Sanxingdui Site
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Introduction to the scenic spots:
Since thousands of exquisite culture relics were unveiled, Sanxingdui has been arousing widespread attention at home and abroad. Sanxingdui museum is located in the northeast of the relic site at the tour circle route of Jiuzhaigou, 3.5km from Guanghan, covering an area of 200mu with the planned construction area up to 14,000 square meters and the investment totaling RBM 2,400,000 yuan. The multi-functional museum was first built and well equipped with modern facilities and good conditions for collections. It’s a modern relic theme museum, praised as the important component of history, human landscape and sightseeing.
Sanxingdui Museum makes a breakthrough in its outside construction patterns and inside displays among the traditional history museums. It tries to create something new in the contents and arts appealing to both refined and popular tastes. On the premise of being strictly scholarly, it is made knowledgeable, enjoyable, dramatic and interesting, enabling the visitors to experience the modern feeling and beauty.
The exhibits are displayed in four exhibition halls as follows: “Three Stars Accompanying the Moon”, “Mystery of the Primitive Faith”, “Exquisite Cultural Artifacts” and “Excavation and Study”.
The constructions of the museum show romantic charm of land features, historical sites and relic patterns. The arch-rising building winds its way up with a soaring steeple as its grotesque roof, and the body becomes smaller until it reaches the center of the arching building, making it a triangular tower. The triangular tower symbolizes the connection of heaven and earth. Three large bronze masks were hung high on top of the tower. They are the symbols of Sanxingdui Museum. The whole construction symbolizes the Sanxingdui in the form of arch-rising building. The yellow outside wall shows the color of the earth. The mound-shaped architectural complex seems to come out from the earth abruptly, striking and creative, symbolizing the connection of primitive and modern cultures and expressing the profound nature of these mounds.
Now the construction of a tourist area covering 1.500mu has been carried out. It is based on the Sanxingdui Museum, and the ancient relic site with the purpose of highlighting the culture of Sanxingdui and the features of the relic sites. The large tourist area is made up of seven sections: “Shu Culture”, “Museum Section”, “Water Culture Entertainment”, “Tribe Section”, “Modern rural scenery” and “City wall Relics”, containing more than 30 scenic spots, such as: collections of ancient stone tablets, sculpture garden, Shu Market, restore of excavating site, restore of city wall site, jade workshop, original tribe village, altars, sweet rice village, and corridor bridge. After it is completed, Guanghan will not only become one of the places of interest in the southwest blending with the tourism of Chengdu and complementing each other, but also become a center where people can learn and do research on the history and culture of ancient Shu.
Scenic spots
No. 1 sacrificial pit
It’s square, and the mouth is wider than the bottom with the length 450-464cm and the width 330-180cm. In the middle and on the two sides of the mouth lies separately a tunnel of 80-100m wide and 26-34m.
Inside the pit and the tunnel five-layer yellow-brown earth was put by ramming. The earth was mixed with a small number of pottery slices, ashes, red sand core and broken bits of bronze, which were used to foundry and withdraw models. Judging from the earth put in, the yellow-brown and five-layer earth; the pit and the tunnel were built at the same time. In the pit nearly 400 historical relics in various qualities were buried. Among the relics about three cubic meters of burnt disintegrating slag was mingled. And the diameter of the disintegrating slag is about three centimeters.
The disintegrating slag is heaped up inclining from southeast to northwest. In the southeast corner the disintegrating slag is as thick as 60 centimeters while in the northwest it is only five centimeters. So you can say that the disintegrating slag was poured down from the southeast of the side tunnel. Most of the disintegrating slag is white except that a small amount of it is blue wish and black. And there are ashes of wood and bamboo, sand core, which was used to foundry bronze wares, mixed with the disintegrating slag.
The wall of the tunnel hasn’t been smoked. It is obviously that the skeletons had been burnt and broken into pieces before they were put into the tunnel. Judging from the broken bone bits and slices, the thick and big bone wall the narrow bone cavity, the skeleton must be big blood-let animals’.
In the 400 pieces of newly unearthed historical relics, jade wares take the first place among them, making up 47.92 % while earthenware 6.6%, ivories 5.42%, gold wares 0.73%. Among the jade wares including “Cong”(cuboids jade with a whole in the center), “Zhang” jade, “Ge” jade (like dagger-axe) “Hu” jade (like an axe) “Zuo”jade (like a chisel),knife-shaped jade, sword-shaped jade, “Jin” jade, “Ben” jade and Hoe-shaped jade wares, “Zhang” takes the first place.
Among the bronze wares big-hole bronze take the first place, besides dagger-axe, bronze human head statue, masks, and statue sitting on heels, dragon, tiger, and wine vessel.
No. 2 sacrificial pit
The surface of No.2 sacrificial pit is in oblong shape whose mouth is 530 by 220-230 by 140-168cm. The bottom of the pit is 500 by 200-210cm. The yellow five-layer earth had been rammed, high in the southwest, low in the northeast. According to the shape of the mould, the unearthed relics in No.2 pit can be divided into three layers, the upper layer, the middle layer, the bottom layer. In the bottom layer mainly are ashes of grass and trees, small bronze wares, animal masks, broken branches, jade wares and lots of sea shells. In the middle layer are big bronze wares and bronze human statues, such as big standing human status, big masks, big bronze wheel, and sacrificial vessels and so on. In the upper layer are more than sixty ivories arranged in a crisscross pattern.
