Gold Mask Found in Shang Dynasty Tomb in Central China

A gold funeral mask, thought to be more than 3,000 years old, has been discovered in the tomb of an ancient noble in the city of Zhengzhou in central China. 

It’s one of the oldest gold objects ever found in central China, as contemporary treasures tend to be crafted from bronze and jade, raising questions about possible links to other early Chinese states where gold was more common.

The gold mask is 7.2 inches (18.3 centimetres) long and 5.7 inches (14.5 cm) wide — large enough to cover the entire face of an adult, Huang Fucheng, a researcher at the Zhengzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, told the state-owned China News Service(opens in new tab). It weighs about 1.4 ounces (40 grams).

And the South China Morning Post(opens in new tab) (SCMP) reported that the institute’s director, Gu Wanfa, said the gold mask may have symbolized that the deceased had an “imperishable gold body” and was likely intended to keep the spirit of the dead person whole.

Government archaeologists made the announcement of the mask’s discovery during a news conference in Beijing on Sept. 16. Finds from three other ancient Chinese archaeological sites were also revealed at the news conference, but the gold mask is arguably the most striking.

The newfound noble’s tomb dates to the Shang Dynasty, which ruled in the Yellow River valley from about 1600 B.C. to 1046 B.C. — the earliest dynasty ever recorded in China, Live Science previously reported.

The tomb, which covers an area of more than 108,000 square feet (10,000 square meters), contains more than 200 other artefacts, China News Service reported(opens in new tab), including ornate objects of bronze and jade, such as daggers, axes, wine vessels, smoking pipes and goblets. Archaeologists also found plaques inlaid with turquoise and coins made from shells.

Ancient gold

The newfound Zhengzhou tomb is a significant find for research into the burial rituals of the Shang Dynasty, and it may even provide new insight into the origins of Chinese civilization, Chen Lüsheng, deputy director of the National Museum of China in Beijing, told the outlet.

The newly discovered funeral mask, from the tomb at Zhengzhou in Henan province, is older than the gold funeral mask found last year in the Sanxingdui Ruins, an archaeological site in China’s southwestern Sichuan province attributed to the Shu kingdom.

The Shu kingdom in the southwest is traditionally dated as later than the Shang Dynasty in central China. But the two states may have existed at the same time, and archaeologists hope to establish links between them.

The Sanxingdui mask had detailed facial features, but archaeologists said it was attached to a wooden post or mannequin, rather than to an actual dead body. Such masks and other gold artefacts are relatively common at the Sanxingdui Ruins site, but they are rare at Shang Dynasty sites. 

However, it’s unclear whether the younger Sanxingdui mask and the newfound Shang mask have any connection. “Although this gold mask is older than those unearthed from the Sanxingdui Ruins, we still need more evidence and a larger [number] of archaeological discoveries to confirm a direct connection between the Shang city ruins and the Sanxingdui Ruins,” Chen said. 

Early China

The discovery of the new gold mask is “exciting,” said archaeologist and metallurgist Ruiliang Liu, a curator of the Early China Collection at the British Museum in London who wasn’t involved in the Zhengzhou finds.

Liu told Live Science that the ritual system of Bronze Age China was dominated by ritual vessels of jade and bronze — a tradition that was established during the Shang Dynasty when an extensive industry existed to manufacture such objects.

Gold and silver, however, were associated with the pastoralist cultures of the steppes, such as those of Central Asia, northwestern China and Mongolia, he said.

“The discovery of the gold mask in such an early and important context at Zhengzhou raises many intriguing questions,” Liu said. “Where does the raw gold come from? … [and] why did the tomb occupant choose to be buried with gold, while other top elites chose only bronzes and jades?”

One possibility is that the gold had been found in relatively small amounts at Panlongcheng — an important Shang site near the modern city of Wuhan that supplied copper, and tin and probably lead to ancient Zhengzhou — and that it had been worked by local artisans with the techniques they used for other metals, he said.

But another possibility is that the gold was brought from farther afield as an exotic metal, which could indicate a trade network existed during the Shang period between the Yellow River valley and gold-producing regions, such as the Yangtze River valley farther south, he said.

Liu also noted that very few Shang Dynasty archaeological sites near Zhengzhou have been excavated because a large modern city sits above most of them.

