Guanghan, called Luoxian and Hanzhou in ancient times, is situated in the north part of the Chengdu plain, 22km from Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province. Being an important and famous city of Sichuan, it enjoys a long istory, fertile soil and abundant produce, and has given birth to many wellknown personal. The world-known Sanxingdui ruins are located by the Yazihe River 6km west of the Guanghan city.

The Sanxingdui ruins cover an total area of 12 square kilometers, whose central used to be an ancient city surrounded by city walls in the east, west and south. The city was broader in the south and narrower in the north with an area of about 3 square kilometers, larger than the Shang (Dynastey) city of Zhengzhou of the same time and ranking among the tops in the country at that time. Investigation and excavation of the city walls prove that the eastcity was 1700m long (the remaining length being1100m) with the top being over 20m in width and the base about 40m in broadth and the existing height being 4m, its structure composed of the main wall, the interior wall and the exterior wall. The top of the main wall was built with adobes and bricks, being the earliest adobe wall in China.

The south city wall was also manual-made, being 200m long, 40m wide and 6m high (remaining height), with a 2.8m deep ditch outside the wall. The west city wall was based on a natural mound and built with manual ramming, its existing length being about 600m, broadth about 40m and height 6-10m. On the axis of the ancient city were dispersed four terraces, namely, Sanxingdui (Three-star Mound), Yueliangwan (Moon Beach), Zhenwugong and Xiquankam. A number of important relics and sacrificial pits were located on this axis showing that the place was the site of the ancient city with the city walls as its support and protective screen.

In 1920s, a farmer named Yan Daocheng discoverd many jade wares while digging a ditch by the side of the house, which unveiled, from then on, the mystery of the ancient Sanxingdui. In 1930s-40s, both Chinese and foreign archaeologists began to carry out excavations and studies in Sanxingdui. In 1950s-60s archaeologists from Sichuan persevered in their work there. Especially after 1980s large-scaled excavations were started and finally two sacrificial pits were found successively in July-August 1986 on the south side of Sanxingdui. The two pits were orderly built, filled up and made even by ramming. In the pits were stuffed in layers various kinds of jade wares, bronze human statues and ivories etc. All these relics used to be the holy images, sacrificial instruments and sacrificial offerings in the ancestral temples. The hundreds of cultural relics unearthed from the sacrificial pits are a concentrated embodiment of the Sanxingdui cultural at its zenith and prove to be world known Culture creams. The culture relics and artifacts of Sanxingdui, unqiue in forms and making, are not only the first discoveries in Sichuan but also very rare in the country. they are reputed as "the most attractive archaeological discoveries in the world".

The identification of the ancient city of Sanxingdui has unveiled the mystery of history and clearly revealed to the people the glory of the ancient capital of the Shu kings, and it once again proves that the place was once a glorious centre of civilization in the ancient east. Numerous archaeological materials prove that Sanxingdui civilization as an outstanding representative of the Chinese ancient civilization on the upper reaches of the Changjiang river warrants eloqently once more the source of the Chinese civilization to be an organic whole of pluralism. It has made up an important cultural gap in the evolutionary development of the Chinese culture and as an ancient pearl displayed by colonization it also occupies its place in the history of world civilization and human development.

However, with dramatical social changes the Sanxingdui civilization seemed to be checked in the course of its local development and the ancient Sanxingdui State also seemed to have died away all of a sudden. What kind of obstacles did it meet with? And how did it become extinct? These questions remain to be answered by us.