Although the unearthed relics from the No.2 pit outnumber those from No.1 pit, the relics from both pits have much in common. They both own big and small bronze human head statues, lots of jade wares of the same kind. However, there are differences between the two pits, the human statues and masks from No.1 pit are smaller than those from No.2 pit in size. For example, the human statues from No.1 pit are 15 centimeters high, but the ones from No.2 pit are from several centimeters to 260 centimeters high; the bronze masks from No.1 pits are nine centimeters in size while the ones from No.2 pit are of different size, the biggest one even achieves 65cm by 138cm in size. In addition, there are many relics related to myth legend such as bronze “God Tree”, figures of bird body with human head.
“Seven Mysteries”
Many important academic problems about Sanxingdui and its unearthed relics remain enigmatic to the world. Experts and scholars have had good argument over the mysteries, but they are still outstanding issues without exact proofs.
1. How did Sanxingdui culture come into being? So far, there are different opinions about its origin. Some believe it came from the New Stone Age Culture in the upstream of the Min Jiang River; some believe it has something to do with the prehistoric culture of the East Sichuan ; others link it with Dragon Hill culture of Shandong province. In a word, it compromises the merits of native and external cultures and the result of the interaction of multi-cultures. But where did it come from?
2. What nationality did the residents in Sanxingdui belong to? To the Qiang nationality? There are different versions of it, including the Di and Qiang nationality version, Pu nationality version, Ba nationality version, Dongyi nationality version and Yue nationality version. But most scholars believe that the sarcophagus burial has great connection with Sanxingdui and the main residents were probably from the Di and Qiang nationality who lived in the northwest and upper Ming River.
3. What was the nature of the ancient Shu state and religion? Was Shu state a tribe military league attached to the Central Plains Dynasty or an independent united early country? Was its religion the worship to nature, to the ancestors, the gods or to all at the same time?
4. How did the smelting skills of bronze ware and bronze ware culture come about? Did it come into being naturally or just the outcome of the influence from the culture of the Central Plains, Chu, west Asia or East Asia?
5. How did the ancient Shu state come into being? How long did it last? And why did it disappear suddenly?
6. When can the two pits, where more than a thousand relics were unearthed, be traced back and how about its nature? Did it come about during Shang period, between late Shang period and early Zhou period, West period or the spring and Autumn Period? Were the pits used as sacrifices pits, subordinate tombs or implements stores?
7. The grave mystery “Shu picture language” in late Shu culture：The signs on the implements, such as those on the unearthed gold-scepters, are characters clan emblems, drawings, or religious symbols? It’s believed that the clue found to the mystery can help to undo the puzzle of Sanxingdui.
Sanxingdui is one of the large scale relics in the beginning of China’s modern archaeology. The relics were discovered in the 1930s and then the two sacrificial pits were unearthed, since which time visitors at home and abroad have been attracting to Sanxingdui for its long lasting period, exquisite culture relics, unique culture, and mystery
The present study indicates it has a history of 4,000-5,000 years. The experts suggest that Sanxingdui was the center of Shu civilization, and was also centered in the successive cultural heritage of mankind. Through scientific verification, there were series of related relics around it.
So the discovery of Sanding is of momentous current significance and far-reaching historical significance in archaeology, history and anthropology.
The discovery of Sanxingdui relics laid the foundation of the archaeology in the upstream of the Yangzi River, which led to the archaeology age system and the basic frame of the ancient culture of the upstream area of the Yangzi River.
The Shu civilization, unknown for thousands of years, was unveiled and the unearthed precious relics, such as the many bronze images, greatly different from those of Central Plains in mould and intention, show the primitive religious patterns indicating man is in perfect harmony with gods. Besides, the discovery also reflects the odd psychology of the Shu ancients and the brilliant mult-civilizations; and the theory is also further proved that china civilization has more than one origin, which opens a door to the ancient civilization.
At the same time, the reason why the discoveries of Sanxingdui astonish the whole world is that it is quite or completely, in some way, different from people’s knowledge to the Shu culture. Secondly, the discoveries also prove the existence of Shu in ancient documents.
It’s traditionally believed that ancient Shu was relatively self-enclosed without communication with the Central Plains civilization. But the relics prove that Shu is one important state of Shang period; its culture is full of its own characteristic but was closely connected with each other.
Sanxingdui relics are an important access for us to learn about the historical culture of Sichuan and even that of the whole southwest region.
Experts think that the discovery of Sanxingdui can change people’s understanding of ancient history and culture and it can be mentioned in the same breath with some other discoveries in the world, such as the Troy ancient city in Germany.
It’s widely accepted by the archaeology world that it’s a hard job to unravel ancient characters. Now most ancient characters have been unraveled except Mayan and two others, those of Sanxingdui included. Moreover, the relics have never been seen and named. So further study on Sanxingdui is needed.
Influence of the archaeology of Sanxingdui overseas
On August 13, 1987, Independent of Britain reported the high praise for Sanxingdui by Britain famous scholar David Guis, which was entitled Incomparable China Bronze Statues
In May, 1993, some historical relics, first on show in the Olympic Museum in Losan of Swiss, won westerns great admiration.
In June, 1996, some historical relics of Sanxingdui, shown in Esoncluber mountain villa, made a stir.
In December, 1995, some historical relics, shown in Munich Harbor Fund Arts Center, attracted flows of visitors.
In April, some historical relics were shown again in Suez Arts Home, continuous stream of visitors came to the exhibition.
In September, 1996, some historical relics of Sanxingdui came across the English Channel and crowds of people came to appreciate them in the Great Britain Museum.
In February, 1997, part of the cultural relics of Sanxingdui came back from Britain to the mainland of Europe. Huge crowds of people came to visit Louisiana Museum.
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