Ruins help in unraveling mysteries, majesty of early Chinese civilization

Wider scope

Excavation started in 1928 at Yinxu, one of the first modern archaeological projects in China run by local scholars. In the decades that followed, generations of leading Chinese archaeologists honed their skills at Yinxu.

"The site is just an incomparable milestone," Chen Xingcan, head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Archaeology, said. "Before the epoch-making finding of Yinxu, early Chinese history was widely doubted by Western scholars to have ever really existed. It (the find) then greatly enhanced Chinese people's cultural confidence."

In 2006, Yinxu was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Archaeologists have also explored surrounding areas, and some nearby sites are probably even older than Yinxu, said Kong Deming, a researcher with the Anyang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Since 2020, a large cluster of bronzeware workshops has been discovered at Xindian site, about 10 kilometers north of Yinxu's palace area. More than 40,000 pieces of pottery molds, which were used to cast bronze, were unearthed along with many other tools.

About 2.5 km south of the palace area, three courtyard ruins have been found at Shaojiapeng site. The discoveries include 18 houses and a graveyard with more than 20 tombs and four funeral pits where chariots and horses are buried. "These findings give us a much bigger picture of Yinxu and about different clans living on this land then," Kong said.

Inscriptions on bronzeware unearthed at Xindian tell of people known as Ge, who were heavily involved in casting bronze. Bronzeware unearthed at the Shaojiapeng site showed there was another group of people known as Ce.

"The findings may echo recordings on oracle bones on the Ce," Kong said, adding that there were believed to be official historians for the royal family.

These findings may also indicate that clans in the Shang Dynasty stuck with the same jobs.

"The idea of Yinxu as 'one' capital city may also be redefined," said Chen from the CASS. "It was possibly composed of a group of smaller satellite cities spread over a large area."

Some of the archaeological findings may indicate that Yinxu was part of a much bigger network of communication, trade, and shared learning among prehistoric civilizations.

Kong said unearthed bronze arrow heads and analysis of human bones in a graveyard on the Taojiaying site, 7 km north of Yinxu, indicated that nomadic people had been coming from northern grasslands, such as present-day Inner Mongolia.

Bones of bronze makers at the Xindian site indicate they may have migrated from the southern region by the Yangtze River. Pottery molds at the site match unearthed bronzeware from the Sanxingdui site in Sichuan province, about 1,300 km away.

"It is communication that makes cultures boom. Yinxu is our benchmark to better view other bronze civilizations of its time," Xu from CASS said.