offered as a sacrifice to heaven in ancient China.

Its shape reflected ancient Shu people's view of the universe - the sky was round and the earth square. Rulers at that time thought that humans could communicate with ancestors and gods through jade cong, Wang said.

According to Wang, the cong was not made in Sichuan. It was transported there from the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The earliest cong discovered in Liangzhu Ruins in Zhejiang dates back 7,000 years.

This proves that Sichuan had more trade links with the outside world than previously thought, he said. Located in a basin, Sichuan was considered geographically isolated in ancient times.

But relics unearthed at Jinsha make archaeologists believe that Sichuan not only had trade links with the Yangtze and Yellow river valleys, neighboring Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, but also northern Viet Nam in ancient times.

Through Sichuan, the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River areas conducted economic and cultural exchanges with Southeast Asia, they think. The Jinsha Ruins have witnessed the excavation of 170 stone statues of people, tigers, snakes and tortoises.

The stone statues are believed to be the oldest and most exquisite ever excavated in Sichuan. It is also the first time in the province that more stone statues of animals than people have been found in one excavation. One rare stone statue is a man in a kneeling position.

With holes in his ears and a pigtail, the man must have belonged to a special ethnic group at that time. With his two hands tied with a rope and with a stern expression, the man might be a slave or war prisoner, Wang said.

Archaeologists think that excavations at the Jinsha Ruins have changed Chengdu's history and proved once again that Chinese civilization has very diverse roots. It was generally thought that Chengdu had a history of about 2,300 years.

But the excavations prove that rulers of the ancient Shu Kingdom established its political and cultural center in Chengdu more than 3,000 years ago, Wang Yi said. Although archaeologists are not sure what the exact nature of the Jinsha Ruins are, they guess that they might be the ruins of a workshop or sacrificial activities, for a profusion of half-finished jade and stone ware and raw materials used to make jade and stone ware have been unearthed there.

As many of the relics, which were sacrificial vessels with special purposes and belonged to the highest rulers of the Shu Kingdom, bore strong resemblance to those at Sanxingdui, archaeologists think the two sites are closely related.

According to Yu Weichao, deputy director of the China Society of Archaeology, the Jinsha Ruins are most likely to be the political and culture center the Shu King had moved from Sanxingdui to Chengdu.

After the sudden demise of the Sanxingdui culture about 3,000 years ago, the Shu King likely moved to areas around today's Jinsha Ruins in Chengdu, he said.

(China Daily April 4, 2001)