“The major part of Zhengzhou archaeology is under the modern Zhengzhou city,” Liu said. “I am sure more will come to light in the future.”

A 70-million-year-old dinosaur baby unearthed in China is one of the best-preserved fossils ever found

A dinosaur embryo perfectly curled up in its fossilized egg was analyzed by a team of researchers in southeastern China.

The rundown: The fossil, estimated to be between 72 and 66 million years old, belonged to an oviraptorosaur — a beaked, toothless and omnivorous theropod that existed during the Cretaceous Period of what is now Asia and North America.

Researchers published their findings in the journal Science.

The embryo was estimated to be 27 centimetres (11 inches) long from head to tail. Researchers said the dinosaur, which would have fed on plants, would be 2-3 meters (79-118 inches) long had it lived to adulthood.

The embryo was close to hatching as evidenced by its “tucking” posture, a behavior seen in modern birds. Chicks preparing to hatch tuck their heads under their right wing for stability as they crack the shell with their beak.

Modern birds are direct descendants of theropods, which are two-legged dinosaurs. Theropods include the Tyrannosaurus rex, spinosaurus and velociraptor, among others.

What the researchers are saying: Due to its complete structure, the fossil turned out to be one of the best dinosaur embryos found in history, the researchers told AFP. They called the creature “Baby Yingliang” after Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum, its current location.

“This skeleton is not only complete from the tip of the snout to the end of its tail; it is curled in a life pose within its egg as if the animal died just yesterday,” study co-author Darla Zelenitsky, an assistant professor of paleontology at the University of Calgary, told Live Science.

Lead author Waisum Ma, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Birmingham, said dinosaur embryos happen to be some of the rarest fossils. Most non-avian embryos are also incomplete, with bones separated at the joints. “We are very excited about the discovery of ‘Baby Yingliang’ — it is preserved in a great condition and helps us answer a lot of questions about dinosaur growth and reproduction with it,” Ma said. “It is interesting to see this dinosaur embryo and a chicken embryo pose in a similar way inside the egg, which possibly indicates similar prehatching behaviours.”

The researchers said the embryo was found in Jiangxi province and acquired by Liang Liu, director of a Chinese stone company called Yingliang Group, in 2000. It was stored and forgotten until museum staff found it some 10 years later, during the construction of Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum, according to CNN.

Embryos that don’t adopt the tucking posture are more likely to die as a result of unsuccessful hatching. The team plans to study the fossil further using advanced scanning techniques, since part of its body remains covered by rock.

White Lead Identified in 2,500-Year-Old Containers in China

Chinese researchers have unearthed bronze containers with lead white residue that the ancient Chinese used for face-whitening makeup around 300 years before the ancient Greeks started making their own.

A team of researchers from the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) and the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology discovered the ancient artefacts at the Liangdaicun site in the city of Hancheng in China’s Shaanxi Province.

In their study published in the open-access journal Humanities and Sciences Communications on Sept. 3, archaeologists noted that the area they excavated in the Liangdaicun site was a nobility cemetery that belonged to the Rui state of China from 770 B.C. until 476 B.C.

Scientists unearthed several valuable artefacts from the cemetery, including the tomb of an aristocrat from the Rui state and miniature bronze containers in her tomb containing synthetic lead white. Upon studying the containers and their contents, the researchers concluded that they were used for cosmetic purposes.

According to their research paper, the team studied the residue using FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy), XRD (X-ray Powder Diffraction), SEM-EDS (Scanning Electron Microscopy-Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy), radioactive and stable carbon isotope analyses.

“The results show that these residues were the earliest synthesized lead white in the world to date, which was produced by the precipitation method in solution distinct from the corrosion method practised in ancient Greece,” the scientists wrote.

Before the recent discovery, it was believed that ancient Greece was the first civilization to use synthesized lead white.

The study noted that the earliest known method to obtain lead white was through mining natural cerussite, which was recorded in southern Europe, Egypt, Iran, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley between the fifth and second millennium B.C.

Ancient Greece did not start employing a corrosion process for synthesizing lead white until the fourth century B.C. Mass production and the widespread use of lead white in cosmetics and art across Europe soon followed.

“The mass production of synthetic lead white with lower cost promoted the widespread use of white makeup in China and the Mediterranean World, which triggered a cosmetic revolution and highlighted that the pursuit of beauty stimulated the development of chemistry in human history, especially the earliest wet chemistry practice in China,” the study read.

