A museum collecting and exhibiting cultural relics representing one of the greatest archaeological discoveries over the past decades in China opened earlier this month in the Shanxi county of Xiangfen, offering visitors and researchers an opportunity to decipher information relating to the formation of Chinese civilization.

The Taosi Site Museum, which opened to the public on Nov 11, was built near the Taosi relics site — located in the village of Taosi in Xiangfen. It is aimed to showcase a civilization dating back to 3,900 to 4,300 years ago, following more than six decades of archaeological work.

The Taosi site was discovered in 1958 and a large archaeological excavation began in 1978. Since the site was included in the national research project on tracing the origins of Chinese civilization in 2002, an urban settlement, a palace enclosure, a storage zone, cemeteries and an observatory altar have been excavated one after another.

Judging from the relics discovered, researchers believe the site was most likely the ruins of the capital city during the period of Yao — a sage emperor dating back more than 4,100 years and one of the founding fathers of the Chinese nation.

Over the past decades, more than 5,500 pieces or sets of cultural relics have been unearthed at the Taosi site, giving researchers adequate material evidence to understand how the earliest Chinese society and nation were formed.