Sanxingdui, in Guanghan , 40 km from Chengdu in SW China's Sichuan Province , is recognized as one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th century.

In the spring of 1929, Yan Daocheng, a farmer in Guanghan, found some jade objects when digging irrigation ditch near his home. The sensational news soon got around, arousing the attention of curio dealers and archeologists from home and abroad. However, Sanxingdui was not widely known until 1986, when two pits containing a wealth of exquisite bronze objects, jades, and elephant tusks were discovered.

 The site of Sanxingdui

the Sanxingdui Museum

Sanxingdui, literally Three Star Heaps, is named after three piles of earth along the bank of a river in Guanghan. Legend has it that Yudi, the Emperor of Heaven in ancient Chinese myths, scattered three handfuls of earth and they became three heaps linearly distributed like three stars. Recent archeological findings show that these three piles of earth are the remains of the collapsed city wall of the ancient kingdom in Sichuan.

The Sanxingdui find is considered a marvel because of its size, age and abundance of relics. The Sanxingdui remains, including two remarkable sacrificial pits, covers an area of about 12 sq km. The unearthed objects indicate the presence of a strong regional culture with sophisticated religious practices and advanced bronze-casting technology from 2,800 BC to 800 BC. Sanxingdui culture is thought to have been divided into three phases. The early phase may have been be more independent, and later phases saw an influences from other neighboring cultures.

 Exciting but mysterious finds

The Sanxingdui finds are exciting, but they remain mysterious. No texts have been found, nor has this culture been mentioned in the records of contemporary states. Only the unearthed artifacts provide a glimpse into this unique and mysterious culture.

·Bronze figures with strange alien eyes

The unearthed bronze figures and heads have unfamiliar looking, sometimes strange, alien eyes. The importance given to eyes in all the Sanxingdui figures and heads is intriguing. Eyes may have played an important part in defining the social roles of these figures.

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