Marked Sanxingdui, Sichuan

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

Sanxingdui

In 1986 two pits in Sichuan, south-west China, were found packed with bronze masks with bulging eyes, gold, ivory and a bronze figure 2.6 metres tall, made by a culture no written record mentions.

Place
Sanxingdui, Sichuan · Jinsha, ChengduAsia
Laid out as
A siteOne place known mainly from digging, read layer by layer from the top down.
Lessons
5 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. IThe pits of 1986
  2. IIThe bronze faces
  3. IIIA kingdom without writing
  4. IVNew pits, new finds since 2020
  5. VWho were they?

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Chen De’an

Objects

  • The standing bronze figure
  • Bronze masks with protruding eyes
  • The bronze sacred tree

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1700 BC to 1150 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?