Sanxingdui owns a large group of exquisite and uniquely-shaped bronze artifacts which were all excavated from two sacrificial pits. Yet, in stratigraphic excavation brone wares are rarely found. This undoubtedly renders a mystic colouring to the originally very uniue Sanxingdui bronze civilization. In perspective of their functions, the Sanxingdui bronze artifacts were chiefly used in religious and sacrificial rites but rarely used in daily life and production. With regard to their shapes, Sanxingdui bronze wares are primarily classified into three catepories:The first category consists of various bronze sculptures imbued with profound religious colouring like human images, divine images and demon images etc. Bronze artifacts of this category are the most typical of the Sanxingdui bronze sculpture and they include standing human statues, kneeling or sitting statues, head sculptures and masks. All of unique styles. Their forms are seemingly meant to meet the needs of sacrifical activities to be cast into images of comperes representing different capacities, or figyres participating in the sacrificial offerings. The completely bronze-cast huge erest human statue, standing high on the square throne with a weight of over150kg, is so far the tallest and largest of all the ancient bronze sculptures ever fond in the world. The bronze head sculptures and bronze mask are orderly arranged in size. The facial features of the masks are similar to those of the head sculptures, some inset with the design of the one-legged dragon on the forehead, which looks the same as the animal facial design often seen on the bronze ritual artifacts of the Shang Dynasty when viewed sidelong. Of the masks, a large one,138cm in broadth and 65cm in height, is very uniquely shaped with a human face and animal ears and two colun-formed eyeballs bulging 16cm out. The second category includes the bronze sculptures of animals and plants related to legend and mythology such as the sculptures of dragon, tiger, snake, chicken, bird, animal, fruit and bronze tree etc. For example, the No.1 bronze tree, with a round seat at the bottom, has three arch forms cast on the upper part symbolizing three mountains with winding branches in which are cast flowers petals, fruit and birds; on the lower part of the trunk and downward along the trunk is cast a "flying dragon" having a horse face, a snake body and a phoenix tail. The whole brounze tree, mysterious and interesting, is vividly shaped, making people associate it with the legendary holy trees described in the book Shan Hai Jing (Scriptures of Mountains and Rivers). Wine and sacrificial vessels belong to the third category, very small in number (only a dozen pieces or so), including cups and dishes etc.

It is not difficult to see that Sanxingdui bronze wares with vivid human images and animal-plant sculptures as the main and with divine, demon and human images co-existing represent a cultural quality whose religious custom is entirely different from that of the bronze culture of Central China.

The casting of the Sanxingdui bronze artifacts includes blockcast, sub-model moulding and concave-convex moulding and concave-convex moulding. For example, the human head sculptures, wine vessels, battle-axes, daggaxes excavated from No.1 pit and some human head images, human face images, and prismati-holde wares and sunformed wares excavated from No.2 sacrificial pit are made with block-cast. Sub-model moulding refers to the separate modelling and moulding of the artifacts. The bronze bell inearthed from the sacrificial pit of Sanxingdui is made with this method. The concave-conves moulding is widely used in the making of Sanxingdui bronze wares. The dragon-tiger wine vessel, the human head statues and human face sculptures are made in this way. The linedesigns of the dragon and tiger on the wine vessel are all made with high relief moulding but the surfaceand the wall of the vessel are evenly formed and interior of the vessel is coincid-ental with that of the exterior of the vessel.

As we knock open the first gate of Sanxingdui, the artistic treasury of the ancient Shu State, a dozen of bronze human head images that have slept under ground for 3000 years are shown before us. Following the successive excavation of scores of bronze head sculptures from No.2 sacrificial pit, we are time and time again surprised by these numerous bronze head sculptures excavated.

In the highly-developed culture of the Shang-Zhou Dynasties in China, bronze human sculptures of real human size have never been found in the past and are very rare also in foreign ancient cultural ruins of the same period. The excavation of these bronze head sculptures has filled in gaps in the lack of separate human sculptures in the bronze culture of China. The different shapes of the Sanxingdui bronze head sculpture are probably the vivid representation of the religious colourings of different people of different clans of races. The grand erect human sculpture, as the "head of all sorcers", is leading the various chiefs composed of various head sculptures in the sarifice. Together with the various medium and small-sized bronze human sculptures different in attires, facial shapes and costumes and varied in postures-either kneeling or sitting or with something held overhead or with gold-gilded masks, they constitute from different layers a grand scene of sacrifice-offering to heaven, to earth, to the god of land, to the holy mountain and to the various deities or the ancetors. This is a reflection of the social life of Shou people at that time.

"The love of beauty exists from ancient times". These bronze head sculptures are exemplary for this earliest love of beauty. They tried every means to orettify themselves. The round hole on the lower part of the big ear should be made for wearing ear-ornament--this is the earliest archaeological proof for the unearthed human sculptures wearing ear-ornaments. We can also see some head sculptures painted dark green on the big and erect eye-socket, vermilion on the broad and long lips and scarlet in the nose-hole for wearing jade earrings. All this looks very handsome and energetic and full of taste of life.

From the coloured paint leftover on the bronze head sculptures unearthed from the sacrificial pits of Sanxingdui ruins we can presume that all facial features of the Sanxingdui bronze head sculptures were colour-painted, but mostly decoloured due to longtime burying in the ground. The coloured panit remaining on some bronze head sculptures explains, to some extent, the make-up custom and aesthetic sense of the ancient Shu people. Surly, the coloured paint maks these bronze head sculptures more vivid and vigorous. But what is its religious significance? Maybe, it is aimed to strengthen the vitality of the divinities and to make the divinities represented by these head sculptures more divine.

