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Bowers Museum displays rare 3,000-year-old Chinese bronzes
Rare ancient Chinese bronzes go on display Sunday at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana.
The exhibition is called "China's Lost Civilization: The Mystery of Sanxingdui." It features 3,000-year-old elephant tusks, ancient jades, monumental bronzes and a life-sized statue of a nobleman. Construction workers in southwest China accidentally discovered the artifacts in 1986.
Suzanne Cahill, the exhibit's curator, says this is one of the greatest archaeological finds ever to be unearthed.
"They found evidence of a society that was already very sophisticated, and technologically … very refined, that nobody knew had ever existed before," Cahill said. "Unfortunately, they didn't fined any writing. So we don't have any words from the peoples themselves to explain their religion, or their government, or their economy."
The exhibit runs through March 15 at the Bowers Museum. Then it'll move to Houston's Museum of Natural Sciences.
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