China Part III: Ancient Past

OK, I'm back for a week now, and this is my last post about China:

We had one morning free during the week we were in Sichuan, and chose to use this to check out an archaeological site called San Xing Dui that is about an hour outside of Chengdu by car. This is a fascinating site, documenting a neolithic civilization called the Shu that lived along the Duck River about 3000 years ago. The museum houses incredible artifacts of jade, pottery and bronze. The bronze castings were amazing, particularly one that is of a life-sized tree with birds nesting in the branches. Also many wonderful and charming miniature bronze or pottery pieces depicting animals like birds, tigers, toads. The imagery reminded me oddly of Mayan decoration – but of course there can’t be any other than a coincidental resemblance! There were many bronzes of people’s heads – and these are considered interesting because the features are not those of Han Chinese, but rather ‘foreigners’, although no one seems to know where these foreigners came from. Zhang Quen, our friend from Beijing who accompanied us, has a theory that they were from outer space – and indeed they look like they could have been, with bulging eyes and sharp pointy noses! I am thinking we should get some DNA from the bones and get our National Genographic project to map where these folks came from.

Like the Maya, this civilization disappeared abruptly and for reasons unknown, in about 800BC.

Back from China now - we've had a couple of snow storms here in CT - yesterday about 10 inches, but I was in Atlanta, so the boys had to shovel alone. I'll post some pix of the snow for any Californians who want to experience it vicariously!!