Abstract – In a recent trip to China, preliminary evidence suggest the ancient Babel Text was used at the the Emei Mountian religious site, and also at the SanXingDui archaeological site, which is a circa five hours drive to the North of Emei Mountain. At the SanXingDui site the Babel Texts appear as linear patterns with one set of astronomically aligned lines on the stool that supports a large standing humanoid figure. The linear patterns are found on all four sides.
Introduction
The reason for visiting the SanXingDui site was an opportunity arose, while investigating the Emei San early temple site, to also investigate the geometrical lines that are engraved on various artefacts at the SanXingDui site. The SanXingDui standing statue, which is the primary focus of this study, is believed to be from the Shu Dynasty and dates to circa 1200 to 1100 BCE1 and thus dates towards the end of the more famous Shang Dynasty2. At present only two Shu Dynasty sites are known. The Jinsha site, which was discovered in 2001, this dates from the 12th century BC until the 7th century BC, and the SanXingDui site3, which was discovered in the 1920s, but despite its earlier discovery, it was overlooked as a site worth studying, and it sat undisturbed until 1986, when the first large scale study was undertake, before it was again left undisturbed by archaeologists until the year 20211.
As described in earlier studies, the major problem with studying geometrical patterns and attempting to identify whether they are, or are not examples of an early geometric text, is they are often found alongside simple geometric patterns that were only designed to be artistic4. For example, in China, many tourist sites have recently been updated to facilitate the increasing number of visitors, and at some of these sites new pathways have been created where modern artists have chosen to add random geometric patterns to the stones used to create the tour paths; and It is also worth noting that in some tourist parks the decision was made to add random geometric images to the reconstructed walls at temples, some of which were built in just the last decade.
It is thus necessary to avoid any possiblity of contamination, and to limit initial studies to the geometric patterns found in objects that can, with certainty, be clearly linked to the earliest phase of each religious site, or (in this specific case) which can be linked to the Shu-period.
With these restrictions, amongst the published and publicly available examples of archaic geometric patterns, at the present time there is one analysable patterns that requires to be studied. This pattern is the sequence of lines that is found on the four sides of a stool that supports a circa 180 cm tall standing figure that is made of bronze. This important bronze figure was discovered in the 1986 survey of the No 2 pit at the SanXingDui Ruins, and it appears to mimic the general pose of a smaller, 14.6 cm tall figure that was found in 2023: where the similar feature present in the two statues is they both appear to have once held, at an angle, a large diameter staff with two large circular hole placed in the left and right hands. In addition to the difference in height, he smaller of the two statues also differs in that it was cast with a three tier “headdress”, whereas the taller statue has a two tier headdress. It should be noted that in addition to the figure which appears to be built to human scale, within the secondary 2021 dig, a giant mask (which measures 135 centimetres in width and 74 centimetres in height), was recovered from the No. 3 sacrificial pit. This mask is remarkable in that it is so large it could not have been used as an actual mask.
As stated, the lines studied in this paper are found at the base of the taller statue and they are found on all four sides of the square “stool” upon which the standing, bronze statue is mounted.
In prior archaeological studies of this large figure, I could find no prior studies that analysed the structure of the stool, nor could I locate any prior study that proposed a theory to explain either the structure of these lines, or the enigmatic design that surrounds the lines. A video showing the statue can be seen here. The images showing the angles drawn by these lines were taken by the author.
Results
Intriguingly, a preliminary analysis of these lines, quickly reveals that the angles present in the observed lines are consistent with the author’s prior studies, and they appear to match the primary astronomical values that have already been shown to be consistent with an archaic linear text. The worldwide presence of this ancient text is discussed in more detail in The Babel Texts, and the statistical study, which revealed that it is statistically improbable for the lines to random can be found here.
Here, the primary result is the angles drawn by these lines overlap with the five primary peaks that are observed in the much larger global study, which analysed all published early geometric patterns6. In total 75 lines could be analysed on this stool, and only circa three lines at the top of two of the arches were not be analysed. This was because of shadows cast by lights within the museum enclosure made it difficult to measure these two lines accurately. With prior studies arguing that the angles are divided into four quadrants (to above and below the horizontal and to hte left and right of vertical) it is noteworthy that in this study the percentage of lines offset to the horizontal axis is 94.9% (this being equivalent to 74 out of the 78 lines), and 5.1% of the lines (4 lines out of 78) are aligned as offsets to the vertical.
