Live: Further revelations from newly-excavated Sanxingdui Ruins in SW China

[Music] hello there everyone welcome to cgtn this is our special coverage on china's archaeological missing link i'm jungshir in beijing today we continue our focus on the excavation of six newly discovered pets in the sun shindri ruins located in southwest china's sichuan province sun shindui is considered one of the country's most significant archaeological discoveries archaeologists are unveiling what's been found from the six sacrificial pits discovered between 2019 to 2020. and later on the show we'll go to a live signal from the mandarin channel of china media group where my mandarin speaking colleagues will be broadcasting live from sunshine dway don't worry we got your back we'll be translating simultaneously for you and now let's take some time to recap what has so far been discovered and excavated from those pets we understand efforts are still underway in the six sacrificial pits so far more than 500 new artifacts have been discovered these include gold and bronze statues mass and other articles as well as jade and pottery a number of elephant tusks have also been discovered which show signs of having been burned and experts have found some architectural remains in pet which is the largest of the six pets for the latest on this let's check in with cgt's in guangzhan satran province where the sanchandra runes are located shelton based on what we saw yesterday personnel working in those pits have been proceeding with extreme caution and care taking very delicate steps to make sure that all objects discovered there will be observed and studied in the best condition possible what more can you tell us on what's happening today well indeed a lot is happening uh like you said all these measures uh to protect and preserve the relics are now underway if you take a look i don't know because this is a bit far away but inside the archaeological shed there are capsules workstations built up to protect uh all these uh pissed newly discovered pairs to make sure that all the artifacts are in the best environment and best condition but today i would like to draw your attention to pit number four now as i said earlier all these artifacts effects are extremely fragile after being buried underground for thousands of years now a lot of elephant tasks have been found in kit number four and um all these uh elephant tusks are now being protected by covering them with wet paper or wet towers now all these artifacts when they are unearthed the largest the biggest threat to them would be dehydration or oxidization and literally archaeologists are now moisturizing moisturizing all these elephant tusks by covering them with all these wet paper or wet towels and these thousand paper will be replaced replaced roughly every four hours judging by its humidity level and there are also clear clear traces clear signs of uh on on these elephant talks that have been burned before they were buried and there is a clear layer of ashes the result of burning and there seems there is a ritual concerning the way all these artifacts were buried on top of it was the the layer of ashes and underneath would be the layer of uh elephant tusks which is true with pits number three number four also with earlier pits number one and number two and following that would be the layer of large size uh bronze utensils including uh bronze heads browns masks bronze um utensils or vessels alike and then on the bottom would be some smaller objects including some bronze wares or jade wares or partridges now archaeologists do have plans to try to remove some more objects out of the the pits uh very likely they're they're going to try to take out a bronze suit soon out of the pit zoon is also a bronze utensil used a lot in ancient times in sacrificial rituals and at the same time they also have plans to try to remove more um jade wares paltries or other smaller browns objects out of the piss number three number four and number five and their attention has also been drawn to a bronze uh figuring might be half bird and half human beings but it's still uh half buried so we still don't have a full picture of what exactly that is don't you wear many hats in your line of work i'm sure that pretty soon archaeologists will be one of them ctn's monitoring the excavation work for us at sunshindway in satran province i want to get you more perspectives and views on the work being done in sunshine doing joining me right now in the studio fandaling deputy director of the center for museum development and research at the capitol normal university in beijing dr fun always a pleasure to see you in the studio hi great to see you again absolutely as we continue to wait for what's going to happen in the pits today i do want to spend some time recapping what we have found and discovered in the pits with you yesterday you told me that you were particularly impressed by those little gold leaves in the pits can we also talk about that gold mask that has been trending on chinese social media with a lot of people amazed by the size of it and by just how beautiful that mask looks oh yeah actually during the last time excavation in 1986 actually we've already dug up some of the bronze hats and bronze masks some of them with the layers of golden mask that already showed us that the sentinel people knows how to make golden objects and it must with special meanings for these golden objects in their ritual process but this time we are so excited to see this huge you know enormous golden mask that's been dug up by the archaeologists and we can see that how skillful sensing the people were you know the purity of the gold and the shape the 3d shape of the mask and also you can you can see the shining even though they were buried for thousands of years when they dug it up they with great shinings so maybe they have already you know obtained the skill of polishing and all that skills to treat with gold and also that is a very important object because not only because you know the material is gold but also because that shows or may we review us more information