Kneeling Human Figure, List # 124

Narrator

Several kneeling figures like this one were uncovered at Jinsha. Many have their hands tied behind their backs, suggesting that they represent captives or slaves, or perhaps a person being prepared for sacrifice.
Here are similar bronze figures found at Sanxingdui. [SFX] [Images of other kneeling figures]

Narrator

The figure in the display case is made of stone. It's labeled "jade" because in China the term "jade" encompasses a wide variety of materials. To Westerners the classification refers to color and type of rock, but in China it refers to the hardness of the stone.

No metal instrument was durable enough to carve jade. So the assumption is that the figure in the case was made with a technique called sand abrasion. Suzanne Cahill It's very, very time-consuming and labor-intensive. 'Cause you have to grind and grind away at the stone. And very slowly get a figure or a shape to emerge. This suggests that these objects were very important to the people who made them and the people who used them. Just that they're willing to put all this labor into creating them. And to use people's hours that could have been used for fighting a war or growing food.

Narrator

So we know they must have been a sophisticated culture if they had the time and resources to make beautiful objects that served no practical purpose. So, what happened to them?

Suzanne Cahill

The people seemed to just suddenly disappear, sometime around 900 BCE. We don't know what happened to these cultures. We just don't know where these people went. Whether they went somewhere else; whether they got absorbed into whatever local population was there. And what inheritance their culture left behind.