After sleeping for 3,000 years, he woke up and shocked the world.
Mysterious bronze masks, golden staffs, bronze sacred trees...... The cultural relics unearthed in Sanxingdui are like fragments of history, piecing together an ancient civilization that we have never understood.
How did the word Sanxingdui come about? What race do these strange-looking bronze statues belong to? It's all filled with endless reverie.
What is even more surprising to experts is that this Shang Dynasty sacrificial site, which is known as the best-preserved in China, is actually an "invisible pit" in history
Moreover, all the national treasures were not only deliberately buried, but also chose to be buried after the fall of the Shang Dynasty, and the motives are unknown.
1. See the light of day again
There used to be three large meunds of earth. It is silently piled up outside the village of Sanxing Village, Guanghan, Sichuan, and this pile is thousands of years.
Speaking of these three mounds, it is also a little interesting. They are like three brilliant Venus stars in the night sky, lined up in a line.
In fact, this place used to be a long slippery wall, and later people may have felt that it was not convenient to pass in this way, or there was some special reason, so they dug two large holes, and as a result, a large wall became three small mounds.
Moreover, in the northeast direction of these three mounds of soil, there is a highland called "Moon Bay", so since the Qing Dynasty, people have given this place an elegant name - "three stars with the moon", so this place is also naturally called "three xingdui".
In 1929, when a farmer named Yandaocheng was digging a ditch by the mound, he went down with a shovel and not only dug out a pile of jade, but also dug up a historical context that had lost his memory.
At that time, Guanghan County was not as crowded with tourists as it is now, and the arrival of a British missionary, Dong Duyi, made it a little lively.
In 1931 and 1934, Sanxingdui had cultural relics unearthed, but after the excavation in 1934, Sanxingdui was silent for a long time and no one cared about it.
2. Twenty years of excavation
Since the fifties of the last century, the archaeological journey of Sanxingdui has been launched again.
At the beginning, experts may not have felt the powerful "aura" of this site, and thought that it was just two separate small worlds of Moon Bay and Sanxingdui.
So, they named the two sites respectively - "Hengliangzi Ruins" and "Sanxingdui Ruins".
In 1963, Professor Feng Hanji returned to Sanxingdui with a joint archaeological team, and finally lifted the mystery behind this land. Professor Feng could see at a glance that this place was likely to be the CBD of the ancient Shu capital.
Fast forward to 1976, a brick factory in Gaoyu Township, Guanghan dug out a "treasure pit" and unearthed a bunch of treasures, such as turquoise bronze medals, jade qi, jade knives, etc., which are the "sharp goods" of the late Shang Dynasty and the third phase of Sanxingdui.
By the early 80s, archaeologists had unearthed a large area of Neolithic house ruins and tens of thousands of specimens. They also discovered a stratigraphic overlap with a periodical significance, which is equivalent to finding the "time tunnel" of the archaeological Sanxingdui.
In 1986, the two major sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui were born, and various exquisite cultural relics shocked the academic circles at home and abroad. Most of these cultural relics are works from the early and late Shang Dynasty, such as the Yazhang of the Erlitou culture and the Yucong of the Qijia culture, which were restructured into jade.
In the next 20 years, the Sanxingdui site ushered in the "spring" of large-scale excavation.
Archaeologists not only found the man-made city wall, but also identified the 3.6 square kilometers of Sanxingdui ancient city. During this period, the Sanxingdui Museum was also built, becoming a window to show the Sanxingdui civilization.
Fast forward to March 20, 2021, and more than 500 cultural relics have been excavated at the Sanxingdui site.
As of September 2022, 15,109 cultural relics have been excavated from these six "sacrificial pits", of which 4,060 are nearly complete.
Fourth, who am I?
It takes thousands of years to sleep, and when you wake up, everyone is stunned. This is the true portrayal of the Sanxingdui site.
But where did the Sanxingdui civilization come from?
The unearthed "Sanxingdui people" have high noses and deep eyes, prominent cheeks, wide mouths and big ears, and pierced ears, unlike the eyebrows of Chinese, but full of "foreigner" painting style.
Sanxingdui's bronze hairstyle is also very cool, one is the braided hair with a braid on the back of the head, which is similar to the Manchurian hairstyle after two thousand years.
The other is a hairstyle with the forehead and temples flattened and a hairpin on the back of the head, which is similar to the hairstyle of the ancient Central Plains in the same period.
And all of these, Sanxingdui unearthed bronzes did not leave a single text to explain to future generations.
Before the bloodline of civilization could be figured out, more than 5,000 sea shells from the Indian Ocean were dug up.
In the sacrificial pit, the world's first golden scepter was also found! Although everyone agrees that this is a scepter, the fish, arrows and other patterns engraved on it are words? Is it a family emblem? Is it a painting? Or is it some kind of religious symbol? Everyone has their own opinions.