about the ritual process and the understanding of uh the universe or about the ancestors and everything about sending the people in the past yes we know that mask was very likely used in rituals do we know at this point do we have theories at this point about how exactly were they used and and you know who or what would wear those masks in a ritual oh wow that's that's people are interested in you know archaeology is a scientific discipline that based on solid materials evidences from the past so we can make hypothesis uh according to some of our discoveries but we cannot be sure you know because there are lack of enough material evidences today so we can make hypothesis because according to the material the price that the pressure that uh that that is very uh pressure you know of gold in the past even in today so there must be uh owned by the higher level higher class of the society and because it was dugged out from the pit from the piece number one number two and this time some of the pits so we can say we can say that it must be linked to the ceremonial to the ritual ceremonial but we can't say more you know because we still like of solid information solid evidences that's part of the fun doing archaeology isn't it piecing together the pieces yes and uh trying to get to the bottom yes of things um i do want to talk to you about those pets um it's very likely that later on in our show we'll be zooming in on one of the pets to see how excavation is being conducted there today but generally talk to us about how those pets were discovered this time because back in 1986 two pets there this time six pets you know uh we have very strict regulations for excavation for archaeological surveys and archaeological excavations actually uh the uh the archaeologists in in in sensing the east side they've already worked there for more than a year so actually they work there first of all they need to do the field survey like you know fuel survey and use some techniques then they will find the the whole area that might contain some you know archaeological remains and then they can focus on certain areas to do uh more activations like using trenches and then finally they will focus on this time that the pits yeah so this is not something that people just can't go there and say okay we will dig here it's a very strict very scientific process to make sure which area contains archaeological evidences archaeological remains that need us to work more on that there have been many phases of their work we're only getting to see yes you know some of the more visual parts of their work actually even with today you know people are all focusing on the discovery on the digging now but actually archaeologists on the side they need far much more works in the future to do the recording to do the you know uh collecting the whole collection collecting of information and of course research and they have to public uh the archaeological activation reports that's so many works to do in the future you got to admire the kind of work they do the workload they have just to get to the bottom of things you know the piecing together of evidence yeah uh let's also talk about the jinsha culture um just 50 kilometers away from sunshine due is the archaeological site of jinsha which is in a way lesser known than sunshine due some say the jinsha culture is an extension of the sunshine to a culture how do we compare and contrast jinxa and sunshine oh actually i have to change your one terminology it's not sinjar culture we pro we we say it's a site but ginger scientist is the capital or the regional center of shar chiao culture phase the charital culture phase is is later than the sentinele culture phase i'm sure i'll be making mistakes all the way around so please do feel free to connect because that's archaeological culture uh it's uh it's a terminology in archaeology archaeological culture is a study of based on the remains the material remains like potteries and bronze or vessels and all certain things of that um we have the same we we normally call that the same uh with the same uh feature of a side of our group of uh remains that we call them uh one kind of uh archaeological culture so sensing three culture is uh the the regional capital of sanctioned culture is something to be science if i make it clear and then after that period we believe i think many based on the archaeological remains that have been discovered in many places around the uh chengdu plain many archaeologists archaeologists believe that charity our culture is the uh you know the second or the latter part of sensing three culture even some of the archaeologists they believe all this suggests that we can combine sensing three culture and charitable culture together actually they were the one they were one they were one culture yeah yeah i'm sorry to interrupt you uh the live signal will happen momentarily we'll talk more when we get back to our studio discussion okay but let's see if we have that signal ready we understand that uh excavation work is ongoing in san juan doing in guangzhou province we have a team of reporters there covering the excavation work they're from our sister channel the mandarin channel of china media group they'll be broadcasting in chinese will be translating simultaneously for you they will zoom in on one of the pets and see how the excavation work is being conducted there take a look in 1921 we started research at the yangshao culture and today's day which has been 100 years and so over the past 100 years we have been passed down one generation for another and now let's enter into the archaeological sites so what you'll now see on the screen is the archaeological structure that is covering the pitch in sunshine under this structure we have four peats number three to eight peas being activated and now please follow our camera let's move slowly to pitch number four and let's unview the mystery that is covered underground so what you now see is a bird view of beat number four and yesterday we had a lot of protection layers and we cannot have a bird view of the pits and today you can still