"After restarting the archaeological excavation work in Sanxingdui this year, six new sacrificial pits were discovered in Sanxingdui."

"Now we are dispatching elite archaeologists from all over the country to Sanxingdui for archaeological excavations."

"It is worth mentioning that the Sanxingdui archaeological project restarted this time uses a large number of high-tech equipment and is a scientific and technological archaeological project."

"It's something you young people are more up to."

"Otherwise, Xiao Chen will be led by you this time, on behalf of our Institute of Archaeology of the Academy of Social Sciences, to Sanxingdui for support?"

Kong Jianwen said to Chen Han with a smile.

Sanxingdui site, 40 kilometers away from Chengdu, the capital of SC Province in the south, and 7 kilometers away from Guanghan city in the east, is a huge ruins group composed of many ancient cultural relics distribution points.

At present, archaeologists divide the cultural remains of the site complex into four periods.

The first phase is an early accumulation and belongs to the Late Neolithic culture, while the second to fourth phases belong to the bronze culture.

The age of the ruins group starts from the late Neolithic period to the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, and lasts for nearly 2,000 years.

With four cultural layers and an area of 12 square kilometers, the Sanxingdui ruins group is huge in scale and wide in scope.

At present, there are more than 30 distribution points of ancient cultural relics, among which the "Sanxingdui" in the south, "Moon Bay" and "Zhenwu Palace" in the middle, "Xiquankan" in the north, "Shishiyan" in the east, "Hengliangzi" in the west, and "Rensheng Village" and "Dayan Village" in the west are the most important.

After decades of archaeological excavations, a large number of pottery, stoneware, jade, bronze and gold artifacts have been unearthed, which have distinctive local cultural characteristics and become a cultural system of their own.

At present, it has been determined that Sanxingdui should be the source of the ancient Shu culture that originated in the Sichuan Basin.

It is the largest ruins of the capital city with regional center status.

Its discovery has provided unique material evidence for the vanished ancient Shu Kingdom, and has advanced the history of civilization in Sichuan by more than 2,000 years!

From July to September 1986, two large Shang Dynasty sacrificial pits were excavated, and nearly 1,000 precious cultural relics such as gold, copper, jade, stone, pottery, shells, and bones were unearthed.

For a long time after that, Sanxingdui archaeology was carried out around these two large Shang Dynasty priest pits.

It wasn't until last year that Sanxingdui restarted new excavations and found six large sacrificial pits again.

Not a new discovery, to be precise, but a new discovery!

These sacrificial pits had already been excavated before.

It's just that the previous two large sacrificial pits of the Shang Dynasty have been in the follow-up research stage, and they haven't been thoroughly studied, so they are not in a hurry to open new pits.

It was not until this year that a new pit was opened.

For the time being, it is time to start the excavation of the third and fourth sacrificial pits!

The discovery of Sanxingdui site is of great significance to the tracing of Chinese culture!

Because the discovery of the Sanxingdui site is very different from the long-term understanding of Bashu culture in the historical circles, and some places are even completely different.

Historians have always believed that compared with the Central Plains, the ancient Bashu region was a relatively closed place, and there was no connection or little interaction with the Central Plains civilization.

The Sanxingdui site proves that it should be an important cultural center around the Xia and Shang periods in China, or even earlier, and has a certain connection with the Central Plains culture.

The authenticity of the records of the ancient Shu Kingdom in ancient documents is verified.

In the past, historians believed that the birthplace of the Chinese nation was the Yellow River Valley, and then gradually spread to the whole of China.

For a long time, we Chinese people have believed that the Yellow River is the mother river of Chinese civilization, and the birthplace of all Chinese civilizations began from the Yellow River Basin.

The Yangtze River Basin was conquered by the culture of the Yellow River Basin when it expanded southward.

During the Shang and Zhou dynasties, Chinese civilization almost entered the Yangtze River Valley.

