Origins of our journey

Archaeologists hail the Jinsha Ruins as one of Sichuan's most important archaeological findings since the discovery of the Sanxingdui Ruins.

Like Sanxingdui, Jinsha was discovered by accident.

On Feb 8, 2001, builders working on an apartment construction site in Jinsha village found ivory and jade pieces among piles of earth.

Since then, archaeologists have excavated more than 10,000 precious relics including gold, jade, bronze and stone wares as well as one metric ton of whole elephant tusks and tens of thousands of pottery and ceramic shards.

Jinsha is known as one of China's most prolific excavations in terms of gold and number of artifacts unearthed. It's also one of the world's largest excavations of ancient elephant tusks, Zhu says.