see a lot of wet tissues and white towels and they have to replace that and replace that very frequently and today we are going to remove this protection layer temporarily so with this opportunity we can follow our camera and have a close look at those elephant tasks so let me ask mr so why do we need to replace the white tissues and towels how often do you do that so because you can see that the elephant tusks they are in white color and they are covered by the ash layer the athlete has the high level of moisture and to reach a balance we have to maintain the moisture and humidity of the elephant tusks we're using wet tissues and towels but those white tissues they have a very high level of humanity and if we cover those tasks with those towels and tissues for a very long time it will generate some vaccines so that is why we change them in every four days and so today we are very lucky to have this time window [Music] so this is like changing the protection layer of the tasks exactly so you can see that the in very black and dark color [Music] well this is because it's covered by the layer of ashes and also before buried underground they were burned and that is why they are in the color of black and a lot of them have a lot of content of those black ashes so what you now see on the screen are archaeologists we've seen the elephant task but we can also find many other utensils and artifacts so what is the progress that we have currently made so starting from october the ninth to uh of 2020 we have officially kicked off the excavation and to may this year to march this year we have basically reached very good results and starting from march 15th and we are unearthing we are scanning these artifacts so now you can have a picture of such scanning so when was this so this was scanned when we were cleaning the earth that was covering the average now let's take a look at the next photo so just now we saw the photo taken by taken on october 26 and so we this is very similar to the preview photos of home decoration so now you are seeing the layer of ashes so now we are cleaning the soil that is covering the utensils and the utensils started to unveil themselves to the public so this is a very comprehensive record of the excavation process so this one is a lot more clearer and you can see all those utensils and elephant tasks you can see that they are covering the floor of the pitch so this is one elephant task we're going to excavate and later we can pay attention to this process we can see that all the ivory they were burned those are similar scenes that we have encountered why is that well this is because of the sacrificial ritual ceremony we had the ancient times because we want to send those sacrificial objects to the heavens so in what way can we do that in central plain area in china and in other places in china in ancient times the ordinary practice that we engage is to burn them with firewood so when we burn those artifacts we're going to have a lot of uh burning smoke and the burning smoke is like the messenger that conveys those artifacts to the heaven and after burning we have to crash them into different pieces and debris and then we bury them under the ground this is a way that we use to pay respect to the heavenly god in china so there are many different theories and explanations and interpretations behind that and those are speculations for the time being and we hope that with the progress in mp number three and number eight we can have some breakthroughs we may overturn the conclusions that we reached in advance or before that and now tell me more about p number one and number two and are they slightly different than pit number four so no matter it is p number three or four similar in terms of how the artifacts are held so this is a photo showing how those artifacts are held so the first layer is actually elephant tasks and below that so some utensils and then we have some very large bronze pieces and copper utensils so the very top layer is the elephant task which means that the elephant tusks they were the ladies to be put on the ground put it under the ground and the very bottom layer some of the bronze utensils for example the bronze trees and also some of the jade do you think there is a pattern behind this yes there is some pattern for example pin number three which we are looking at right now and also pin number four the very top layer is elephant tasks and beneath that we have a lot of bronze utensils and for their penis utensils and we may encounter some surprises so basically the form they follow this pattern and from pin number one through piece number eight they are following the same direction same pattern and most of these utensils they are placed towards the direction mountain which is uh northwest they believe that the ancestors all came from there so that is why all the utensils they were placed towards that direction so this is a jade tablet yes this is a jade tablet and through the footage you can see that it's very smooth we can see a color that is attached to this j-tablet yes and we have a lot of holes on that tablet and it's popped out and when it was just unearthed it's in ivory white but right now it's green and this is because of the corrosion from the layer of ashes so now the other half is still buried and it's it's covered by the earth yes because it's broken and for the other side it was covered by the elephant tusk i have confidence that we can 100 percent unearthed at this piece do we have any other excavation of j tablets yes but this one is relatively big it has a quite advanced polishing technique from the surface because we are seeing the jade zom it is also a quite terrible jade player and for this piece of the jade jaw it is a very unique jade vessels generally speaking dao indicates a tools but in the joe in the dynasty of jody have made it using the jade so making it a virtual so here we could see the tone and we could see the jade patterns and i believe there are six different types of the gtbs for each of them it has its unique virtual functions for example we talked about g disk and we