It was not until the Han Dynasty that the Lingnan region south of the Yangtze River entered the control area of Chinese culture.

Historians of the time,

It is believed that the development of Chinese culture is from north to south, gradually expanding.

The discovery of Sanxingdui pushed the history of the ancient Shu Kingdom forward to 5,000 years ago, proving that the Yangtze River Basin and the Yellow River Basin are the birthplace of the Chinese nation, and proving that the Yangtze River Basin region has no less ancient civilization than the Yellow River Basin.

The discovery of the ancient city of Liangzhu once again proves that the Chinese culture was not formed by the gradual expansion of the Yellow River valley to the north.

Instead, one south and one north, the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin have parallel Chinese cultures, and finally the Chinese cultures of the two basins blend and merge with each other to form the current Chinese civilization!

In other words, not only the Yellow River, but also the Yangtze River is also the birthplace of Chinese civilization, and Chinese civilization is a dualistic development, not a unitary development!

The bronze vessels unearthed from the two sacrificial pits in Sanxingdui, except for the bronze vessels with the Yin Shang culture of the Central Plains and the bronze culture style of the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the rest of the types and shapes of the utensils have extremely strong local characteristics.

This shows that when the Central Plains culture was in the Shang Dynasty, Shu already had a mature local culture.

This local culture not only had contact and blending with the Shang and the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, but also had a strong civilization itself.

The bronze civilization of Shu is not only highly developed, but also has a unique appearance!

The world's earliest and highest bronze sacred tree, 384 cm high, three clusters of branches, each cluster of three branches, a total of nine branches, there are 27 fruits and nine birds, there is a dragon edge tree on the side of the tree, it is inferred that it may be the Fusang tree in ancient myths and legends.

The world's earliest gold scepter, 142 cm long, 2.3 cm in diameter, weighs more than 700 grams, and is decorated with carved human heads, fish and birds.

The world's largest and most complete bronze statue, with a height of 262 centimeters and a weight of more than 180 kilograms, is known as the king of bronze statues.

The world's largest bronze portrait with a height of 64.5 cm and a distance of 138.5 cm between the ears.

The world's largest number of bronze human heads and masks unearthed at one time amounted to more than 50 pieces.

These are world-class weight archaeological relics unearthed in Sanxingdui!

And these cultural relics are independent in the ancient Shu region, their own style and culture, not by the Xia Shang and even the lower reaches of the Yangtze River Liangzhu culture and development!

Before the discovery of the Sanxingdui site, the character "Shu" was first found in the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty.

It is recorded that when King Wu was defeated, the Shu people once helped.

However, the history of Shu has not been recorded in detail in pre-Qin documents.

It was not until Chang Xuan of the Eastern Jin Dynasty that the history and legends of Shu were recorded in Chang Xuan's "Huayang Guozhi Shu Zhi".

The most famous poem about the history of Shu is written by Li Bai in "The Difficulty of Shu Dao": "Silkworms and fishes, how at a loss to open the country! He is 48,000 years old, and he is not populated with Qinsai. There is a bird road in Xidang Taibai, which can cross the top of Emei. The earth collapsed and the mountain destroyed the strong man to death, and then the ladder stone stacks were hooked together."

In other words, in the Central Plains culture, the recorded "Shu Kingdom" can only be traced back to the middle and late Shang Dynasty at the earliest.

The discovery of Sanxingdui completely overturned the Chinese people's understanding of the "Shu Kingdom".

The "Shu Kingdom" in the middle and late Shang Dynasty was already a late culture in the Sanxingdui culture.

The time of the demise of Sanxingdui culture was almost at the end of the Shang Dynasty and the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty.

The "Shu people" in the pre-Qin period were the descendants of the Sanxingdui culture inherited from the Sanxingdui culture after the demise of the Sanxingdui culture!

The real "Ancient Shu Kingdom" is hidden under the fourth-phase culture of the Sanxingdui site, and is waiting for future generations to unveil them!