Sanxingdui
2800 BCE – 800 BCE
A Bronze Age walled city in Sichuan that has forced a rewrite of early Chinese history — home to a civilization with no confirmed writing system, unrelated artistic conventions, and no clear match to any known Chinese dynasty, yet capable of casting bronze on a scale and sophistication rivalling the Shang dynasty of the Yellow River heartland. Vast sacrificial pits discovered in 1986, and again in 2019–2022, have yielded towering bronze masks with alien, protruding eyes, a 4-metre bronze "sacred tree," and gold masks unlike anything else found in ancient China.