have also talked about the jade tone for the deep digital it is aware to pay the tribute to the god while the jdb is there to pay the tribute to earth so for the gdp it is a necessary part during the ritual ceremony so we are seeing a bronzer here mr c can you tell us more about this bronze wheel this is a very magical bronze wheel just as we have on earth here it is showing something like a protruding tooth we also find some of the patterns on surface of the protruding tooth we used to think it's a bronze bird with aids i found it quite similar to a human hand i believe the two hand is clinking together but we are not sure what kind of a brown square it is if it's a bronze bird i believe we could only identify it until we have removed the elephant task covering on top of it through its patterns and distributions of the human hand mr chen what do you think of this bronze bear i think it is quite similar to the giant figure bronze giant figure it is a combination of a bronze giant figure between the human and bird this giant bronze figure something that we cannot imagine before something that we have not seen before it might be related to its respect i believe they have added different patterns of animals and human beings into one branch as we call it bizarre bronze figure but from the archaeological side we cannot call it a bizarre bronze figure we name it after it's cool appearance [Music] i think it's quite similar to the patterns on the bronze bird i'm not sure whether it is an independent bronze root or it is closely connected to the bronze bird that we have seen before i think it might belongs to one piece of the bronzer oh two pieces i think the result can only be unveiled after the excavation finished with the moving of the camera we are watching the wheels and also all the ultra relics i'm seeing a lot of bronze bears buried here i'm also seeing a bronze bear at the bottom of this picture it is diamond shaped elephant tasks as we are seeing here is a piece of the poetry yes it is a wine holding pottery it has been burned because of the neutral ceremony although it is only a piece of the pottery you might think that it's not as valuable as the bronze bears or elephant task but poultry is quite important during that time because bronzers and gws can be passed through from generation to generation while partly it is easy to bruise so every time they need to make new pathways and for each new pieces of the pottery it varies the characteristics of the craftsman and it's his time this is a very important indication to the culture and civilization at that time because yesterday we have so not seen a single piece of pottery so far is it going to be a colorful part a review and white part right there i think we i think that this battery is indicating some of the reddish color on its surface there are some of the blackish color i believe the black mod is the ashes attaching to it we are also seeing some of the shining or glitters if we have added this material into the pottery mod it is going to make it more stronger so during the pottery making they have also added some of the ashes of the shelf to prevent the pottery from breaking because yesterday during our live streaming i have not seen a single piece of the poetry so yesterday in page one and two we saw a lot of power and pottery is a great invention of the ancient people to cook food we have to build it and that's how the pottery was invented so potter is a very important watershed between the new stone age and bronze age and so we had a lot of pottery excavated yesterday so this shows how developed the ancient culture is and we also saw a lot of very pointed pottery utensils yes we have seen a lot of very pointed utensils made of pottery and we also had a lot of uh one potteries and we have many different shapes of utensils some of them can be used to serve hot pots so this is one very big family of the pottery design and we have identified some very big pottery containers and it can be used to hold water and salts and also vegetables you get very excited so maybe later when we have time we can get into some details so we identified and unearthed some of the pointed pottery parts and what is that for maybe we can have more detailed explanations later and we'll hand it back to my colleague in beijing bye-bye an incredibly detailed look into what's happening in the pit i know it's a challenge to make sense of what you saw just now that is why i have with me in the studio fan dialing deputy director of the center for museum development and research at beijing's capital normal university dr fun looking at how they carry out their work in the pets i mean you were telling me you were emphasizing that this is a whole discipline it's not just a bunch of amateurs uh forcibly removing the items from the pits it's been carried out in faces and in very scientific manners and one word you used is top-notch world-class work is being conducted at those pets tell us more you know because the archaeology in china have developed for decades and this times relaunch activation in sensing the east side was supported by state administration of cultural heritage and the local government so they invited many research institutes all around china to form a one big team to do the activation this time though there are experts in conservation there are experts in zoo archaeology who can you know test the species of animal bones and also experts to do the testing of micro traces yeah so this time the excavation is well planned or pre-planned elaborated uh carried out so i i believe at least i believe this times endeavor is at the top of top level of the world i think also it shows that we have the ability to carry out very very strict very very well planned research lead archaeological excavation i'm sure for professionals like you this time is not not just about new items being found it's also uh how china's archaeology has developed all those years let's talk about the focus of the excavation work today all those elephant tusks um i know i'm going to ask you to hypoth hypothesize again yes but do we what are the