Since its discovery in 1929, the Sanxingdui culture, represented by the Sanxingdui site, has been famous for its cultural appearance that is different from the Central Plains and for its brilliant excavated cultural relics. The discussion of the cultural origin of Sanxingdui sometimes spills over into the academic community, causing widespread concern in society. Professor Sun Hua of the School of Archaeology and Archaeology of Peking University, "Sanxingdui Ruins and Sanxingdui Culture", introduced the discovery process, cultural staging, layout and function of the city site, ethnic composition and even cosmology of the Sanxingdui site in detail. This article was originally published in Literature and History Knowledge, No. 6, 2017.
In addition, on April 1, the Institute of Culture and Research will organize the "Sanxingdui Culture and Sanxingdui Country" forum to further unveil the mystery of Sanxingdui culture for readers.
Longitudinal man mask
Height 66, width 138cm
The Sanxingdui culture is a bronze culture distributed in the Sichuan Basin in southwest China, dating roughly from 1700 BC to 1200 BC. This culture is based on the Sanxingdui site in Nanxing Town, Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, as a typical site, with a wide range, because the most important archaeological work and the most important archaeological discoveries of the site are concentrated around the mound called "Sanxingdui", hence the name. Sanxingdui site is the longest lasting pre-Qin settlement and city in Chengdu Plain, is also the largest known Bronze Age ancient site in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the Sanxingdui culture represented by the Sanxingdui site is the earliest bronze culture in the Sichuan Basin, which has an important position and role in Chinese Bronze Age archaeology. The Sanxingdui site and Sanxingdui culture provide a wealth of physical materials for the study and exploration of the early history of the legendary ancient Shu kingdom.
The three cultures of the Sanxingdui site
The Sanxingdui site is located on the Yazi River, about 7 kilometers northwest of Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, with administrative divisions spanning Nanxing Town and Sanxing Town, 40 kilometers south of Chengdu City, and the geographical coordinates are 30°59′38"N and 104°11′58"E (Figure 1). The site is an irregular trapezoidal with a south-wide and north-narrow plane, 5 km to 6 km long from east to west, 2 km to 3 km wide in the south, with a total area of about 12 square kilometers, of which the most important places are "Sanxingdui" in the south, "Moon Bay" and "Qingguan Mountain" in the north, and "Rensheng Village" in the west of the city.
Figure 1: The location of the Sanxingdui site
The site was discovered in 1929. At that time, a farmer surnamed Yan stumbled upon a jade pit at the site of Moon Bay at the site, and according to this clue, in 1934, the West China University Museum conducted an investigation and excavation of Moon Bay north of the Sanxingdui site. In 1951, archaeologists in Sichuan Province investigated the Sanxingdui site, and for the first time, a large cultural accumulation was found at the Sanxingdui site in the south of the site. From 1980 to 1986, archaeologists in Sichuan Province conducted several consecutive archaeological excavations at the Sanxingdui site, basically grasping the vertical evolution of the site and proposing the naming of the Sanxingdui culture. In 1986, on the southwest side of the mound named "Sanxingdui" in the south of the Sanxingdui site, which was later confirmed to be artificially built, two artifact pits were discovered successively, and a large number of gold, copper, jade, stone, bone, tooth, and pottery artifacts were excavated. From 1987 to 1996, archaeologists have identified the outer walls of Sanxingdui east, west and south, and dissected the remains of the two inner city walls in the northwest of the site, thus realizing that the ruins of Sanxingdui in the Xia and Shang dynasties were a large-scale city surrounded by a wide earthen city wall and an internal small city (Moon Bay Small City) in the northwest (Figure 2). In 1997, outside the western city wall of Sanxingdui Ancient City, the Rensheng Village Cemetery was discovered, which gave people a more comprehensive understanding of the space between the living and the dead at the Sanxingdui site. Since 2000, the archaeological investigation and excavation of the Sanxingdui site has been carried out, and the archaeologists of the Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology have not only made a comprehensive drilling of the site, but also newly confirmed the northeast small city of Sanxingdui (CangbaoBao Xiaocheng) through archaeological excavations, newly revealed the large building complex of Qingguan Mountain in the north of the northwest small city, and then had a more comprehensive understanding of the distribution of the Sanxingdui site. With the increase of archaeological materials, researchers' attention began to shift from the two artifact pits of Sanxingdui to the site of Sanxingdui City, and from the site of Sanxingdui City to the Sanxingdui culture and its related archaeological remains, thus deepening the research on the Sanxingdui site, sanxingdui culture, Sichuan bronze culture system and ancient Shu history.
