Tracing back to the ancient Shu civilization, the word "Shu" once appeared in oracle bone inscriptions and gold inscriptions On June 13, the archaeological excavation of Sanxingdui site, a major project of "archaeological China", released the latest archaeological results. The unearthed tortoise back shaped gridiron, copper pig nose dragon, bronze statue of snake on the top, gold mask and copper head... Added new evidence to the pluralistic integration of Chinese civilization. About the ancient Shu Kingdom, the historical records are extremely brief, and most of them have the nature of myths and legends. Therefore, to correctly understand the history of ancient Shu, we can only rely on archaeological excavations and research results. Among the numerous ancient Shu civilization sites, Sanxingdui is the most core site. Its discovery and excavation has gradually exposed the confusing early ancient Shu civilization to the world. Lei Yu graduated from the Department of history, Peking University, majoring in archaeology. He is now the stationmaster and researcher of Sanxingdui site workstation of Sichuan Academy of cultural relics and archaeology. For more than 30 years, he has presided over and participated in the field excavation, indoor sorting and report preparation of a series of important sites and tombs of ancient Shu civilization from the Neolithic Age to the Warring States period, such as the Guiyuan bridge site in Shifang, Sanxingdui site in Guanghan, Shaxi site in Ya'an, Shifang ship coffin burial cemetery, and Yili site in Vietnam. At present, he is presiding over the "Sanxingdui - archaeological excavation report 1980-2005" The collation and compilation of the archaeological excavation reports of the Sanxingdui site series from 2012 to 2018, as well as the archaeological exploration and excavation of the Sanxingdui site during the 14th Five Year Plan period. Before talking about Sanxingdui, Lei Yu first talked about a "history of ancient Shu" recorded in ancient books. He said, "ancient Shu is an ancient country located in the west of Sichuan Basin. The name 'Shu' has appeared many times in oracle bone inscriptions and gold inscriptions of the Yin and Zhou dynasties, and participated in the war of King Wu against Zhou. According to the book of the king of Shu written by Yang Xiong, a historian of the Western Han Dynasty." According to records, the ancient Shu state has experienced five dynasties, namely, cancong, Baiguan, Yufu, Duyu and Kaiming. In 316 BC, Shu was destroyed by the state of Qin, and since then, Shu has been under the unified management of the central dynasty. " The site covers an area of 12 square kilometers, and the rammed earth platform of Qingguan mountain is suspected to be "palace city" After the founding of the people's Republic of China, the archaeological work of Sanxingdui site entered a critical period, and new discoveries constantly subverted people's inherent understanding of the history of ancient Shu. According to Lei Yu, during the 1950s and 1970s, several archaeological institutions in Sichuan conducted many investigations at Sanxingdui site, and conducted small-scale trial excavation on the Yueliangwan platform, recognizing that Sanxingdui site should be a site of ancient Shu culture, which may be a very important political and cultural center of ancient Shu. Many people have been to the Sanxingdui Museum in Guanghan. The exquisite and unique bronze wares displayed there are amazing, but most people don't know much about the area and scale of the Sanxingdui site. According to Lei Yu, since the 1980s, Sichuan Academy of cultural relics and Archaeology and other units have continued to carry out comprehensive and systematic archaeological investigations (150 square kilometers), archaeological exploration (12 square kilometers) and archaeological excavations (20000 square meters) at Sanxingdui site. Lei Yu said, "at present, we have basically mastered the distribution scope, accumulation and preservation of the site. The Sanxingdui site covers an area of 12 square kilometers, and is the largest site of the pre Qin era in the southwest region. The core of the Sanxingdui site is the Sanxingdui ancient city (a big city, several small cities, first small cities, then big cities), which covers an area of about 3.6 square kilometers and is the largest ancient city of the Xia and Shang Dynasties in southern China With the development of settlement archaeology since the 12th Five Year Plan, the layout of the city site has gradually become clear, and the face of a metropolitan site has gradually emerged. " It is understood that many city walls divide the ancient city of Sanxingdui into several different functional areas. Because large buildings of the Shang Dynasty were found on the rammed earth platform of Qingguan mountain in the small city of Yueliangwan, it is speculated that the small city of Yueliangwan may be the location of the palace city of Sanxingdui kingdom. A total of three large-scale building base sites have been found in the qingguanshan large-scale building complex, of which the base site of Building No. 1 covers an area of more than 1000 square meters, making it the largest single building of the Shang Dynasty in southern China. The unearthed cultural relics have strange shapes, and the long eyed mask was once mistaken for a Taishi chair So far, more than 50000 cultural relics such as pottery, stone, jade, copper, gold, ivory, seashells, silk and so on have been unearthed from the Sanxingdui site. The two "sacrificial pits" discovered in 1986 in the late Shang Dynasty have also unearthed a large number of unprecedented artifacts with strange shapes. Lei Yu said, "in addition to some common jade and bronze ritual (capacity) vessels in the Central Plains during the Shang Dynasty, many are new artifacts that have never been found in the past: such as bronze statues (statues, gods, masks, etc.), sacred trees, shrines, sun shaped objects, eyes (eye shaped objects), gold sticks, gold masks, etc., which constitute the most brilliant and unique part of Sanxingdui culture." In the view of thunderstorm, the bronze wares unearthed at Sanxingdui site are mainly shaped by statues, gods, demigods and sacrificial utensils between concrete and abstract, and have a lot of ink on the images of priests, wizards and other clergy who preside over the ceremony in religious ritual activities. "Compared with the Shang culture in the Central Plains, Sanxingdui culture has a stronger and more prominent color of witchcraft and theocracy, reflecting distinctive local