theories about how those tusks were used in the ritual and what do we know about the elephant population at the time how did the people get those tusks in the first place uh you know today it is difficult to you know find elephants live elephants in sichuan province but you know according to the study of environmental experts in the past decades we know that uh during sentencing uh cultures phase uh the time pressure or the climate is more humid and warm than today and a british a british scholar called mark alvin he ever wrote a book called the retreat of elephant in the book they discussed the the climate uh change along uh 4 000 years in china and the impact on chinese civilizations so actually according to the inscriptions on oracle bones that in during in period of shang dynasty they ever caught an elephant in hong province today you know just look at the abbreviation of ghana province you the right part of this chinese character is elephant so actually during that time the environment is more humid and warm so you know hypothesis there must be some elephants in sichuan province today in that area or maybe uh sensing the culture the people in centuries culture they might collect more elephant tasks from the surrounding area yeah when you mentioned ingre i might be getting ahead of myself now that reminds me of china's efforts to list more sites as the world cultural and natural heritage we do know that efforts have been on our way to list sunshine doing also on that list where are we on those efforts and what do you think the chances are that sanchez will eventually be listed as such a site you know uh the convention of the protection of natural natural and cultural heritage was released by the unesco in 1972 the world heritage list is a endeavor international endeavor and also participated by different national state parties so which one which property to be inscribed on the list first they need to be inscribed on the tentative list of the state party so it is great that the archaeological size of uh asian shoe people including sensing design is already on our attentive list so they've they've already made the first step and then because one property wants to be a world heritage list on the world heritage list they have to prove they have the outstanding universal value that's the vital work to do yeah a lot of work yeah a lot of work to do yes fingers crossed yeah dr fun i've learned so much from you those past two days i certainly appreciate your company thank you so much for thank you today yeah now i do want to make a quick stop back to sanshin the way where ctsd xiajin is standing by he is also in great company joined by professor sun hua from the school of archaeology and museology at peking university xiaojin take it away thank you indeed i'm now joined by professor sunghwa a professor of archaeology from peking university welcome to the latest discoveries have they changed your judgments over the sentencing the relics thoughts relic aside 30 years ago we identified two peats here which astonished the whole world and which generated a lot of academic papers and i myself have written a lot of academic papers all those papers there were conclusions that we reached from these two pieces and between the two peach there is some distance and there are six other pits that were not discovered so we had a lot of missing information today we have all together eight kids so they are forming a humanity and the excavation of this pitch is of great significance in helping us to fully understand the places of sacrificial rituals and it's also of great significance for us to recover the incidents are those artifacts buried uh at once according to our observation they should be buried uh at once and they identified a place and then they dug up seven holes and seven peats and then an additional uh pitch on a later date and then they buried all those utensils the time of burial is pretty close amongst this eight peaks if we found out that there are matching utensils between two nearby pits then we can show that they were buried at the same time so those peach indicates a falling of a nation or a kingdom but we think that we have to engage in more researches than if they were buried at once this is not for sacrificial ceremonies for sacrificial ceremonies they have to bury those utensils at different times and this i believe is a result of a major historical event as for what specifically this event is a lot of sacrificial um so what is your biggest expectation this time number one [Music] we hope site we believe there are three gods two separate trees and one pieces of the bronze bears that taste people and even the leader and shenzhou people have three gods and their religious belief currently we have discovered two secret trees we believe it is representing the fourth century which is the secretary witnessing the sun rising from the eastern side and also the secretary witnessing from the western side we believe there's another tree named kenti connections between the earth and god it enables people from the earth break down the rules between the heaven and the earth if we can earn another secret tree it is an important testament to the historic record and the han dynasty of the trinities of the three gods we believe these special religious rituals could be i think it needs to be testified from multiple brands the sensing new civilizations we think there are many different routes but all of it is coming from the eastern side or the northern part of china or even the yangtze river we believe from the early stages there is another important civilization the maasaian civilization which is descendant to the young show civilization i believe some of the elements of the baudu civilization gradually becomes important features of the samsung civilizations that's how i deducted the transformations of several different civilizations are there some of the patents from the western world this is actually uh something that catches the eyesight across the world relics is very unique it has some of the bronze figures indicating god some of the secret trees this