Orange County

Mystery from Sanxingdui

We made our annual winter-time trek to California to see my oldest daughter & her family – and avoided cold & nasty weather in New Jersey for sunshine & warm breezes. Not a bad trade at all!

During the stay we took in a fascinating exhibit at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana entitled ‘China’s Lost Civilization: The Mystery of Sanxingdui’…. and what a mystery it is! The exhibit shows the findings of archeological digs located near Chengdu in Sichuan Province, and the artifacts found there are unlike anything else found in the country. Indeed, it would be easy to mistake them for Pre-Columbian statues found in Central/Latin America rather than Chinese antiquities. They are so strange that the museum teased on its website: “Ancestors or Aliens?” Sanxingdui represents a Bronze Age site dating from about 1200 BCE, and its relics have managed to raise questions about the validity of traditional historical narratives concerning China’s development.