Amongst the studied lines 11 lines were found to overlap with an alignment close to 27.32 degrees, and 18 lines align to its half value at 13.66 degrees. There are 8 lines aligned to 18.6 degrees and 29 lines aligned to its half value at 9.3 degrees. Again, all lines in this specific study are aligned to either above or below the horizontal. Finally, there are 9 lines aligned to 5.1 degrees. Concerning the division of the lines, there were 17 lines on side 1, 20 lines on side 2, 19 lines on side 3 and 19 lines on side 4.
A comparison between data taken from all previously studied linear geometric texts, in which the orientation of the geometrical image is fixed and cannot be rotated4,5, and the data extracted from the SanXingDui “stool” is shown below, and as can be seen there is perfect overlap between the two datasets, with the same five primary lines appearing in both graphs.
From statistics, the probability for this overlap to occur by chance is 1 in 1,221,759 (this being calculated from 45C5, with each line assumed to have an error of ± 0.5 degrees.
In addition with the lines being offset by up to 45 degrees to above and below the horizontal this creates a mirror plane, and the probability for these lines being random reduces to 1 in 1,492,695,054,081. For comparison, in medical trials, a p-value of 0.05, which is equivalent to a 1 in 20 chance, is the standard value that is considered to mark a clinical trial as being statistically significant.
For completeness, the statistical probability for this study of the SanXingDui stool to emphasise the exact same five angles as the large scale world-wide study6 and a world-wide study on mobile art6 is 1 in 3.27 x 1051. This is equivalent to a p-value of 3.054 x 10-52.
As can be seen the value in this specific test is well below the boundary that is considered to mark a result as being statistically significant.
Thus, because it is now very unlikely that these lines were aligned to these specific angles by chance, this then argues the lines were drawn with intent. In addition, as can be seen four of the lines are consistent with just two astronomical values, the 27.32-day sidereal month and the 18.6-year luna cycle. The line at circa 5 degrees is believed to relate to the angle of the moon’s orbital plane relative to Earth.
These specific values are important in astronomical studies, as the half and full values of the sidereal month identify when moonrise and the setting of the moon will transitions from being in the north to the south. The sidereal month is also used by astronomers to measure the duration of the year, and from its 366 cycle each year this lunar term can be used to determine that the Earth takes 365 days to rotate around the sun, even without the use of a clock. To understand this visually, there are many interesting videos that describe the so-called penny paradox, where a penny will take two complete rotations to rotate around another penny of the same size (see here).
So, in conclusion the angular geometrics found on this specific bronze figure shows good agreement with the Babel Texts4,5, but further work is still required to determine if the same trend is found on other linear geometric patterns that have been uncovered from the same pit at the SanXingDui site. As previously stated, care is required in studying the archaeological finds that are circa 3,000 years old. This is because within this era the use of the Babel Text in religious figures does overlap with the creation of geometric art and the use of non-angular texts within China.
Thus, in order to confirm that the geometrical text was used widely in the Shu Dynasty more SanXingDui samples will need to be recovered that show consistent angles. If this is achieved, this would confirm the Shu dynasty were literate, and it would also argue the belief system in Shu was different from the belief system that was then being worshipped in the Shang Dynasty. Within the Shang Dynasty Oracle Bones, which date to the same general time period, the symbols are usually more cursive.
As always, more work is required.
References
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- Zhao Hao, 2023 Sammy Yukuan Lee Lectures on Chinese Art and Archaeology, UCLA Center for Chinese Studies
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- Selena Lai and Waka Takahashi Brown, Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, Excerpt from Chinese Dynasties Part One: The Shang Dynasty Through the Tang Dynasty, 1600 BCE to 907 CE
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- Jinsha Site Museum, online information about the history of the site.
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- Derek Cunningham, The Babel Texts, Amazon Books.
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- Derek Cunningham, The Map That Talked, Amazon Books
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- Derek Cunningham, New Study Reveals Stone Age People Could Read – and were Homo sapiens the first species to learn to write?, The Babel Texts Research Papers Vol. 1, Feb 25, 2024.