In No.2 sacrificial pit of Sanxingddui is excavated a uniquely-shaped bronze mask of a vertical-eyed animal. This mask is square with broad forehead, slightly-withdrawn cheeks, wide and deep mouth, up-slanting mouth corners and slightly out-extended tongue; its brows long and knife-like and broad, its eyes vertical like dento liva and the eyeballs being prism-formed with arched sides and staring straight forward; and each eyeball being bound with a wide-strap hoop, seeming to open the eyes with efforts and to pull out the eyeballs together with the eye-muscles as if to see through the whole world by the two telescope-like eyes. The animal ears are somewhat rectangular with the ear-tip shaped like the kernel of walnut; the nose is short like a cow's with two sides in wardly up-coiling; in the center of the forehead there is a square hole in which is set an ornamental one-legged dragon to link with the upper part of the nose. The ornamental dragon has its two horns outwardly coiling with knife-shaped feathers and the upturned tail coiling inward. There are also square holes on the upper and lower part in front of the ear, which are probably used for fixing. The one-legged ornamental dragon on the largest mask is no longer existing.

This kind of bronze animal mask testifies the high standard of the sculptures of the ancient Shu State in their artistic conception. With bold exaggeration they skilfully and harmoniously combined man and animal to have created abstractly this unrealistic man-animal intergrated divine idol. At first glance, it looks stately, dignified and awe-inspiring like beasts. But looking at it carefully, its profile rendered by smooth and exquisite lines, its sharp knife-formed broad eyebrows, its slightly round vertical almond-like eyes, slightly-exposed tongue-tip and swollen-up nose, all give people a sence of warmth and kindness. And the slightly retrenched facial muscles give the facial look an expressions of quiet and bitterness to reveal certain solemnity and grimness in the calmness. These special and complicated expressions seem to render the people a sence of the divinities so that they respect them, worship them and are subjected to their power, while at the same time they take them as protective deities who drive away the evil and protect the good. These masks which have so harmoniously intergrated man with animal, grimness with kindness have reflected the unique social consciousness and religious concept of the ancient Shu people which are different from the Culture of Central China. At the same time they also have shown that the ancient Shu States possessed very high bronze carving workmanship by no means inferior to that of the Central Chinese Culture.

Facial masks of divinities are an important component of sorcery culture. These masks are worn on the head or body in religious sacrificial activities to carry out simulated performances for the purpose of expelling evils or disease, which was called "exorcising ceremony" in ancient China.

The Chinese sorcery culture has a long history. In the period as early as the Neolithic Yangshao Culture, there appeared manual-made pottery human masks for sorcery purposes. In the Shang and Zhou Dynasties exorcising ceremonies became an important rite to offer sacrifices to dogs or devils and to expel pestilence. In the time of Han-Tang Dynasties this ancient religious rite was mixed with contents of entertainment to become a kind of dance with entertaining characters. And starting from the Song Dynasty the exorcising dance, influenced by folk talking and singing art and drama, became a form of dramatic performance. Up to date this ancient culture is still very popular in some regions inhabited by national minorities or some remote mountainous areas.

In two sacrificial pits of the Sanxingdui ruins have been unearthed about 20 human facial masks. The excavation of so many human masks is the first discovery in the archaeology of the Shang-Zhou Dynasties in China. The combination of all the bronze erect figures, head images and kneeling human figures plus the head masks constitutes a world of masked images of divinities of the ancient Shu State.

The numerous bronze masks are very different in size, yet, none is fit for human wearing. Their usage is still a mystery.

Three kinds of artifacts excavated from the sacrificial pits are of special value. They are the bronze prismy eyes, the bronze upper eyelid and the bronze sun.

The prism-eye is slantingly flat in the percline and the eye ball in the center is round and bulging out with a concave periphery. The two ends of the prism-eye havetriangular convex edges which look like share beaks and on each tip of the two obtuse angles and the two acute angles there is a round hole used for fixing. Besides, there are two combined types of diamond eye. One is shaped like an obtuse triangle equalling a half of a complete diamond-eye cut in twins through the diagonal line. This kind artifact is used by combining two together. Another type is a quarter of a complete diamond-eye, shaped somewhat like a right triangle and four such right triangles put together constitute a whole diamond-eye.

