In the mythology of "Shan Hai Jing", Kunlun appears as the middle pillar of heaven and earth, and Jianmu is the sacred tree growing on Kunlun.
The emperors of the human world accepted the will of the Emperor of Heaven to rule the human world by climbing up to the sky.
The branches of the sacred tree are divided into three layers from top to bottom.
It may also mean the three realms of divine realm, human world and region in Chinese mythology.
The top of each branch is decorated with flowers, fruits and sacred birds, which expresses the fairyland scene in heaven where the fairy fruits are fragrant and the sacred birds disappear.
Almost every relic found in Sanxingdui is placed in an extremely orderly manner, exuding a strong religious atmosphere.
From these details, it can also be seen that they all reflect the unique mysterious state of the ancient Shu Kingdom as a kingdom of God recorded in some documents.
Especially in Sacrificial Pit No. 2, an altar with bronze figures of two different sizes was unearthed.
The big one holds an auspicious branch of auspicious grass, and the small one holds a jade medal with a bud-shaped front end.
The tallest one, including the base, is 2.62 meters high and weighs 180 kilograms.
The standing figure is slender and wears a crown with an animal face pattern on its head. There is a circular decoration symbolizing the sun between the eyebrows of the animal face.
The sun is often described as the eye of the sky by the ancients. The animal-faced eyes are the same as the image of the sun, which may be called the "crown of the heavenly eye".
The legs have anklets and stand barefoot on a square base supported by four dragon heads.
The tallest bronze figure unearthed from Sacrificial Pit No. 2 is also very special.
The standing figure is wearing a dragon pattern with a long lapel on the left side, arms folded across the chest, and the hands are hollow, as if holding something.
Wearing Gong robes, he looked like a king and religious leader who was all-powerful.
There are several small figures, all of them kneeling and sitting.
One of the typical statues is only 13.3 centimeters in height.
The figure "wears a flat-topped double-horned crown on his head, bends his left leg, kneels on one knee with his right leg, and presses his hand on his abdomen, much like he is kneeling respectfully to the bronze Dali".
These bronze figures of different sizes and postures vaguely reveal to us a bit of information about the ancient Shu Kingdom.
This is a theocratic society with a strict hierarchy.
The king of ancient Shu had an extraordinary status in the ancient Shu kingdom.
He is a "superman" who combines divine power, royal power and military power.
He is aloof, while others can only crawl beside him and serve him as slaves.
In Sanxingdui Pit No. 1 and No. 2, hundreds of gold objects including gold staffs, gold masks, gold tigers, gold leaves, gold medals, gold belts, etc. were also unearthed.
These gold vessels are numerous, large in size, and very exquisitely made.
From this it can be seen that the ancient Shu people's smelting, production and processing technology of gold mines has reached a very high level and formed a special "gold culture".
Among all the gold products, the most distinctive one is the gold rod unearthed in Pit No. 1.
This golden staff is 143 long
centimeters, 2.3 centimeters in diameter, and weighing about 500 grams.
It is made by beating pure gold into a golden skin and wrapping it with a wooden stick.
However, after more than 3,000 years of cleaning, the inner core of the stick has decayed and carbonized, leaving only the flattened and deformed gold skin, telling people about the vicissitudes of time.
But what is surprising is that about 46 centimeters above the top of the scepter, which has only the outer gold skin left, there are three groups of clearly identifiable patterns engraved on it.
The upper two groups are two feathered arrows piercing through birds and fish, and the lower group are two symmetrical human heads wearing crowns at the front and back.
When Chen Wenzhe looked at the two pieces of Shu Ge before, he had seen birds and fish.
So he knew very well that these were the totems of the two tribes or kingdoms of the ancient Shu Kingdom at that time.
The stork is the totem of the Baiguan people, so the meaning of this pattern is obviously that the stork shoots fish.
When the Baiguan people and the Yufu people changed their political power, the Baiguan people defeated the Yufu people in a certain war.
In other words, in order to defeat the invading Yufu tribe, the Baiguan people specially carved a picture of Bostork shooting fish on this golden staff, which symbolizes the supreme divine power, to boost their morale.
In addition, "Huainanzi Shi Ze Xun" said: "In the winter months...the fishermen are ordered to take care of the fishing, and the emperor personally goes to shoot fish to recommend them to the temple."
The king's shooting of fish is usually used as a sacrifice in the ancestral temple, and the shooting of fish must be done on the fishing beam.
This golden scepter is actually a scepter that symbolizes royal power, divine power, economic and social wealth monopoly, and is the highest symbol of the political power of the ancient Shu Kingdom.
Judging from the age of the artifacts in the pit, Pit No. 1 is equivalent to the early period from Pan Geng to Wu Ding.
Therefore, sacrificial pit No. 1 is likely to be the sacrificial remains and artifact pit from the period of King Bai Guan.
Sacrifice pit No. 2, judging from the age of the artifacts in the pit, is from the late Wuding period to the early Western Zhou Dynasty.
It belongs to the same era as the newly excavated Pit No. 4.
During this period, there should be sacrificial remains and artifact pits from the Yufu King period.
Unearthed in the pit were three bronze human-faced statues of Cancong, the king of Shu.
The so-called vertical eye means that the eyes are like cylinders, protruding from the eye sockets.
One of the slightly smaller ones is 77.4 centimeters wide.
The eye pillars protrude from the eye sockets by as much as 9 centimeters, and there is a 68.1 centimeter-high decoration above the bridge of the nose, making the overall height 82.5 centimeters.
The reason why Cancong is so "looking" may be related to the fact that he originally lived in Wenshan County in the upper reaches of Minshan Mountain.
The water and soil here are severely deficient in iodine, which can easily lead to hyperthyroidism, a condition in which people's eyes bulge outward.
Therefore, some experts speculate that Cancong, the king of Shu, may be a patient with severe hyperthyroidism, so he has the image of "Mu Zong".
Of course, these are all speculations, and as of now, there are more speculations.
After all, the ancient Shu Kingdom has disappeared in the long river of history, so will their descendants also disappear?
This is obviously impossible, because various signs indicate that we are their descendants and we have not disappeared.
In fact, many modern studies have shown that our culture is passed down from generation to generation.
It's just that there was a blank period between the ancient Shu and the later Shu.
This is the so-called "deification" period in "The Book of the King of Shu".
That is to say, secular society becomes religious, and secular political power disappears into the mountains.
In this way, it will be completely transformed into a religious and divine kingdom, and all citizens will be "transformed" into religious citizens.
As mentioned before, the three kings of ancient Shu, Cancong, Baiguan and Yufu, were all "deified".
After the "deification" of the first two generations, there were new Shu kings who continued to rule the Shu people who did not "go with the king".
But the last generation of Yufu King was "deified" on an unprecedented scale.
He converted so many people that he failed to produce a new king of Shu for hundreds of years.
"Deification" means that Yufu people's life in the human world is over, which means that they have to make a break with the past.
It is speculated that the relics from the above-mentioned sacrificial pits, except for a few original daily necessities, most of them, such as statues of gods, bronze and jade ritual vessels, etc., were originally enshrined in the ancestral temple of Sanxingdui ancient city.
From the observation of the artifacts in Pit No. 1, the earliest ones are jade seals, jade Ge, etc., which can be as early as the Erlitou Xia cultural period;
The bronze vessels can be as early as the early Shang period, and the later ones are also in the late Shang period, which means that these artifacts are ritual vessels that have been stored in the ancestral temple for a long time.
Since the ancestral temple sacrifices have come to an end, in order to prevent secular desecration and damage to the gods, the ancestral temple sacrificial vessels must be buried.