Figure 2: Floor plan of Sanxingdui Ancient City
Based on the stratigraphic relationships, the status of the ruins and the style of artifacts at the Sanxingdui site, archaeologists already know that the Sanxingdui site spanned a considerable period of time, from the Longshan Era at the end of the Neolithic period to the Shang Zhou period of the Bronze Age (about 2500 BC to 1000 BC), and lasted for 1500 years. The site can be divided into three major periods of early, middle and late (some archaeologists divide the middle period, that is, the second period of Sanxingdui, into two periods, so that the Sanxingdui site is divided into four periods), and the three periods represent three different archaeological cultures. The first major period of the Sanxingdui site is the Baodun Village culture (2500 BC to 1700 BC), the second period is the Sanxingdui culture (1700 BC to 1200 BC), the third period belongs to the Twelve Bridges culture, in addition to the third period, the other two periods have experienced the whole process of cultural development.
The base site of the baodun ancient city ruins
By the time of sanxingdui's first major period, sanxingdui had already appeared on a large scale, but no city wall was built (or only two north-south defensive facilities were built between the Yazi River and the Mamu River), and the central area of the settlement extended all the way to the west city of the later Sanxingdui ancient city. When the construction of the city wall began in the second phase of Sanxingdui, the original settlement had been destroyed, so many of the house sites of the previous period were superimposed under the newly built walls or large buildings. The disappearance from the original settlement to the construction of the new capital city is undoubtedly a major change in the development of the Sanxingdui site, and the Sanxingdui site before the establishment of the city and the Sanxingdui site after the establishment of the city should be separated, and each should be regarded as a major stage of development of the site. In the third period of Sanxingdui, the original palace, temple, and city wall have been destroyed, the statues and utensils in the original temple have been destroyed and buried underground, and only some areas of the site have found the remains of this period, and some previous special places (such as sanxingdui religious sites and Qingguanshan palace sites) have also appeared in the accumulation of ordinary residence sites in this period. The fall from the central capital to the ordinary settlement is undoubtedly another major change in the Sanxingdui site, and it should be reasonable to treat the central capital period and the ordinary settlement period as a large period (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Three-star pile city, pile, pit direction gesture
Through the phased study of the Sanxingdui site, it can be known that during the period of the transformation of Baodun village culture to Sanxingdui culture, many baodun village cultural ancient cities in the Chengdu plain have been abandoned, only the settlement of Sanxingdui has begun to rise and become a regional center; and when the Sanxingdui culture is transformed into the Twelve Bridges culture, the ancient city of Sanxingdui should also have major political events and social changes, and the main residents of the city are likely to migrate to other places, and some of them may migrate to the western suburbs of Chengdu. There, the ancient city of Jinsha Village was newly established, ushering in a new era.
Functional layout of sanxingdui city site
The ancient city of sanxingdui in the second period is bordered by the Yazi River in the north and the Small HippoMu River in the south, so that the city site presents a cross-river distribution pattern divided by the river into two districts, south and north. The city is 1800 meters to 1900 meters long from north to south, and 800 meters to 2000 meters wide from east to west, and the plan of the city site is narrow in the north, wide in the south, short in the east and long in the west, with an area of about 3.6 square kilometers. The city site is surrounded by a very thick city wall and a wide trench, the city wall is built diagonally with earth, the wall is generally composed of the main city wall and the inner and outer walls, the wall base is more than 40 meters wide, and the existing width at the top is about 20 meters. The eastern city wall is about 1090 meters old, the southern city wall is about 1150 meters, the western city wall is still about 650 meters, the north city wall may have had both flood control functions, but it has been washed away by the Duck River and has no trace to be found (archaeologists recently found two sections of the suspected city wall in the north of the site, there is still a distance from the Duck River, and there is also an area rich in culture in the same period on the north side of the city, such as "Xiquankan", which may not be the northern wall of the Ayutthaya). There are several gaps in the eastern, western and southern walls of the Ayutthaya, some of which may be where the city gates are located, but it is difficult to determine. Of these gaps, the most noteworthy is the one on the western wall of the Ayutthaya, which is connected to the moat outside the western wall, where the silt and pebbles are thickly piled up, most likely the "water gate" where the Gumamu River enters the city. The river that originally passed through the city entered the city from here, rather than from the southwest corner of the city, and now the course of the Mamu River is the result of a flood diversion.
