Sanxingdui, this mysterious site of the ancient Shu civilization, since the excavation began in 1933, every excavation has shocked the world. Originally, it was thought that only the "Tongtian God Tree" and "Human Head and Snake Body" creation gods existed only in ancient books and myths, and the highly developed casting technology far surpassed the contemporary electroplating process. These seemingly absurd records, one by one, emerged from the land, subverting human cognition of history again and again.So, why was the archaeological team stopped and didn't dare to continue excavating? The truth lies beneath the layers of mysterious ruins, a story that spans time and space, about the origins of human civilization.
In 1933, Ma Guohai, an appraiser of the Sichuan Provincial Museum, led a team to conduct archaeological exploration in Sanxingdui, Mianyang, and a large number of bronzes appeared under the charred black soil. This marks the official unveiling of the mysterious Sanxingdui civilization. Later, cultural relics proved that the Sanxingdui civilization originated in the Neolithic Age, with a history of 5,000 to 3,000 years.
But in the course of a hundred years of excavation, the archaeological team only excavated the tip of the iceberg of the Sanxingdui site. What other shocking secrets are buried in the deepest part of the site?
In 1986, in the No. 7 pit of the Sanxingdui site, archaeologists dug up a stunning masterpiece - a nearly 4-meter-high "Bronze Sacred Tree".
This "sacred tree" has three layers, nine branches that bend downward, and the branches are full of fruits, and each fruit is inhabited by a bird. Even more shocking is that a mysterious creature coils around the trunk of the tree, resembling a snake but not a snake, like a dragon and not a dragon, with dragon scales and wings like blades.
This is simply like walking out of the record in the ancient Chinese book "The Classic of Mountains and Seas: The Classic of the Sea":
There are wood, green leaves and purple stems, Xuanhua Huangshi, the name is Jianmu, there are no branches, there are nine trees, and there are nine wolf.
Jianmu", also known as "Tongtian Divine Tree", legend has it that this is the ladder connecting heaven and earth, and the gods and goddesses took it to come to the world. The discovery of the sacred tree once again confirmed the authenticity of the Classic of Mountains and Seas.
Not only the sacred tree, Sanxingdui also found a large number of bronze figures representing wizards and gods. This coincides with the record of "Jedi Tiantong" in Chinese legends.
In ancient times, the world was in a state of chaos in which "God and man are one". In order to restore order in the world, the grandson of the Yellow Emperor, Zhuan Xuan, ordered to sever the connection between the human world and the divine world, and cut off the Tongtian Divine Tree, which is the "Jedi Tiantong".
Then, the sacred tree of Sanxingdui is the embodiment of the "ladder" connecting the two worlds of man and god in the world. In order to prevent the re-mixing of man and god, it was also deliberately destroyed before it was buried.
In addition to the "Tongtian God Tree", the Sanxingdui ruins have revealed many monster creatures that only exist in myths and legends.
First, the human head and the body of a bird. At the top of the No. 3 bronze tree, the archaeological team found three bronze statues with a human head and a bird body. This is exactly the same as the sentence recorded in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas: Overseas Eastern Classic":
Oriental sentences, bird body and human face, multiply two dragons. "Jumang is the oriental spring god who is in charge of the life of all things. Every spring, people wear green clothes to worship Jumang, an ancient custom that still exists today.
Second, the human head and snake body. Sanxingdui has unearthed dozens of bronze statues with human heads and snake bodies, which are the images of Fuxi and Nuwa in Chinese creation mythology. Not only that, the water god Gonggong in the form of a long snake, as well as the human-faced snake-body god "Candle Dragon" in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", are also reproduced in Sanxingdui. It can be said that the human head and snake body is an extremely common life form in ancient times, a mixture of gods and humans.
During the excavation, the archaeological experts were also surprised to find that the bronze smelting and processing technology of Sanxingdui was superb, which far exceeded the technical level at that time, which was unprecedented.
In 2022, the archaeological team found the largest bronze artifact in the No. 7 pit of Sanxingdui - the "Moonlight Treasure Box". It is a grid-like vessel shaped like a barbecue grill, with jade, ** and silk inlaid inside.
Using X-ray scanning technology, experts found that the "Moonlight Treasure Box" used a connection method similar to modern welding technology, and there were no traces. And this technology is believed to have originated in the West in the 19th century, how could the ancient Shu people master it 3,000 years ago?
Not only welding, but the alloy materials used in the "Moonlight Treasure Box" are more advanced. Expert analysis found that the alloy contains 8%-10% phosphorus, and this precise ratio can greatly improve the fluidity of copper juice and make the details of the utensils more refined. But phosphorus was not discovered in the West until the 16th century.
In 1986, the archaeological team also found a "**scepter" covered with ** foil. This 0Gold leaf with a thickness of 2 mm cannot be made by hand using modern technology, and can only be made by electroplating.
That is to say, the ancient Shu people 5,000 years ago not only mastered the electroplating technology, but also knew how to purify and smelt.
Well, the sophistication of this technique is astounding. It reveals that behind the known history, there may be a transcendent civilization that is far more advanced than modern times.
If technology is just the tip of the iceberg, then the origin of Sanxingdui civilization is the biggest secret.
Sanxingdui is very different from the Central Plains civilization, but it has a striking similarity with the Mesopotamian civilization at the same latitude.
The picture on the left is the relief of the Sumerian ruins in Mesopotamia, and the picture on the right is the Sanxingdui bronze sacred tree, which can be described as the same. Not only is the shape similar, but the image of the Sumerian creator god Enki is also a human head and a snake body, which is exactly the same as the Chinese Fuxi clan.
The inertia of thinking makes us take it for granted that civilization is developed step by step from low to high, but we ignore that civilization may also have the possibility of regression and destruction in the middle, and the ruins that have been found one after another around the world are telling human beings that there was a high civilization on this earth that far surpassed modern civilization, which is the so-called "prehistoric civilization".