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A major discovery of a gold mask alongside a treasure trove of artefacts at a Bronze Age site in China has generated online debate about whether there were once aliens in China thousands of years ago. The gold mask, possibly worn by a priest, along with more than 500 artefacts in Sanxingdui, a Bronze Age site in central Sichuan province, have become the talk of China since the news broke on Saturday The mask is similar to previous discoveries of bronze human statues, however, the inhuman and foreign features of the finds have triggered speculation they may belong to a...

Chinese archeologists announced on Tuesday that they have discovered an important site next to the Sanxingdui Ruins, which they believe to be a 5,000-year-old settlement. A large number of potteries, porcelain and stonewares have been unearthed from the site, about eight km south of the Sanxingdui Ruins, in the city of Guanghan, southwest China's Sichuan Province. "This is the first time that a complete sequence of ancient Shu civilization has been found around Sanxingdui," said Xin Zhonghua, an associate researcher with the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archeology Research Institute. The majority of relics unearthed from the settlement ruins bears...

A recently excavated tomb in Nanjing has been confirmed to be the grave of Zheng He, a eunuch from the early Ming Dynasty who led historic voyages to Southeast Asia and eastern Africa. The tomb was discovered accidentally on June 18th by workers at a construction site near Zutang Mountain that also holds the tombs of many other Ming Dynasty eunuchs, the Yangtse Evening News reported. The tomb was 8.5 meters long and 4 meters wide and was built with blue bricks, which archaeologists said were only used in structures belonging to dignitaries during the time of Zheng He. But...

5 guesses on Emperor Qin Shihuang's tomb Qin Shihuang holds a central place in Chinese history for being the first emperor who united the country. He is also well known for his part in the construction of the spectacular Great Wall and his splendid terracotta army. To ensure his rule in the afterlife, this emperor commanded more than 700,000 conscripts from all parts of the country to build him a grand mausoleum as luxurious as any of the palaces he had in mortal life. Legend says that numerous treasures were placed in the tomb. As time passed, no one knew...

A map of Japan showing the fateful site of Sakushukotoni-gawa on Hokkaido. Origins of the Ainu by Gary Crawford The ringing telephone broke the evening silence. It was the fall of 1983, and my research partner, Professor Masakazu Yoshizaki, was calling from Japan. "Gary, I have some news," Yoshi said. "We have a few grains of barley from a site on the Hokkaido University campus. I think you should come and look at them." The Japanese language is notorious for its ambiguity, so I wasn't quite sure of the full meaning of what I had just heard. But I didn't...

Prehistoric oriental 'Venus' carved on cliff discovered in Ningxia A figure of a pregnant woman carved into a cliff, known as a prehistoric oriental "Venus", the Goddess of love, has been discovered by Chinese archaeologists in Zhongwei county, northwest China's Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. The "Venus" has a plump figure, full breasts and a bulbous belly. The woman, standing straight with her legs together, has slender fingers but no facial features. The image was a typical reproduction of figures of naked women carved on stone by ancients in the late Paleolithic period, said Zhou Xinhua, curator of the museum of...

An earthquake nearly 3,000 years ago may be the culprit in the mysterious disappearance of one of China's ancient civilizations, new research suggests. The massive temblor may have caused catastrophic landslides, damming up the Sanxingdui culture's main water source and diverting it to a new location. That, in turn, may have spurred the ancient Chinese culture to move closer to the new river flow, study co-author Niannian Fan, a river sciences researcher at Tsinghua University in Chengdu, China, said Dec. 18 at the 47th annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. [Ancient Chinese Warriors Protect Secret Tomb]

Striking Gold It all started in 2001, when a bulldozer driver heard a scraping sound as his machine's blade bit deep into the dirt. Working at a new real estate development site on the west end of Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, the driver looked down to see what his scoop had snagged. He had struck a collection of golden and jade objects in the earth. Soon after construction workers and passers-by rushed to the site, snapping up the treasures and scurrying off. Those too late to get anything were disgruntled, and then reported the incident to the...

3000 Year-old Jinsha Coming to Life The archeological site of Jinsha located in the western suburbs of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province, is widely believed to have been the capital of the Shu Kingdom close to 3,000 years ago. After some burial grounds and sacrifice emplacements were recently discovered, a renewed effort was made to excavate Jinsha. This vigor has now revealed the outlines of the cemetery, living areas, palace remains and sacrifice grounds. Lying only 50 kilometers away from the famed Sanxingdui, Jinsha rose to prominence around 1000 BC and shared similar origins with Sanxingdui as can...

Niannian Fan, a river sciences researcher at Tsinghua University in Chengdu, China, presented new thoughts on the disappearance of the Sanxingdui culture from a walled city on the banks of China's Minjiang River some 3,000 years ago, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "The current explanations for why it disappeared are war and flood, but both are not very convincing," Fan told Live Science. In the 1980s, scientists found two pits of broken Bronze Age jades, elephant tusks, and bronze sculptures. Similar artifacts have been found nearby at another ancient city known as Jinsha. Did the people...

The objects found in the sacrificial pits included animal-faced sculptures and masks with dragon ears, open mouths and grinning teeth; human-like heads with gold foil masks; decorative animals including dragons, snakes, and birds; a giant wand, a sacrificial altar, a 4-meter-tall (13-foot-tall) bronze tree; axes, tablets, rings, knives, and hundreds of other unique items. Among the collection was also the world’s largest and best preserved bronze upright human figure, measuring 2.62 meters (8 feet). However, by far the most striking findings were dozens of large bronze masks and heads represented with angular human features, exaggerated almond-shaped eyes, straight noses, square...

Archeologists shake up historyNEW EVIDENCE: Artifacts found at a building site and the subsequent discovery of a lost civilization have forced historians to rethink Chinese history as a wholeAFP , JINSHA, CHINA Wednesday, Jul 13, 2005,Page 4 A worker stands on a stack of bags of cement before a huge billboard featuring the famous ''bronze human head figure with gold mask,'' one of the treasures of the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan, Sichuan Province in this photo from May. Recent archeological finds from previously unknown civilizations such as the Sanxingdui and the Jinsha are dealing shattering blows to traditional views of...

Unmasking Sanxingdui Ruins www.chinaview.cn 2004-05-07 00:15:40 CHENGDU, May 6 (Xinhuanet) -- In an out-of-the-way area of southwest China not on the beaten path of most foreign tourists visiting the picturesque home of the giant panda, giant Buddha and Tibetan people lies a little-known site that holds its own unique mystique. Some 100 years ago, Sanxingdui in today's Sichuan Province hadn't seemed to anyone anything more than a typical rural area, and just 20 years ago its significance was not fully known. But when a farmer hollowing out a just-dug ditch in 1929 found some jade he unwittingly opened the door...