Ancient capital opens its hidden doors to visitors

Around 5,900 to 3,800 years ago, a thriving civilization flourished along the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Its people built a vast city, engineered sophisticated waterworks, mastered jade carving, developed a highly organized pottery industry, and conducted elaborate religious rituals. Today, archaeologists know it as the Shijiahe Culture.

At the Shijiahe Site Museum in Tianmen, Hubei province, visitors can now explore this civilization.

The museum, roughly the size of a football field, opened on May 18 and features six exhibition halls. Its focus spans ancient urban planning, religious practices and jade craftsmanship, displaying over 800 valuable artifacts — including pottery, jade and stone tools — that shed light on the archaeological discoveries and historical significance of the Shijiahe site.

"The Shijiahe site is remarkable for its vast urban scale, long period of continuous occupation, rich cultural remains and distinctive regional character," says Wang Wei, a veteran archaeologist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Particularly striking is the abundance of remains linked to spiritual beliefs, something rarely seen at contemporary sites elsewhere," Wang says.

According to Fang Qin, director of the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Shijiahe was the largest prehistoric urban center and the most densely populated settlement cluster in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River during the late Neolithic period.

Listed among China's Top 100 Archaeological Discoveries of the Past Century, the site has undergone more than 20 excavations since its discovery in 1954. Its culture developed continuously for about 2,000 years, making it the longest-occupied settlement among China's major prehistoric urban sites.

Fang, who has spent decades studying the culture, says the ancient city covered nearly 3.5 million square meters — more than four times the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Distinct functional zones included residential quarters, ceremonial spaces, pottery workshops and cemeteries. An advanced water-management network served irrigation, flood control and defensive purposes.

Among the site's most celebrated finds are its jade artifacts, considered a pinnacle of prehistoric Chinese craftsmanship. More than 400 jade pieces have been unearthed, depicting deities, phoenixes, eagles, tigers and cicadas with extraordinary artistry and refinement.

Phoenix imagery was especially prominent.

A star jade phoenix, now housed in the National Museum of China in Beijing, is renowned as "China's first phoenix" for its highly stylized circular design.

Equally intriguing are depictions of deities believed to represent ancestral figures.

Highlights include two interconnected deity faces and another showing a deity with two eagles perched atop its head. Despite their complexity, many of the carvings are no larger than a fingernail.

"These jade artifacts were likely used in ritual ceremonies to communicate with the spiritual world," explains Fang.

The pottery unearthed at the site also reflects the wisdom and imagination of the prehistoric inhabitants. The museum exhibits lively clay sculptures of birds, chickens, pigs, and dogs, as well as a contemplative figure that recalls Auguste Rodin's The Thinker.

Nearby, at the Sanfangwan site, archaeologists uncovered an 8,000-square-meter workshop dedicated to the production of red pottery cups. According to Hu Yongmei, deputy director of the Shijiahe Site Museum, it is the largest Neolithic pottery workshop ever discovered.

Hu says that the large number of red pottery cup remnants indicates possible trade with other regions.

Near the kiln site, a large ritual area with numerous pottery jars and pots was uncovered, which archaeologists believe were used to hold ritual offerings.

"The sophistication of both the jade and pottery industries points to a highly specialized division of labor," Hu says.

To help visitors visualize the ancient world, the museum offers an immersive digital production titled Seeing Shijiahe. Combining holographic projections, moving mechanical displays and environmental effects such as wind, mist and vibration, the experience recreates dramatic scenes ranging from floodwaters breaching city defenses to grand rituals and phoenixes soaring across the sky. All props are produced using high-precision 3D-printing technology.

With no fixed seats or traditional stage, the audience becomes "discoverers of civilization", traveling 5,000 years back to "touch" ancient culture, according to director Fan Yupeng.

Fan says that since there are no visual or written records to draw from, the production was built on archaeological evidence and expert interpretation, balancing imagination with academic rigor.

"By recreating archaeological scenes through immersive performance, we can bridge the distance between modern audiences and ancient history," he says.

"In doing so, we hope visitors gain a deeper understanding of Shijiahe culture and its enduring legacy."

Xu Lin contributed to this story.