is something that we have not seen before in the central part of china and eastern part of china's civilization before we believe we have nothing we have found nothing before in the temples and starting from sean and jill dynasty especially from the western jewel dynasty people stopped to make the sacrifice thought they started to make some of the plate representing the gods it is something like that we are worshiping we are using to worship the confucius today are there any people are there any mutual practice that people used to cultivate some of the giant figures representatives we have discovered the thousands of the pieces of them but at the same time during the strong civilizations and the jew dynasty we discovered more about the sea shops the seashells must not come from the yangtze river area it might be moved from the southern part thousands of china sea in the yangtze river and in the yellow river it is the different civilizations interacted and in the unknown region we have not discovered the early stage seashells the seashells we discovered was between the warring state period to the late joe period on the southern part of the ruins we have not found any evidence for the spreadings of the sea shells some of the scholars by indicating that these seashells comes from was located in the ancient sioux area and there's no question about it and prior to the han dynasty there was a ancient kingdom and there's no question about it either and but we have in that interval there are two civilizations and the archon and chinchou and then we have descension to it if saint john belongs to ancient kingdom then they are very coherent following this one cultural system the evidence shows that there is high level of coherence but we have one link that is missing and that historical records and there is one missing link and if you look at the earlier period of ascension 3 does that belong to kingdom we have to collect more historic information thank you all right thank you very much it's interesting actually um that we've uh found some well we've i've noticed that mr sun professor swinton holds some different views especially when it comes to the nature of the sacrificial side whether they were buried all at the same time or buried at different time periods well maybe that is what makes it intriguing makes the latest excavation even more intriguing as there are so many questions waiting to be answers and probably researchers all have different theories but again like uh professor sun said we need to wait and see what new proof will be excavated from this time and see whether or not they will be able to reach a consensus this is our dream back to you what a thought provoking conversation you had with your guests indeed the quest for answers continues and i know we'll be counting on you for some of the answers cdtsd in sunshine doing for us today thank you so much and you're watching our special coverage on the sun chandra discoveries we'll be right back after a short break [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i do want to get you more analysis on sunshine doing joining me now once in hua the dean of the institute for the global history of civilizations at the shanghai international studies university in shanghai mr one welcome to our coverage i'm pretty sure you're as excited as the rest of us about what is being discovered at sunshine deway but i do want to go beyond the objects with you here because at the end of the day what will excite all of us is the information that these objects will lead to secrets uh unveiled and uh mysteries solved so talk to us about uh the remains here we do know that the sanchindori remains are the largest among what's known as the early cultural sites what makes the new discovery so significant to understanding the early shoe culture uh hi uh as you mentioned already i think the most important factor that decides the importance of science indeed to the understanding of our issue is exactly this is the largest materialized and fantastically productive archaeological site we have from bronze h shu and with the new findings this time from these new sacrificial pits we will have much more reliable samples for the solution of a lot of critical questions scholars have been struggling with i think this is the most important and especially as specialists we the most important thing that everybody is looking forward to evidence mr among the artifacts recovered from saint chandra are leaves made of ivory jade and gold which were also discovered in other regions of the world during that time some 3 000 years ago a lot of people are curious about how that can be the case how would you explain that uh this is a question let's say um a lot of scholars researchers are not interested in but but as a discipline that is highly evidence based i would have to say there is no clear scholarly consensus for a ready answer for this for an explanation but in general terms as the evidence shows we are confident that essentially through this evidence sanjingdi must be located in bronze age china bronze age uracia in a much larger geographical context so the question to be answered is more relevant to connecting the dots we have dots from here we have those from there as you mentioned we have ivory from here um golden masks from uh now from sunshine d more than one and also golden marks from other parts of urasia but scholars the next stop the next step is that we will try to find more thoughts and put them into time and space and try to connect those and finally hopefully to find out how these fantastic findings should be located in real history well for the moment um i have to be confined a bit constrained a bit absolutely understood completely not to say that there is no uh there is already any clear explanation sorry mr one no no worries at all i don't get definitive answers many of my questions these days which makes this process a fabricating i do want to take you now back to sanji day to take a look at a very fascinating process from pet four a complete elephant tusk has been excavated as you can see in those live pictures