Sanxingdui (China archaeology excavation)

Cafe Society
1

Ok, you know, I’m in my (sigh) seventh year of grad school in art history and I have this sense that by now I should have some idea of the edges of the range of art that’s been produced on the planet. You know, I can look at an object and make a pretty good guess as to where and when it’s from, even if it’s outside my specialty. I know what sculpture form New Guinea looks like, I can tell Dogon fron Dan, and I know what Chinese Shang-era stuff looks like.
Then one day someone pops a couple of slides up on the wall and my jaw drops because it doesn’t look like ANYTHING and I swear it must be frikking Venusian.
Sanxingdui. Wow.
Exhibit A:
googly-eyed martian mask
Exhibit B:
Eight foot tall soldier from Planet X
Exhibit C:
Words fail me

This style hasn’t much in common with the nearest culture in time and place (Shang). . . it’s just wierd. They haven’t found any texts at the site yet and no contemporary cultures mention them. A pretty recent find.
Just sharing, I guess. Cool stuff.
Nice slide-shows at this site and this one .

2

I haven’t followed this in years. But in the mid-late 80’s when these artifacts were discovered in Sichuan, rumor had them to be of a non-Han Chinese civilization.

Quite controversial because it implies that the Han were not the original inhabitants, nor the first with “culture.”

Hope that someone who knows more about this stuff gives an update since I’m about 15 years out of date.