Although the recent study claims that the use of synthesized lead white was first evident in China, it noted that ancient Greece and China had different approaches.

“The synthetic lead white found at the Liangdaicun site was several hundred years earlier than that of ancient Greece, and both regions have different synthetic approaches, indicating the independent origins and development of lead white synthesis between east and west Eurasia during the first millennium BCE,” the researchers wrote.

They also pointed out that the residue found in the aristocrat’s tomb could be much older than the actual tomb.

“Although the age of the lead carbonates does not fall exactly within the burial date of the tomb, it still reveals the synthetic origin of ancient samples because natural cerussite was observed to have a significantly larger offset,” the team wrote.

New archaeological discoveries provide insight into the Yellow River origins of the Chinese civilization

A gold “funeral mask” dating back to more than 3,000 years ago was excavated from the tomb of an ancient noble in Zhengzhou, capital of Central China’s Henan Province, officials with China’s National Cultural Heritage Administration announced at a recent press conference.

Different from gold masks discovered at sites from the ancient Shu civilization in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province, the mask representing the culture of China’s Central Plains was large enough to cover a person’s entire face. This mask and other relics found in the Shang Dynasty (c.1600BC-1046BC) tomb have shed light on the burial rituals and gold culture of the Shang people.

The tomb yielded more than 200 burial objects.

The ancient city ruins and three other archaeological discoveries revealed at the press conference number among the latest achievements of excavation and research into early city sites along the middle reaches of the Yellow River. All these sites date back to the early stages of Chinese civilization, according to a press release from the administration on Friday.

Rare discoveries

The remains of the tomb of the Shang Dynasty noble, around 10,000 square meters in size, possessed some of the highest quality and most diverse array of burial objects among all the tombs found in the city ruins.

Among all the discoveries from the tomb, which include bronze and jade wares, the gold mask is the most striking finding. The mask is 18.3 centimetres in length, 14.5 centimetres wide and weighs around 40 grams.

Huang Fucheng, a researcher at the Zhengzhou Municipal Institute of Cultural Heritage and Archaeology, said that the size of the mask means it can basically cover the entire face of an adult.

Previously, a large number of gold items were unearthed at the famed Sanxingdui Ruins site in Sichuan Province, but gold wares are rarely found at Shang Dynasty cultural sites in the central plains, an area centred in much of today’s Henan Province and parts of the neighbouring provinces of Shanxi, Shandong and Hebei. Researchers say that these rare discoveries can help expand archaeological research into Shang Dynasty culture.

Chen Lüsheng, a renowned museologist and researcher at the National Museum of China, told the Global Times that the tomb is a significant find for research into the burial rituals and systems of the Shang Dynasty, and because it dates back to a very early period during the dynasty, it can provide new insight into the origins of Chinese civilization.

“Although this gold mask is older than those unearthed from the Sanxingdui Ruins, we still need more evidence and a larger amount of archaeological discoveries to confirm a direct connection between the Shang city ruins and the Sanxingdui Ruins,” Chen said. 

Early beginnings 

Chinese civilization and its origins, especially the study of the Xia Dynasty (c.2070BC-c.1600BC), has been one of the most important topics in Chinese archaeology.

Since 2018, the National Cultural Heritage Administration has been carrying out 11 archaeological projects focusing on tracing and researching the origin of Chinese civilization. So far, more than 200 excavations have seen significant achievements.

The projects focusing on regions along the Yellow River, commonly seen as the birthplace of Chinese civilization, are seen as the highlights of these related archaeological projects.

Besides the Shang Dynasty city ruins in Zhengzhou, archaeologists also excavated the Erlitou Ruins in Yanshi, Henan Province. Dating back to about 3,500 to 3,600 years ago, they are the largest late Xia Dynasty site discovered to date.  

Some 3 million square meters in size, the surviving ruins have revealed the remains of two palaces, a residential area, pottery and bronze workshops, as well as kilns and tombs.

The latest archaeological highlights at the site include the discovery of rammed earth walls on both sides of the roads in many parts of the city and walls dividing several areas outside the palace and workshop areas, showing that people from different classes lived in different parts of the city.

Recent excavations have also unearthed for the first time at the site the remains of pottery, more than 800 pieces of pottery decorated with red paint.

