Back to Sichuan Index  
Back to Sanxingdui Index  

Splendor of ancient Shu culture

A lot of ancient remains are scattered in Sichuan and neighbouring areas.  Many cultural relics with special features have been unearthed.  All the cultural remains have identical style, and formed one regional cultural system.  Generally, the "Shu culture" is divided into two periods - early Shu (the period of Xia, Shang, West Zhou dynasties) and late Shu (from the period of East Zhou dynasty).  The typical symbol of Shu culture is Sanxingdui.  Sanxingdui culture can be divided into four period.  The first belongs to pre-Shu culture, and the second to fourth belong to early Shu culture.  The Sanxingdui culture or civilization occurred between 2800 B.C. to 800 B.C.,  from Neolithic age:  Dragon Hill culture to the end of Shang/early Zhou.

The 'capital cities' of the Shu culture was around the plains of Chengdu. Sanxingdui in Guanghan was one of such cities of ancient Shu.  The brilliant craftsmanship and other achievements of Sanxingdui is proof that the ancient Shu reached a high level of civilization.  

Academic circles divide Sanxingdui culture into four periods.  The first period belongs to fore-Shu culture, around the time of late Neolithic age.  The second period is the formation of the Shu culture, around the time of the early Xia and Shang dynasties.  The city walls were built.  The third is the prosperous period, around late Shang dynasty, and the fourth was the decline period, around end Shang to the early Zhou. dynasty.

A New Revolution in Ancient China

Imagine that archaeologists were to discover evidence of a sophisticated culture whose existence until that point was completely unknown to us. If this scenario sounds implausible, recent discoveries in China demonstrate that we don't know as much as we think we do about the origins of complex human societies.

In the last twenty years or so, not only has archaeological evidence pushed back the date of the earliest rice farming, city building, large-scale sculpture, and ritual practices in China, but it has also brought to light entirely unknown civilizations. For instance, in 1986 brick makers excavating clay in Sanxingdui, Sichuan Province, stumbled upon a treasure trove of bronzes and other objects dating to the thirteenth century B.C.E. Up to that point, it was almost universally believed that the only Bronze Age civilization in China was that of the Shang Dynasty, thought to be centered around Anyang, in the Yellow River Valley, far to the north of Sanxingdui. The Sanxingdui bronzes, which include the earliest examples of life-size human sculpture in China, meet with the American public for the first time in two exhibitions, one that traveled to Washington, D.C., Houston, and San Francisco in 1999–2000, and another that will travel from the Seattle Art Museum to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, and then on to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2001.

While the Yellow River Valley may have lost its claim to the only great Bronze Age civilization in China, another archaeological find, which was little-known to Western scholars until now, provides astonishing evidence of the extreme antiquity of permanent human settlement in the region. Discovered in 1962 by the late Zhu Zhi, former director of the Wuyang County Museum, the Neolithic site at Jiahu in Henan Province only began to be studied in earnest fifteen years ago, and to date is only about 5 percent excavated. Jiahu includes over 40 dwellings, 370 cellars, and more than 300 graves. The village was inhabited for roughly 1,300 years, starting in about 7000 B.C.E.

In addition to evidence of rice cultivation and mystical divination, the site has yielded six intact musical instruments -- flutes made from the wing bones of the red-crowned crane. At 7000–9000 years old, as indicated by radiocarbon dating, these flutes may be the earliest extant and playable multinote instruments in the world, yet they can produce a scale that covers a modern octave. Because the flutes were found in graves, researchers believe that music must have played an important role in religious rituals (such as death rites) at Jiahu. You can read about these findings in detail in the September 1999 issue of the British science journal Nature, and you can even listen to an online recording of researcher Taoying Xu playing a (more recent) Chinese folk song on one of the flutes on the Brookhaven National Laboratory Web site. Like the Sanxingdui bronzes, the haunting sounds of the ancient Jiahu flute have contributed to a growing global interest in and an awareness of Chinese culture, as well as a new line of questioning as to the roots of modern civilization.  

Importance of Ancient Sichuan Culture   

Shanxing dui Ruin, capital of Ancient Shu in the age of Yin & Shang, is located in Guanghan, Sichuan Province, China. It is one of the ten most important discoveries of archeology in China.

The world famous cultural relics of Shanxing Dui is the most valuable and admirable one in the abundant magnificent cultural groups in China.

Thousands of years ago, the history of Ancient Shu is like something hidden magically in the clouds and hard to understand. A great poet in Tang dynasty-Li Bai--was shocked and composed many poems to describe the mystery of Ancient Shu. It seems that the history of Ancient Shu has gone with the wind.In the end of 20's of this century, a series of jade vessel was excavated in the zone of Sanxing Dui Ruin. They arrested lots of attention because of their thick local feature.

In the 30's and 40's, archaeologists from all over the world set out to explore mystery and embark the research on the subject. Especially in the 50's and 60's, local archaeologist s worked hard unremittingly. In the 80's, with the massive exhumation of the cultural relics, the viewpoint had been attested that this place was once a considerably advanced ancient kingdom before 3000 years in the southwest of China. The Ancient Shu ever had a magnificent period.

During July to September of 1987 A.D., discovery of the two huge sacrifice tomb -- the most important discovery in the past fifty years -- which brought a large amount of cultural relics, became the most resounding news and made the Site Of Three-star well-known to the world. There were many fancy bronzes in this series of treasure, such as a 2.62 meters high statue, an 1.4 meters wide mask and a nearly 4 meters high tree which was considered as the only one in the world. The shining gold plate, such as aureate gold mace, the immaculate jade, such as totemic article were all singularity too. The compelling grand bronze statue groups elucidated the regime framework and social structure of Ancient Shu. From the cultural relics of Site of Three-star, the mental world of the primitive people could be perceived, and so did their experience.

The discovery of Sanxing dui Ruin and the excavation of the cultural relics proved the existence of Ancient Shu undoubtedly. The mysterious legends of Ancient Shu then became truely history, the origin and the center of the Acient Shu were also validated for the site of Three-star.

As a "hyper-tribal,stable and independent political entity" the site of The Ancient Shu is one of the most representative " ancient country " in the rimlands surrounding the central area of ancient china, it has great full orientation significance to us. Sanxing dui Ruin filled up the lack of some chains of important cultural relics in the process of the Chinese civilization. As an eximious representation of Chinese ancient civilization in zone of upriver yangtse rive, it has proved multi-aspect of the origin of Chinese civilization firmly again.

"Been slept for thousands of years, once woke it rocked the whole world." As a treasury full of essence, it is filled with glamour of Ancient China. As a mysterious art hall, it is shining with rays of the human cultural legacies. The antiques are peculiar treasure in ancient human world, which are part of global cultural legacies. The living example is apotheosis that exploring the human being's political structure and evolution of the social framework in early stage. It's very valuable for us to study the process of the country and the development of the religion ideology. It is a landmark in the history of civilization.

"The exhibition of antiques of Ancient Shu" in the museum of the site, which covers over 3000 square meters and are composed by over 1000 exhibits, reveals the great influence of the relics completely. For the sake of the visitors, the designers of the exhibition exerted all kinds of modern techniques to express the connotation. As soon as the museum cut the ribbon at an opening ceremony, it attracted lots of visitors, some of whom even came from overseas. President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji and Chairman of People's Congress Li Peng, etc. went their way to visited the exhibition many times.

Contacting information               

E-mail: cits@4panda.com

About our Corp.