Sanxingdui ruins
According to the remains of the inner city wall in the city, it is now known that in the northern center of the Ayutthaya, there is a north-south longitudinal wall and moat dividing the entire city site into two parts, east and west. In this way, the river running through the city from east to west and the wall that runs through the city from north to south divides the entire Sanxingdui city site into four areas, of which the northwest district is also built along the north bank of the Mamu River, making it a closed northwestern city, and in the central north of the city there is an artificial earthen platform "Qingguan Mountain" up to 3 meters high, and there are large palace buildings constructed of civil engineering on the earthen platform, and an excavated building is 65 meters long from east to west and about sixteen meters wide from north to south. From the remains of the palace architecture of Qingguan Mountain, combined with the various forms of tiles previously excavated in the eastern part of the northwest town, it can be judged that the northwest town is the most important "palace city" of Sanxingdui City, and it is the location of the central administrative district of the city. Although the southwestern small city opposite the northwestern town was seriously damaged by the Mamu River, judging from the two artifact pits at the Sanxingdui site that have been preserved and the artifacts with strong religious sacrifice colors buried in the pits, the southwest small town is likely to be the place where the Sanxingdui people held sacrifice activities and is the religious area of the city. In the northeast of Ayutthaya, in recent years, it has also been confirmed that there is a small northeastern city, which was built in the late stage of the second phase of Sanxingdui, and judging from the large number of jade artifacts excavated in the city, there may be an area with handicraft workshops as the main function. In addition, in rensheng village outside the western city wall, there are also densely distributed and orderly pieces of tombs, which should be an important burial area of the Sanxingdui site.
Guanghan Duck River, May 2017
Sanxingdui's chengyi is located on the south bank of a large river, and there is another river running through the center of the city, dividing the space in the city into two parts, north and south, and the functional division of the city presents the spatial pattern of Hebei as a secular area and Henan as a religious area. In addition, the inner city wall that runs through the north and south of the city divides the city into east and west cities to separate the different social classes and occupations in the city. As a result, the city forms an urban structure in which the north and south go up and down, and the east and west are juxtaposed with the two cities. The planning ideas and cultural traditions of the ancient city of Sanxingdui had a great influence on the capital city of the ancient Shu Kingdom in the future, and even on the capital planning of the Qin and Han Empires. The ruins of Jinsha Village and the city of Chengdu in the Warring States period both planned the city on the banks of a wide river, but a slightly smaller river passed through the city from west to east, dividing the capital city into two urban areas, south and north. The northern part of the city is decorated with secular buildings such as palaces, and the southern part of the city is arranged with religious sacrifice sites such as temples, highlighting the dualistic idea of the separation of man and god. The river that runs through the middle of the city plays the role of separating the secular people from the functional areas of the clergy, and also plays the role of a link between the space of the people on the north side of the river and the space of the gods on the south side of the river. This is actually what some scholars call the capital city planning of "like heaven and earth". The capital of the Qin state, Xianyang, was on the north bank of the Wei River, and there were also old and new Xianyang Cities, the former being the Xianyang Capital built during the reign of Qin Xiaogong, and the latter being a palace area built by Qin Shi Huang to imitate the Palace of the Six Kingdoms, and he also extended the Xianyang City to the south bank of the Wei River, forming a capital city pattern in which the river ran across the Great Xianyang. Because Qin Shi Huang constantly mythologized himself, regarded himself as the sublimation of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, and pursued the immortal alchemy and immortality, he transplanted the capital city plan of the original ancient Shu kingdom "Like Heaven and Law" to Xianyang, strengthening the heavens and weakening the earth, changing "like heaven and earth" to symbolize heaven and Han. Ancient texts record that Chengdu was "in the same system as Xianyang" (Jin Changxuan's "Huayang Guozhi Shuzhi"), and the form of Qin Xianyang was "Duanmen Sida, with the Purple Palace; Weishui Guandu, with elephants like Tianhan; Hengqiao Nandu, with the Law of Morning Glory" ("Chu Xue Ji" Volume 7 Di Di Xia Cited "Three Auxiliary Yellow Diagrams"), which is the product of this planning idea.
Sanxingdui culture and ancient Shu history
Through years of archaeological work and research, archaeologists have a more in-depth and comprehensive understanding of the Sanxingdui site and its culture. Although no writing has been found at the Sanxingdui site, a large number of high-grade cultural relics such as bronze statues that are not seen by other cultures have been excavated from the Sanxingdui Artifact Pit, which intuitively conveys a large amount of important historical and cultural information to us, and the Sanxingdui Kingdom, shrouded in ancient fog, has revealed its part of the "true face of Lushan".
