In an out-of-the-way area of southwest China not on the beaten path of most foreign tourists visiting the picturesque home of the giant panda, giant Buddha and Tibetan people lies a little-known site that holds its own unique mystique.

Some 100 years ago, Sanxingdui in today's Sichuan Province hadn't seemed to anyone anything more than a typical rural area, and just 20 years ago its significance was not fully known. But when a farmer hollowing out a just-dug ditch in 1929 found some jade he unwittingly opened the door on an unknown culture between 3,000 to5,000 years old.

Perhaps it's not so startling in itself that an accidental strike of the hoe would unearth ruins as new archeological sites from China's rich history are being discovered almost every day.

But what no one could have expected was that this particular discovery would rewrite Chinese history by unearthing a culture contemporary with the first civilizations of China but that had left no clues in historical records, that seemingly disappeared without a trace and which left artifacts never before discovered elsewhere in China.

The discovery of the jade, which the family thought to keep secret at first, later brought archeologists, though one of them have predicted in the 1930s that this might be the capital of the ancient Shu kingdom, they still might have been startled by another accidental discovery by workers at a brick factory in 1986.

Two sacrificial pits were filled with gold masks, bronze wares,jade tablets, elephant tusks and sacred trees - and they opened a world of mystery. The discovery pushed back the date of the bronzeage in China and yet the objects made are unlike any made in any other period of Chinese civilization with the creation of human-like figures and faces particularly unique.

They left experts asking what the purpose of the objects was, where the culture came from, why there was no mention of it in historical texts and how such an ancient culture, at the origin ofChinese civilization, could be so advanced.

Theories abound, but whatever the answer, the unique part-human,part-animal masks have become the symbol of Sanxingdui and of the mysterious culture. So recently the local government invited some foreign journalists to participate in the opening of the Sanxingdui International Mask Festival at the start of the May Dayholiday.

The area whose name means 'three-star mounds' in English is nota place foreigners who aren't archeologists would know to visit and little is left for the common person to see of the actual ruins but some ancient objects and many reproductions showing off this advanced culture are on display in the local museum.

The more we learned about the mystery behind what was dug up, the more intriguing and important this site seemed. Many objects at first seem somewhat commonplace for old cultures until you realize that the people making these objects were those living at the beginning of Chinese civilization. 

2005/05/07
Source: China Daily