from the pet there we've spent a lot of time broadcasting how work was being done in pit 4 and that is the highlight of the day certainly also on our special coverage now that southern silk road is believed to have been an important channel for ancient china's economic and cultural exchanges with the outside world it started in sichuan where the sanchendra site is located but where exactly did it lead and how significant was it here is more you probably know the asian silk road a trade route from the city of xi'an and through china's northwest into central asia but this wasn't the first and only connection between east and west another path is known by historians as the southland silk road it's named as such because it took a more southern route across china to the west the southern road had two routes both starting in chengdu the west route wandered through sutran province via ya'an and xichang the east route passed through ebin before moving into was today's southwestern province of yunnan going through kunming and dali where it converged with the west route from there the road took traders to present day myanmar india and beyond merchants traded things like silk sugar herbs tea jewelry and shells along the route the journey was hard though with the road twisting through the treasures mountains of southwest china to make things a bit easier bridges and plank roads along clear faces were built some of which still remain today the south and sioux road also enabled cultural exchange elements of buddhist art and architecture flowed into china along the route they can still be seen along the route today especially in yunnan as the starting point of the asian trade route and the main source of chinese souk chengdu was the trading center and the transportation hub in the region this brought prosperity to surrounding areas and allowed the local economy culture and civilization to flourish the bashu and yelang cultures as well as british civilization are all among crucial elements of the south and sukuro's heritage sites like saint xindui and the dujangian irrigation system dot the route and served today as a reminder of one of china's first forays into global trade [Music] i want to now return to my guest wang xianghua the dean of the institute for the global history of civilizations in shanghai international studies university mr wan what did the southern silk road contribute to the formation of sanshin to culture by way of cultural exchange among countries or kingdoms along that route okay uh this for this question first of all one thing and one point is very important to understand the connection between sanjingdi and the southern silk road as we call it the simple fact is chengdu is the hub or the connecting point one of the connecting the joining place joining hub uh that connected both the southern silky road and the silk road as we usually talk about if we can call it uh the silky road from central china leading to west asia so if this point is clear i would say the contribution by this from the southern part again back to conf evidence may be part of the material culture especially tusks ivory sea shells for instance i as i i can recall a scholarly scholarly opinions are not really agreeing with each other but for my for my own judgment i think for such or parts of the material culture we look into the southern silk road well at the same time when we talk about the southern silk roads i think equal attention equal attention should be paid to the northern part or the silk road as we usually use the term for which is the road leading from central china to the western part of asia to as the geographical location of chengdu determines in this region on the chengdu plan it's also open equally open to the silk road or central china or north western china i think this is my my my impression or my point of view my perspective to this question thank you mr one certainly appreciate your expertise today thank you so much for making time for us on a related topic buddhism has been a religion and a bridge that communicates asian civilizations and promotes people-to-people exchanges our next report looks back at its history and connections with china buddhism is one of the world's oldest religions having originated in asian india sometimes between the 6th and 4th centuries bc it arrived in china during the han dynasty probably from the exchanges made along the asian silk road its peak in china came during the tan dynasty after monks xian zhang and 18 brought back buddhist scriptures from pilgrimages to india after establishing its roots buddhism became deeply integrated in chinese culture and had a deep impact on beliefs philosophy literature art architecture and customs of its people this form of chinese buddhism spread to neighboring countries such as japan and south korea and helped to create a cultural bridge in the region chinese innovations fashions styles and etiquette were also exported in this way china says has always been open and inclusive in how we promote this culture and this provides a platform for mutual learning among different peoples one cell cgtn and for more insight into the spread of other cultures and religions through time joining me now professor kuznanto angora from the university of indonesia in jakarta professor a pleasure to have you on our special coverage today as we have seen cultural communications have been happening throughout asia for centuries can you shed light on how cultural communications have benefited people of asia uh well i think yes uh it is very important actually that cultural exchange put the beneficial to uh many people especially because the spread of many things including trade investment and to some extent also technology and so on and so forth and more important that that it hopefully it would create a mutual understanding among people we remember that a chinese scholar for example during the fifth and sixth century many of them actually sent into indonesia to learn about buddhism and this is a very huge connection between chinese indonesia and india at that time so the communication between