CultureEast Asia

Sanxingdui

1,201 BCE

Bronze masks with protruding eyes, from a culture with no name

In depth

Sanxingdui is contemporary with the Shang but stylistically unrelated — none of its motifs appear in any other Chinese tradition. The find undermined the notion that Chinese civilisation grew from a single core on the Yellow River. There is no writing at the site, so all we have are the objects, and they do not answer.

For children

In Sichuan archaeologists found pits full of bronze masks with enormous eyes, gold masks and a four-metre bronze tree. Everything had been deliberately smashed and burned. We do not know what these people called themselves, what they believed, or why they destroyed it.

Connects to

The Shang dynasty1,601 BCE – 1,047 BCE
Liangzhu3,301 BCE – 2,301 BCE

Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org