A Chinese boy found a 3,000-year-old sword while playing in a river in Jiangsu Province, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
The 11-year-old boy named Yang Junxi was washing his hands in the Laozhoulin River in Gaoyou County on July 2 when he came across the ancient weapon. Junxi brought it home to his father, and news of the mysterious bronze sword spread.
"Some people even offered high prices to buy the sword, but I felt it would be illegal to sell the cultural relic," Junxi told the news agency.
It wasn't until September when the family found out how precious the artifact was. Junxi's father sent it to the Gaoyou Cultural Relics Bureau for appraisal.
Bureau experts estimate the 10-inch rusty sword was made more than 3,000 years ago, placing it around the time of the Shang or Zhou dynasties.
"There was no characteristic or decorative pattern on the exquisite bronze sword," Lyu Zhiwei, head of the bureau's office of cultural relics, told Xinhua. "Made in a time of relatively low productivity, its owner would have been an able man with the qualification to have such an artifact."
Zhiwei said the sword, the second bronze relic ever found in the region, was most likely for show.
"The short sword seems a status symbol of a civil official. It has both decorative and practical functions, but is not in the shape of sword for military officers," the relics expert said.
The bureau sent Junxi and his father a reward for preserving and donating the artifact.
Laozhoulin is linked to the Grand Canal, a 2,400-year-old artificial waterway that's also the longest in the world, the news agency reported. It was designated a World Heritage site in June.
Local government officials are planning an upcoming archaeological dig in the Laozhoulin River and its surrounding waterways.