Bronze standing figure
Pass height 260cm
First of all, the ethnic composition of the Sanxingdui Kingdom was diverse, in addition to the local Neolithic ethnic groups that originally lived on the Chengdu Plain, there were also ethnic groups that migrated from the Central Plains and the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Archaeological research has shown that around 3000 BC, the Chengdu Plain, which is now considered rich, was still a damp and dark jungle, and there were no long-settled settlements. Roughly in the early days corresponding to the Longshan cultural era, some ethnic groups in the northwestern mountains of the Chengdu Plain gradually entered the plain and became the original developers of this area. Due to the influx of people from the surrounding mountains and hills, many villages soon emerged in the Chengdu Plain, and there was a competition and conflict for resources and leadership. In order to protect themselves, after about 2500 BC, some large settlements began to build earthen walls around them, and the Chengdu Plain entered the "city-state era" where ancient cities were lined up. As conflicts between these prehistoric city-states intensified, many of them were annexed by neighboring powerful states, and the original cities became fewer and fewer. Around 1700 BC, the Sanxingdui ethnic group located on the northern edge of the Chengdu Plain, because of its geographical location in the Tuojiang River Basin, made the city-state on the edge of the conflict between the city-states and reaped the benefits of the fishermen; also because of this period, a group from the Erlitou culture of the Central Plains Yiluo region, through the Guanzhong region of Shaanxi and the Tianshui region of Gansu, joined the Sanxingdui city-state, bringing more advanced technology and experience, thus standing out in the fierce city-state conflict. It has eliminated other ancient cities on the Chengdu Plain and become the only ancient country in the Chengdu Plain and even the Sichuan Basin.
Bronze head with gold mask
The head has a longitudinal diameter of 13 .8cm, a transverse diameter of 12 cm and a height of 41 cm
Figure 4: The composition of the upper layer of the Sanxingdui Kingdom
Second, the social structure of the Sanxingdui Kingdom consisted mainly of two ethnic groups, with some characteristics of the early state. In the bronze human head portrait in the Sanxingdui artifact pit, it is clearly divided into two hairstyles: one is the "braided hair" person who combs his hair into a braid and drags it behind his head, like the men of the Qing Dynasty; the other is the "hairpin" person who pulls his hair behind his head and then pins it up with a hairpin, which is the mainstream hairstyle of people in the central plains of China for thousands of years (Figure 4). The "braided hair" people may have been early residents of the mountains of northwest Sichuan, belonging to the main ethnic group of the Chengdu Plain, and the upper echelons of them may hold part of the power of the state, while the lower layers are the grass-roots residents of the Sanxingdui Kingdom. The "braided hair" portraits at the Sanxingdui site, the hair on the head of the bronze figure are combed to the back of the head and braided into large braids, while the hair on the top of the head of the naked figure tied with stone hands is cut into "split heads", but the hair behind the head is combed into a small braid; the difference between the social status of the two is very obvious in the hairstyle. In the bronze statue group of Sanxingdui, all those who engage in religious sacrifice rituals are "Zhenfa" figures, and the "Zhenfa" people are likely to be foreign ethnic groups from the Central Plains, they are theocratic aristocrats who hold knowledge such as astronomy and religion; then, those "braided hair" people who coexist with them are likely to be native ethnic groups in the Chengdu Plain, and they are secular aristocrats who hold military and administrative power.
Sacred Tree
Height 396, base diameter 93 cm
Figure 5: Sanxingdui people's cosmology
Third, the people of the Sanxingdui Kingdom already had a complex cosmology, with a primitive religion with the sun god as the supreme god, forming a symbolic meaning of the bird and eye associated with the sun. A large copper mulberry tree and a copper willow tree about five meters high have been unearthed in the Sanxingdui artifact pit, and a sunbird perches on each of the nine branches of each tree, which should be an early physical example of the cosmology and myth that there are ten days in the sky and take turns to cruise around the sky. A comprehensive collection of excavated cultural relics and myths and legends shows that the universe in the minds of the Sanxingdui people is a dome-shaped sky covering the earth, surrounded by a vast ocean, at the end of the East China Sea there is a mulberry tree named "Fuso", at the end of the West Sea there is a willow tree named "Wakaki", and ten sunbirds take turns to fly from the east to the west (Figure 5). Based on this cosmology, the people of the Sanxingdui Kingdom worshipped the sun very much, forming a system of gods centered on the sun god in the body of a human head bird. The three large bronze statues of bronze with convex eyes and pointed ears unearthed in the Sanxingdui artifact pit should be the facial decoration of the sun god and related gods in the Sanxingdui Kingdom Temple (Figure 6). The original complete head and body of the sun god were wooden carvings of the human head and bird body, and the wooden part has disappeared with the burning of the temple, and only the bronze facial decoration with convex ears has been preserved. Probably because the image of the main god such as the sun god is a bird, and the eyes of the sun god are extraordinarily special, the people of the Sanxingdui culture have formed the custom of worshiping birds and eye images. Their wizards dressed up as birds to please the gods, their kings held scepters of the bird's head, their temples were nailed with many huge copper eyes, and the clergy who communicated with the gods also had eye motifs on their clothes or bodies. The bronze statues of birds with bird makeup unearthed from sanxingdui artifact pits, bronze figures of bird-shaped clouds with feet, and images of numerous birds and eyes are a reflection of this custom and worship.