Therefore, some experts feel that these Sanxingdui people may have come from other places. Some even say that it may be the work of aliens.
The mountains and rivers are full of doubts, and the willow bank flowers are bright and another village.
At the same time as the large-scale excavation of the Sanxingdui site, the site of the Twelve Bridges in Chengdu was excavated in 1985~1987.
In the end, it was found that the culture at the bottom of the site and the remains of the most late Sanxingdui were exactly the same.
Therefore, archaeologists believe that the connection between Sanxingdui culture and the Central Plains culture is far greater than its connection with any other culture.
5. Where do I come from?
The bronzes unearthed at the Sanxingdui site, although they look like completely independent intellectual property rights, experts still picked up its "hometown".
Let's talk about this bronze casting technology, both the fan casting method and the sub-casting method are used, as well as the smelting of three alloys based on lead, tin and copper, which is the black technology of the Shang and Zhou dynasties.
Moreover, although they are full of Shu characteristics and look a little different, the respect for bronze ritual vessels is not less than that of the Central Plains culture.
Silkworms and fish, how dazed is the founding of the country!
Starting from the Silkworm Cong clan to the destruction of the country by the Great Qin in Kaiming, these kings of ancient Shu, although they are not far away from the Central Plains Dynasty, they also maintain a subtle connection with the Central Plains.
Sanxingdui unearthed pottery seals, skulls, goblets, high-handled beans, etc., and Xia culture is simply "brothers".
Moreover, according to the latest archaeological discoveries, the Sanxingdui culture is likely to be a large family from the Erlitou royal family in the Central Plains.
After they moved from the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to the Chengdu Plain, they were formed after "mixing" with the local aborigines. In the end, he not only established his own "territory" in Chengdu, but also brought the greetings of the Central Plains to the gods and witches of Shu.
Six. Sudden departure
The major affairs of the country are in worship and Rong.
In the late Shang Dynasty, the Sanxingdui culture ushered in its "highlight moment", but looking at the two neat burial pits, it was obviously artificially designed, and the utensils were also placed in an orderly manner. But what is the motive for these artifacts to be buried, it is difficult to understand.
In 2021, Peking University used carbon 14 dating to dig out more than 200 samples from six pits for research.
The results show that the formation of these sacrificial pits is probably the late Shang Dynasty, and this time coincides with the time of the fall of Shang.
In the Yinxu divination and Zhou Yuan's oracle bones, the word "Shu" appears frequently, although the writing is varied, but there is a characteristic: longitudinal eyes, that is, the eyes are vertical, and the Sanxingdui people are exactly the same.
So why did the state archives of Shang and Western Zhou mention the daimyo of Shu?
In today's Chenggu and Yangxian counties of Shaanxi, people have found traces of the ancient Shu people, and the unearthed bronzes have both a bit of Yin Shang flavor and Sanxingdui style.
Therefore, they were the local regimes established in the Hanzhong Basin when the Sanxingdui civilization expanded northward.
Therefore, the ancient Shu Kingdom, which was on the edge of the Central Plains civilization, could not stand the tyranny of the King of Xu, so it was very likely that they obeyed the call of the Martial King and rushed to the battlefield of Muye at dawn that day.
They were in the limelight at the time, but then suddenly disappeared from the Chengdu plain?
Some people say that after the destruction of the Shang Dynasty, the army of the Zhou Dynasty attacked them, and some people say that they moved, because, in the Western Zhou Dynasty, the country of Gongyu appeared with similar ornaments as Sanxingdui.
Although no one knows what happened to them, it can be said that when the wind of royal power in the Western Zhou Dynasty blew away the last trace of divine power in the ancient Shu Kingdom, the leaders of the Sanxingdui people (Shu people) made a final consolation to their ancestors.
They buried all the national treasures used for sacrifice, and held a grand sacrificial ceremony for the abdication of theocracy.
Just like when the Shang Dynasty fell, the king of Shang went to the fire and died.
And then disappeared.
Epilogue:
There seems to be no standard answer as to why the ancient Shu Kingdom chose to bury its national treasures after the fall of the Shang Dynasty.
But each answer may have something to do with their reverence for theocracy, their reverence for their ancestors, and their keen perception of historical changes. This move may be a tribute to the past and an expectation for the future.
Although there are still many unsolved mysteries in Sanxingdui, every new discovery and research brings us one step closer to the truth.
Sanxingdui, this disappearing civilization, its charm and mystery will always attract us to explore and pursue.
Source: China National Knowledge Network "Sanxingdui Burial Pit Combined Bronze Ware - Sanxingdui Temple in the Communicative Offering Utensils of Humanity and God" Sun Hua