Message #21875

[Bee Cha]

Jinsha shares many cultural similarities with Sanxingdui, or Three Star Mound, an important archaeological site about 50 km away.

For example, the Jinsha gold mask looks like the bronze masks uncovered in Sanxingdui. The bronze masks in Sanxingdui show facial features so different from local Chinese that some people have joked that they must have been built by extraterrestrial beings.

"Maybe the features on the masks were done so as to deliberately exaggerate their facial features," Zhu said.

Sanxingdui culture disappeared suddenly after about 500 years of existence and some have speculated it may have disappeared in a flood. The discovery of Jinsha suggests that Sanxingdui people may have moved to Jinsha and built another capital there, where their culture lasted for another 500 years before disappearing again.

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," Zhu said.

"Sanxingdui and Jinsha are consistent in cultural traits and they present a unique culture in the world, bronze culture endemic to Sichuan," said Sun, "The sites yielded rare stone and bronze artifacts, including statues of human beings, Gods and animals. They used so many prehistoric jade that some people describe it as ''wild''."

The place revealed by the bulldozer''s blade was a ceremonial 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 ten to 20 utensils but some pits used by high-ranking officials or for particularly important gods have as many as 1,000 objects.