Masks made by aliens?
Jinsha shares many cultural similarities with Sanxingdui, or Three Star Mound, an important archaeological site located at Guanghan, a city 40 kilometers away from Chengdu, and representing an ancient Chinese culture that is believed to have existed between 2800 BC and 800 BC.
For example, the Jinsha gold mask looks like the bronze masks unearthed in Sanxingdui. The bronze masks in Sanxingdui show facial features so different from those of local Chinese that some people have joked that they must have been made by extraterrestrial beings.
The Sanxingdui culture disappeared suddenly after about 500 years in existence and some have speculated it may have disappeared in a flood. The discovery of Jinsha suggests that the Sanxingdui people may have moved to Jinsha and built another capital there, where their culture lasted for another 500 years before disappearing.
The Jinsha site covers an area of about five square kilometers.
"As far as we can make out after studying more than 2,000 tombs, the life expectancy of people there was about 30 or 40 years," says Zhu Zhangyi, deputy-curator of the Jinsha Museum.
"Sanxingdui and Jinsha are consistent in cultural traits and present a unique culture in the world, a bronze culture endemic to Sichuan," says Sun Hua, an archaeologist from Peking University. "The sites have yielded rare stone and bronze artifacts, including statues of human beings, gods and animals. They used so much prehistoric jade that some people describe it as 'wild'."
The place revealed by the bulldozer's blade is a site where the ancient people offered sacrifices to the gods. After the rites, they apparently buried the utensils used during the ceremony in a pit. Each pit holds a minimum of 10 to 20 utensils but some pits used by high-ranking officials, or for particularly important gods, have as many as 1,000 objects.
Locals believe it is their ancestors' will that their secret has at last been revealed to the world. "The area was previously farmland. If the bulldozer had not tumbled on the biggest sacrificial pit, the site may have slept under high-rises for decades or even centuries," says Zhao Bisong who works at the Jinsha Museum.
Archaeologists are optimistic about more exciting finds as only one tenth of the sacrificial area has been excavated, and the king's mausoleum has not yet been located.
"The gold masks and jade artifacts carry historical information quite different from cultures in other parts of China," says Professor Sun. "Just half of the 16 layers of deposits have been excavated and further exploration will surely throw up new surprises."
China Features
(China Daily 07/19/2007 page19)