The upper eyelid is of varied kinds. It may be hemispheric or arc-square or fillet-square or cylindrical. In terms of its basic form, it is same as the eyes of the excavated vertical-eyed animal mask or their variant. Some eyslids are basically parallelograms and these parallelogram-shaped bronze artifacts are named bronze prism-eyes or bronze diamond-eyes.

There is another bronze artifact which resembles a cartwheel very much, originally called bronze cartwheel. It is shaped round, the centre being a convex hemispheric eyeball surrounded by five radiant spokes and its outer edge being a ring linking with the spokes. This kind of cartwheel also has fixing holes on the convex centre and the periphery and some are colour-painted. Actually these artifacts are not cartwheels but the sun as described in the inscriptions on the bones and tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty and in the bas reliefs on precipices.

Comparative studies of the primitive religious of many nationalities in the world prove: the divinities worshipped by almost all the nationalities experienced a transitional process from the animal-shaped deity to half-animal-half-human deity. This evolutionary process has reflected the changes of human statues in nature and is the refraction of these changes in ideology. In this regard, the sphinx of ancient Egypt and the human-head and bird-body statue, the human-head and bird-feet statue and many other relics excavated from Sanxingdui ruins are all good example.

The gold artifacts of Sanxingdui culture include gold rod, face-screen, tiger, fish-shaped ornament, leaf-formed ornament, gold block and so on. The gold rod excavated frome No.1 sacrificial pit is 1.42m in length and about 500g in weight, with flat-carved designs of human head, bird, fish and crop ears on the upper part. The gold face-screen was still worn on the bronze head sculpture when first excavated from the earth. The gold wares of Sanxingdui are not only great in number but also large in size, which proves the first discovery in the Shang Dynasty Culture.

The gold rod is made of a wooden core coated with thick gold wrappings, 142cm in length and 2.3cm in diametre and with 46cm-long ornamental line designs on the upper end of the rod. Over 500g in weight, the rod is so far the largest gold artifact of the Shang Dynasty ever found in Chind. Its convex line design by double intaglios is extremely exquisite. The cutiing is made along the two sides of the line to make the central line convex and thin structure of the design, the eqillibrium of the fish and the bird has strengthened the ornamental beauty of the design.

The gold face-screen and gold tiger are made by mould-pressing if thin gold plate and their detail features are consoicuous. Seen from the workmanship of mould-pressing, hollowing-out and carving of these exquisite gold artifacts, the Shu people then had already metal so that they could create with ease such exquisite artistic wares of it. These advanced technologies were already in lead of gold manufacture at that time.

The jade wares of Sanxingdui culture are not only large in number but also complex in kinds. They include ritual artifacts and daily utensils made of high quality jade like jade earring, jade bracelet, jade pipe, jade beads, jade pendant as well as jade arms or tools like jade spear, jade daggar-axe, jade chisel and so on. The latter kind of jade wares looked new and sharp when first exccavated and are mostly unearthed from the sacrificial pits. They should be ritual articals but not jade wares for practical use. Some tables are even as long as 90cm and made of very thin jade plate, showing that their manufactural skills like plate-cutting, sculptural carving and grinding already reached very high standard.

The excavation and studies of the ancient Sanxingdui ruins have solved many doubts for us but at the same time have left us many unsolved mysteries. Examples are as following:

1. What is the source of the Sanxingdui culture?
2. What nationality once lived in the Sanxingdui ruins?
3. What is the nature of the regime and religion of the ancient Sanxingdui state?
4. What are the reasons for the production of the Sanxingdui bronze artifacts?
5. How did the ancient Sanxingdui State come into being? How long did it last? And why did it die out suddenly?
6. What is the date of the two sacrificial pits?
7. What is the nature of the two pits?
8. How to solve the mystery of the "Ba-Shu graphic language?"
9. How were the jade stones processed?
10. The origin of the ivory and its use?
11. How were the bronze erect human sculpture and the holy tree made in ancient times?
12. What are the functions and usages of the various bronze masks of Sanxingdui?
13. The function of the bronze divine alter?
14. What is the thing held in the hand of the bronze erect man and what is its use?
15. What is the use of the holy tree?
16. What does the bronze erect man stand for?
17. What social statues does the gold-screened head statue represent?
18. What does the design on the gold rod indicated?
19. The source and function of the gold rod?