Bronze bird
Height 33.9cm, width 19.3cm
Figure 6: A combination of the main gods of Sanxingdui
Fourth, the Sanxingdui Kingdom was still a relatively backward ancient country, mainly using high-pressure means of military killing and plundering to rule, and the Chengdu Plain and Sichuan Basin, which were originally lined with ancient cities and densely packed with villages, had been basically empty. During the first period of Sanxingdui, the Baodun Village Culture Period, there were at least eight ancient cities in the Chengdu Plain, and these cities were densely scattered with villages of the same period, and the settlements of the same culture were even distributed in the Bayu area and even in the northern part of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. However, by the time of the second phase of Sanxingdui, these ancient cities and villages had all disappeared at once, as illustrated by the fact that there were only a few sites of the Sanxingdui culture found throughout the Chengdu Plain and the Sichuan Basin. Only at the end of the Sanxingdui culture, that is, the arrival of the third major period of Sanxingdui, the Chengdu Plain and its surrounding settlements increased rapidly, and a large number of sites of the Twelve Bridges culture were found in and around the entire Sichuan Basin, and their density even exceeded that of the Baodun Village cultural period. The time span between the Sanxingdui culture and the two cultures before and after is not very large, but the number, density and distribution range of the sites are very different, highlighting that the Sanxingdui Kingdom period is actually the trough of the development of the pre-Qin culture in the Sichuan Basin. The brilliant artifacts of the two artifact pits of Sanxingdui are easily obscured by people's eyes.
Bronze solar shaper
Diameter 85cm
Jade beads
Size: Length 1 to 1 .8cm, diameter 0.8 to 1.1 cm
Fifth, the Sanxingdui culture may be the remnants of the early ancient Shu state, and it is possible that the lineage of the ancient Shu Dynasty is the legendary "Bai Guan" dynasty. The Eastern Jin Dynasty Chang Xuan's Huayang Guozhi Shu Zhi records that the earliest ancestor king of the Shu people, Silkworm Cong, said: "There is a Silkworm Bush of the Marquis of Shu, and its eyes are longitudinal, and it is called the king." "Sanxingdui culture has the characteristics of prominently expressing the eyes, and the culture that highlights the eyes may belong to the remnants of the ancient Shu people, and the Sanxingdui kingdom may be the earliest ancient Shu kingdom." According to ancient historical legends, the ancient Shu Kingdom successively had several dynasties of silkworm bush, cypress irrigation, fish, Puze, and enlightenment, each of which experienced a development process of hundreds of years, of which the last enlightened dynasty had twelve generations and three hundred and fifty years, and finally was destroyed by the Qin state in 316 BC. According to the dynastic inheritance order of the ancient Shu Kingdom, compared with the Pre-Qin cultural sequence of Baodun Village Culture, Sanxingdui Culture, Twelve Bridges Culture, Xinyi Village Culture (or "Late Twelve Bridges Culture"), and Bashu Culture in Chengdu Plain, since bashu culture is equivalent to the latest Enlightened Dynasty, Xinyi Village Culture is equivalent to the earlier Puze Dynasty, Twelve Bridges Culture is equivalent to The Yujiao Dynasty, and Sanxingdui Culture is roughly equivalent to the Baiguan Dynasty. Of course, the connection between this archaeological material and ancient history and legend needs more materials to verify.
Pottery amphora cups
Caliber 13.5cm, height 10cm
Gold mask
The width of the stump is 21.5 cm, and the height is 11.3 cm
The above is our current understanding of the Sanxingdui ruins, Sanxingdui culture and the early ancient Shu Kingdom. Of course, these understandings must be further supplemented, revised, strengthened and perfected with new archaeological data and new research results.
Transferred from the civilization exploration source public account