The culture Sanxingdui (三星堆 san1 xing1 dui1) goes back to the period going of 2800 with 800 av. J. - C.

The archeological site Sanxingdui is in the town of Guanghan, to approximately 40 km of Chengdu in the province of the Sichuan in China. The objects found on the spot astonished the archeologists because their style was completely different from the Chinese art of the same period.

The objects of Sanxingdui date from the Bronze Age and show a technique of work and cast iron of the Bronze advanced for the time. This civilization approximately seems to have lasted: 2000 years and missing suddenly for still unknown reasons. To date more: 10000 objects out of bronze, Gold, Jade, Os, or Ivoire were found.

The culture sanxingdui seems to be contemporary Dynastie Shang which developed very an other technique of manufacture of bronze. Curiously, this culture never was directly mentioned by the Chinese historians, and there does not exist either of writings which clarify nature of it.

Excavations

In 1929, a farmer wanting to plow his field found a great piece of jade, thereafter good numbers of Chinese archeologists visited the places without too much success until the day or two pits were discovered in 1986. These two sacrificial pits revealed an unknown side of the civilization of Sichuan. Dug at thirty years of variation approximately, they made it possible to discover various parts deliberately broken or burned before being deposited there. One however observes an order in their hiding. To have deposited there shortly after, the inhabitants of Sanxingdui gave up their city for a still unknown reason.

The walls of a city were also found in 1996 and, after excavations, the archeologists discovered that the site covered a surface of 12 km ², which to date makes of it more the big city of Asia of this importance never discovered.

The Xinhua News Agency' declared that these excavations pushed back the Ba history Shu a few 1000 years behind of 1000 with 2000 av. J. - C.. The discovery of bronzes was to excite the curiosity of the scientists of the whole world, and Rosen Task of the British Museum even considered that they were more important than the Army cooked of Xi' year. In 1987 and 1990, objects were exposed to Beijing. In 1993, the exposure moved in Suisse, 1995 with Munich, and in 1996 with the British Museum, attracting each time a crowd of visitors. A museum was also opened in Sanxingdui.

The museum of Sanxingdui contains a thousand of invaluable historical vestiges, among which six treasures nationaux : a gigantic vertical statue bronzes some, a mask bronzes some with the projecting eyes evoking Can Cong (ancestor of Shu), a gold cane symbolizing the capacity of the king of the State de Shu, a large divine tree bronzes some, a shelf of Jade decorated reasons describing ritual primitive religions and another jade shelf reflecting the elevated level of the techniques of Polissage and Perforage of the time. The museum has statues out of bronze of size and paces varied, masks, birds and other animals out of bronze.

According to Doctor Chen Fang-mei, specialist in bronzes of the Dynasty Shang of the National Taiwan University' S Institute off Art History , one can say by looking at the size of the bronze statues which the culture sanxingdui was very sophisticated. One of the statues weighs more than 180 kg, which wants to say that it was necessary to dissolve more than 10 tons of ore to be able to manufacture it. We can thus deduce from it that the people of Sanxingdui knew already the techniques of temperature, cast iron, and ventilation if not it would have been impossible to arrive at such a level of quality.

The site of Jinsha, discovered in February 2001 with Chendgu, probably corresponds to the establishment of a new city after the abandonment of Sanxingdui. This major archaeological discovery, including/understanding remarkable badges of prestige out of jade and bronze, illustrates the end of the Sanxingdui culture.

Several sites date from the first millenium before J. - C. Among them, Zhuwajie (fine XIe-beginning Xe front century J. - C.), in the district of Peng, whose impressive bronze containers to the reasons Zoomorphe S reveal few bonds with the civilization of Sanxingdui all while dissociating ritual vases of the time of the Zhou (approx. 1050-256 av. J. - C.) discovered in the province of the Shaanxi in the north of Sichuan.