The Bicun Ruins, dating back to 3,700 years to 4,000 years ago, are located in North China’s Shanxi Province. New discoveries at the site, including a complex architecture built of stones that have some characteristics of a watchhouse, demonstrate that the site might be an important customs pass at that time.

Another ruins site in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous region covers an area of around 1.38 million square meters and has been basically confirmed that it had triple defence systems, including inner city, outer city and barbican. Researchers found two underground passages in the outer barbican of the ancient city.

The excavation works in the inner city area found a large number of remains, such as tombs, housing sites and ash pits, which provide clues for understanding the structure layout of the inner city.

Newly found Chinese artefacts illuminate the mysterious ancient kingdom

A bronze altar and a dragon with a pig’s nose are among a trove of items discovered in sacrificial pits that shed new light on the buried secrets of an ancient Chinese civilization.

Archaeologists on Monday announced the “significant” series of finds at the Sanxingdui ruins in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, according to the team behind the dig and the state-run Xinhua news agency.

A team including academics from Peking University and Sichuan University found thousands of items including intricate bronze, gold and jade items, and what it called the unprecedented discovery of 10 bronzes. Experts say the finds date back 3,000 to 4,500 years.

Discovered in the late 1920s, Sanxingdui is one of the key Chinese archaeological sites. Experts think its treasures once belonged to the ancient Shu kingdom, which dates back 4,800 years and lasted 2,000 years.

The new finds mostly come from what archaeologists call sacrificial pits 7 and 8, the highlight being a bronze box with a tortoise-shaped lid containing jade artefacts, including dragon heads. Traces of silk fabric were found surrounding the box.

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the vessel is one of its kind, given its distinctive shape, fine craftsmanship and ingenious design.

Although we do not know what this vessel was used for, we can assume that ancient people treasured it,” said Li Haichao, a professor at Sichuan University who is in charge of the excavation at pit 7, according to Xinhua.

The role of the pits and their use is contested. One academic, Chen Shen, argued in a 2002 book: “Some belief the pits to be a kind of burial, but without human skeletons; the body might have been reduced to ash as a result of a ritual burning ceremony.”

Burned fragments of ivory were found in one pit and the presence of ash, possibly the remnants of tree and plant matter used as fuel, has led archaeologists to speculate that boxes were placed in the pits to be burned.

In-pit 8, archaeologists found yet more elaborate bronze work, including heads with gold masks, an altar and a dragon with a pig’s nose.

A curious three-part sculpture features a snake with a human head with protruding eyes, tusks and horns. The top part of the head resembles an ancient trumpet-shaped wine vessel.

Ran Honglin, from the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, said some elements of the sculpture were typical of the Shu kingdom, while others were seen in items from the Zhou dynasty.

“These three factors are now blended into one artefact, which demonstrates that Sanxingdui is an important part of Chinese civilization,” he told Xinhua.

“More cultural relics unearthed at Sanxingdui have also been seen in other locales in China, giving evidence of the early exchange and integration of Chinese civilization,” Honglin added.

“The sculptures are very complex and imaginative, reflecting the fairy world imagined by people at that time, and they demonstrate the diversity and richness of Chinese civilization,” Zhao Hao, an associate professor at Peking University who led the excavation of pit 8, told Xinhua.

The institute said some 13,000 items have already been found at Sanxingdui since excavations began in the 1980s.

The 12-square-mile site was accidentally discovered in the late 1920s by a farmer in Sichuan province who was repairing a sewage ditch. It is considered one of the most important Chinese archaeological finds and one of the world’s greatest discoveries of the 20th century.

The finds paint a vivid picture of life in ancient China. Small sacrificial pits and the sacrificed remains of cattle and boars were found alongside reeds, bamboo and soybeans.

Most historians and archaeologists previously thought the birthplace of Chinese civilization was the Yellow River Basin in China’s north. But Sanxingdui’s discovery, and its excavation in the 1980s, challenged those assumptions.

The new finds are expected to be displayed at an exhibition at Sanxingdui Museum, near the city of Guanghan, in 2023.

Mystery has surrounded the fate of the societies that created the artefacts found at Sanxingdui. Evidence shows that at some point, they left the area and moved to the ancient city of Jinsha, near the modern city of Chengdu. Some scholars believe the move was caused by an earthquake 3,000 years ago.