Imagine construction workers digging a trench who suddenly unearth a massive pit packed not with pottery shards, but with hundreds of bizarre giant bronze masks with bulging eyes and flaring ears, every one deliberately smashed, burned, and buried 3,000 years ago. This is exactly what happened at Sanxingdui in Sichuan, China.

This episode explores how a highly advanced mega-civilization, the Kingdom of Shu, completely erased itself from history only to be rediscovered in shattered, burned fragments. Drawing on field reports, ancient mythologies, and recent excavations, we unpack the staggering engineering, the haunting ritual destruction, and the most probable theory for why an entire society dismantled its sacred universe and vanished. It matters because it rewrites the established narrative of ancient Chinese history.

• The walle ...