characteristics." He said. So far, thunderstorm showed a group photo of Professor Chen Xiandan who found the Sanxingdui bronze vertical eye mask when it was just unearthed. "When the mask was just discovered, it was buried upside down in the No. 2 'sacrificial pit'. For this hollow U-shaped object, even historians with academic background like Professor Chen Xiandan had never seen it, so they mistakenly thought it was a bronze Taishi chair at that time." Lei Yu said that the cultural relics unearthed at Sanxingdui site reflected the imaginative and unique understanding of "man and God" of ancient Shu people and the unique power structure of the upper echelon of ancient Shu. The diverse and complex cultural outlook shows that Sanxingdui is not "behind closed doors" In 2019, Sichuan Academy of cultural relics and Archaeology conducted archaeological exploration and small-scale trial excavation in the sacrificial area in the south of Sanxingdui site, and achieved significant results: Six "sacrificial pits" with an area of 3.5-19 square meters were found around pits 1 and 2 found in 1986. Lei Yu said that the cultural relics found in xinkeng show the multicultural and composite cultural outlook of Sanxingdui. "In general, the largest number of artifacts unearthed from Sanxingdui site are pottery and stone tools. Most of these most common daily necessities have obvious regional characteristics and occupy a dominant position in cultural factors." Lei Yu said that at the same time, Sanxingdui culture is deeply branded with the culture of other regions, reflecting the openness and inclusiveness of Sanxingdui culture. "The tradition or custom of taking statues and gods as the main body of bronze ware modeling and advocating gold can't be found in the land of China in the same period. Therefore, objectively, it can't be ruled out that Sanxingdui culture had exchanges and mutual learning with civilizations in further regions. But at present, we can't find direct evidence of this connection, or find similar wares with high similarity in further regions. Therefore, it can be understood that they are ancient Shu people who may be learning from them His unique creation based on cultural factors. " He said. Thunderstorm stressed that many unprecedented artifacts were unearthed in several "sacrificial pits" in Sanxingdui, which are quite different from people's understanding of Chinese civilization in the past, but the ancient Shu civilization represented by Sanxingdui is still a part of Chinese civilization. "The bronze casting technology from the Xia and Shang civilizations in the Central Plains, the bronze ritual system, the monk jade tradition, and the sculpture art and monk gold custom that may have originated from other civilizations have collided and blended in the Sichuan Basin, thus forming distinct regional characteristics. In this sense, the seemingly strange things unearthed at the Sanxingdui site can still be regarded as a regional cultural category." He said. There are many civilized elements in the Central Plains. There are as many as 29 dragon shaped ornaments in pits 1 and 2 In the eyes of many attentive viewers and history lovers, some cultural relics unearthed at Sanxingdui site are inextricably linked with contemporary cultural relics in the Central Plains, and the story of thunderstorm confirms their conjecture. "Even those bronze wares that look the strangest have many Chinese elements and symbols on them: for example, the tooth Zhang (Central Plains ritual vessel) in the hand of the bronze kneeling figure; the flying dragon falling from the sky on the No. 1 bronze big God tree, the dragon head seat of the bronze giant and the dragon pattern on it are typical Central Plains symbols, and there are as many as 29 dragon shaped ornaments in the No. 1 and No. 2 pits alone." In addition, thunderstorm also introduced that the cloud and thunder patterns, Kui dragon patterns, animal face patterns, palindromes, Qi Yu patterns, Jiong patterns, stealing patterns, cloud eye patterns, hook cloud patterns, round bead patterns, double ring patterns, wavy patterns, geometric cloud and thunder patterns, cicada patterns, etc. on the bronze wares of Sanxingdui are almost a set of typical patterns on the bronze wares of the Shang Dynasty in the Central Plains. "They have been applied to the most weird looking artifacts, such as Dali Man, Xiaoli man, beast head crown man, protruding eye mask, human body bird claw foot man, sacred tree, altar, temple and so on." He said. Speaking of this, thunderstorm quoted Li Xueqin, the chief scientist of the Xia Shang Zhou dating project, as saying: "in view of the uniqueness of the ancient Shu civilization, without an in-depth study of the ancient Shu civilization, it cannot constitute a complete picture of the origin and development of Chinese civilization." Lei Yu said that the ancient Shu civilization represented by Sanxingdui is the most developed and unique branch of many regional civilizations in the formation of Chinese civilization. Based on the distinctive regional culture and traditional Central Plains culture, it has widely absorbed the cultural factors of the surrounding and other regions, showing unique and magnificent cultural characteristics, thus greatly enriching the cultural connotation of Chinese civilization. "The second meaning of Li Xueqin's sentence is that although it is unique, it is still an integral part of Chinese civilization. Although Sanxingdui is very special, it is still very Chinese." Thunderstorm said. Sanxingdui was included in the "source exploration project of Chinese civilization" twice in 2013 and 2022. Lei Yu believes that the discovery and excavation of Sanxingdui site has fundamentally changed the traditional understanding of the development level of ancient Shu civilization. "In terms of the degree of development of civilization and its impact on future generations and surrounding areas, the ancient Shu civilization represented by Sanxingdui culture as a whole did not reach the height of the civilization of the Central Plains in the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, but surpassed the Central Plains in terms of artistic imagination and creativity, the casting of large-scale bronzes, and the forging and utilization of gold." Finally, Lei Yu concluded that the cultural relics unearthed at Sanxingdui site showed the diversity in the development of Chinese civilization with unique and magnificent shapes, which further demonstrated the development process of Chinese civilization from pluralism to integration. (outlook new era)