For hundreds of years, the Sanxingdui culture flourished in what is now southwest China, producing ornate bronze masks and precious wares before vanishing abruptly around 1100 or 1200 B.C.E.

Archaeologists connected Monday announced the “significant” bid of finds astatine the Sanxingdui ruins successful China’s southwestern Sichuan province, according to the team down the dig and the state-run Xinhua quality agency.

A squad including academics from Peking University and Sichuan University recovered thousands of items including intricate bronze, golden, and jade items, and what it called the unprecedented find of 10 bronzes. Experts accidental the finds day backmost 3,000 to 4,500 years.

Discovered successful in the precocious 1920s, Sanxingdui is 1 of the cardinal Chinese archaeological sites. Experts deliberation its treasures erstwhile belonged to the past Shu kingdom, which dates backmost 4,800 years and lasted 2,000 years.

A bronze altar and a dragon with a pig’s chemoreceptor are among a trove of items discovered in successful sacrificial pits that shed caller airy connected the buried secrets of a past Chinese civilization.

Historians know relatively little about the Sanxingdui culture, which left behind no written records or human remains, though many believe it to be part of the ancient kingdom of Shu. It’s hoped the latest finds will shed light on the kingdom, which ruled in the western Sichuan basin along the upper stream of the Yangtze River until it was conquered in 316 BC.

A joint team of archaeologists from Sichu an Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, Peking University, Sichuan University, and other research institutions has been excavating the six pits at the site since 2020.
In the most recent excavation, archeologists found 3,155 relatively intact relics, including more than 2,000 bronze wares and statues, China’s state news agency Xinhua reported.

Believed to be part of the broader Shu state, the civilization continues to fascinate more than 3,000 years after its demise. As state-run news agency Xinhua reports, a trove of 13,000 artifacts unearthed at the Sanxingdui Ruins site over the past two years is poised to offer new insights on the mysterious Bronze Age culture. Found in six sacrificial pits, according to China Daily’s Wang Kaihao, the cache includes 1,238 bronze wares, 543 gold artifacts and 565 jade objects.

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the vessel is one of its kind, given its distinctive shape, fine craftsmanship and ingenious design,” Li Haichao, an archaeologist at Sichuan University, tells Xinhua. “Although we do not know what this vessel was used for, we can assume that ancient people treasured it.”

Archaeology Research Institute told Xinhua that the diversity of items at the site showed cultural exchanges between ancient civilizations in China.
He noted that one of the sculptures with the head of a human and the body of a snake were characteristic of the ancient Shu civilization, while ceremonial vessels known as “zun” from the site were culturally emblematic of the Zhongyuan, a region known as China’s central plains.

Burned fragments of ivory were recovered successfully 1 pit and the beingness of ash, perchance the remnants of histrion and works substance utilized arsenic fuel, has led archaeologists to speculate that boxes were placed successfully in pits to beryllium burned.

In-pit 8, archaeologists recovered yet much elaborate bronze work, including heads with golden masks, an altar, and a dragon with a pig’s nose.

A funny three-part sculpture features a snake with a quality caput with protruding eyes, tusks, and horns. The apical portion of the caput resembles a past trumpet-shaped vino vessel.

In addition to the towering figurines, excavators discovered oversized bronze masks with exaggerated facial features. Measuring around three feet wide, the masks share several key characteristics, per the Saxingdui Museum: “knife-shaped eyebrows, protruding eyes in [a] triangle shape, big stretching ears, snub nose, and fine mouth.” Experts posit that the masks may have memorialized their creators’ ancestors or gods.

The 12-square-mile site was accidentally discovered in the late 1920s by a farmer in Sichuan province who was repairing a sewage ditch. It is considered one of the most important Chinese archaeological finds and one of the world’s greatest discoveries of the 20th century.

Although not yet recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Sanxingdui is on the organization’s “tentative list” for consideration