The Mystery Of Sanxingdui: Who Were These Mysterious People And Unusual Masks They Created?

MessageToEagle.com – The Sanxingdui ruins represent one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
Yet much about the historical site and people who left their traces there – still remains a mystery.

Who were they? Where did they come from?

In 1929 a farmer living about 40 km northeast of Sichuan Province’s capital city, Chengdu, accidentally uncovered a cache of about 400 jade pieces.

Sanxingdui

The place was Sanxingdui, a small village that would eventually lend its name to an unknown culture that even today is one of China’s greatest ancient mysteries.

The first discovery was made more than eighty years ago and subsequent periodic excavations continued around the site for over a half a century, but researchers still haven’t learned much about mysterious people of Sanxingdui.

Sanxingdui

In the summer of 1986, yet another discovery was made by brick makers mining clay in the area, who unearthed two rectangular pits filled with gold items, and bronze figures, heads, masks, trees, sun shaped wares, bells, decorative dragons, snakes and birds and other artifacts that no one has ever seen.
120 mysterious Sanxingdui bronze artifacts (all unearthed from the Sanxingdui Ruins, located in Guanghan City of southwest China’s Sichuan Province) will be on view at the Bowers Museum from October 19, 2014 through March 15, 2015.

Sanxingdui

Among them, particularly baffling are those depicting unknown beings.

One of the bronze figures is 8 feet tall (!) and placed on a pedestal of bronze.

Sanxingdui

What is particularly intriguing is that the heads, for the most part, don’t appear to be human or animal. They are characterized by very sharp features, grossly perturbing eyes, and exaggerated ears and noses.

sanxingdui

It is believed that the bronzes were solely the product of the Sanxingdui people, but traces of local bronze production have yet to be found.
None of the artifacts are marked with characters and no texts have been unearthed and no historical records of the Sanxingdui culture have been found in the annals of nearby areas, casting a cloud of mystery over the entire site.

See also:

Ancient Marble Statue Of Sphinx Discovered In Tang Dynasty Tomb

Remarkable 2,000-Year-Old Smoke-Absorbing Lamps Reducing Pollution Discovered

Chang Woo Gow – The Kind And Intelligent Chinese Giant
For some unknown reason, these people wanted to depict unknown beings and make their unusual faces to be remembered.

Who were these Sanxingdui people, where did they come from, and where did they go after burying their most precious treasures?

Both culture and its legacy in form of artifacts uearthed in the area of Sanxingdui Ruins continue to baffle researchers.

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