them actually is very good uh considering technology and considering geographical proximity and this kind of thing so i think it's yes and cult and religion of course from my discipline because i myself was a political scientist uh i'm not uh trying to elaborate what actually religions actually are but there is very important intersections between culture and religion both are actually trying to diverge about the belief system about the behavior of people and communities and a chart with creating about a very important aspect of social relations so again in the shen culture is becoming very much interesting we have in modern international relation one can mention about the what's so called as soft power uh and so on and so forth uh with and it is understood that they already have freeway and xi'an exaggeration an enchanting day and so on would eventually create mutual understanding more people i'm sure that the chinese government would uh are trying to capitalize on that both within the context of nation building inside china itself and two of course to full relation between chinese and other countries we learned our experience in the past especially in sixth to twelfth century how had becoming more important it is part of the chinese trade it is part of a digital silk road it is also part of how professor uh there will be here on our program all right let me get back to my guest professor and girl how can we keep cultural exchange and mutual learning with other civilizations alive professor because when you mentioned mutual understanding i think that is crucial especially crucial in today's world under the current climate of politics economics and cultures how do we keep those crucial communications and exchanges alive and move them even forward would spiritual understanding of mutual learning and a sense of non supremacy and so on meaning that acceptance of others is important within the cultural relations among civilizations uh you cannot just assume that your culture is higher or superior to other culture that would possibly create and the deficient relationship among countries but when we asked our standpoint is basically mutual understanding and mutual learning that is good because that's actually the very foundation of religion amongst it so i as we understand it buddhism for example in india it's not the same with buddhism in china or even buddhism in other countries in southeast asia like thailand or vietnam so there is no ethnocentricism there is no such thing of xenophobia and so on meaning that within the particular context people must understand actually that uh the most important thing is mutual respect mutual learning and so on and so forth it is based on this mutual learning that contact among people are becoming understood and of course beneficial with with others we understand that culture could possibly be very specific every culture that is understanding about particularities peculiarities say snow princess peculiarities is a factor create a uh pluralism that create the differences but we should not understand it as the differences but we can actually capitalize on that kind of peculiarities into the whole theme so within that context then mutual understanding again and again is very very uh very important we understood that society exchange historical record in bangko shan and paliguang and kashin and possibly shan chidiang and everywhere is actually uh from a different historical perspective and we understand that of course there are some accumulation of civilization as with accumulation of the way of life accumulation of technology and so on and so forth it must be accept as it is it is part of long historical journey and within that particular context every countries actually have their own journey and it is because of these peculiarities that mutual learning is actually a very important i know that there is chinese scholar in sixth and seventh centuries when they came to sri jaya kingdom in indonesia also a lot of buddhism from indonesian scholar and pala putra dewa the king of trivijaya actually also visited china and they learned something and of course this contact of learning is actually very important the relationship between china and indonesian parts as well as between china and india as well as other countries and i guess it is because of the need of mutual learning that for example chinese government actually now becoming more active in some cooperation including on excavation of some archaeological site in uzbekistan and saudi arabia and turkey and some part of the world it is a joint project it is a chin at the intellectual and academic level it is a cooperation at the research level and by maintaining all those things the mutual understanding among people would eventually enhance and of course everybody will actually benefit it from that kind of cooperation professor kuznet angora from the university of indonesia in jakarta we appreciate your analysis thank you so much for making time for us today in the middle of our interview just now we showed you live pictures from the side of sunshine due from one of the pits actually where personnel were apparently putting pieces of wet cloths on top of the elephant tusks we understand that was a crucial step to get the tusks ready to be lifted for further observation study preservation and analysis and with that we come to the end of our special coverage today our program on the unearthed treasures will continue for the coming two days we'll have more exclusive interviews with experts and live feeds from the site join us monday and tuesday at 1 pm beijing time that's o 500 gmt as we continue to trace the links to the origins of the chinese civilization we're leaving now with a look at some life-sized bronze hats that date back more than three thousand years experts say they represent the rulers of saint xindui i'm jungshir in beijing thank you for staying with us [Music] [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: CGTN

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Length: 74min 30sec (4470 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021