On December 9, 2023, China's National Cultural Heritage Administration announced its latest findings from the "Project for Tracing the Origins of Chinese Civilization," revealing that from about 5,800 years ago, various regions of China entered the proto-state period. The discovery of the Niuheliang site of the Hongshan Culture pushes back the origin of Chinese civilization by another 1,000 years.

Chinese civilization pushed back 1,000 years

Generally speaking, China, like ancient Babylon, ancient Egypt, and ancient India, is an ancient civilization with a history dating back 5,000 years. Since the discovery of the Erlitou site (the capital of the Xia Dynasty, 2070–1600 BC) in 1959, the origin of the Chinese civilization has been traced back to over 4,000 years ago through empirical evidence. So, where does the 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization originate?

The Yellow River basin has been hailed as the "cradle of Chinese civilization," a concept deeply ingrained in people's minds. The significant archaeological findings of the Hongshan Culture prompted people's reassessment of China's prehistory and the search for the origins of Chinese civilization.

Hongshan Culture, one of the earliest origins of Chinese civilization, was an agricultural culture created by a group of tribes active over 5,000 years ago in the northern Yan Mountains, the upper reaches of the Daling River, and the West Liaohe River. It covered an area of over 200,000 square kilometers and lasted for 1,500 years.

Niuheliang site is located in Chaoyang City, Liaoning Province, China. According to radiometric dating, it dates back to around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, during the middle and late stage of the Hongshan Culture and also the peak period of Hongshan Culture. Su Bingqi, a renowned Chinese archaeologist, said, "The altars, temples, and rubble mound tombs from the Hongshan Culture represent the highest level of prehistoric cultural development in northern China, much more advanced than other contemporary cultures. From the Hongshan Culture, we can see the dawn of Chinese civilization."

The architectural complex of altars, temples, and rubble mound tombs

The Niuheliang site, located in the central part of the Hongshan Culture Area, was the holy land and political center of the Hongshan Culture. The site consists of an altar, a goddess temple, and a group of rubble mound tombs, forming a large-scale prehistoric sacrificial and burial site group that was independent of residential areas. A large number of exquisite jade, stone, pottery, and bone artifacts have been unearthed, reflecting the unprecedented social hierarchy and unique cultural features of the late Hongshan Culture.

The 43 sites discovered so far are mostly unique rubble mound tombs rather than earth pit tombs found in other prehistoric cultures. The ancient Chinese called the raised tombs "zhong" (mound), so archaeologists refer to the Hongshan Culture tombs built with stones as rubble mound tombs.

The Goddess Temple is the most important discovery of the Niuheliang site and the Hongshan Culture, and it is also the only known temple site from prehistoric China discovered to date. The temple features a group of goddess statues that are the life-sized as or two to three times larger than real humans. The head sculpture of a goddess perfectly portrays an image of vibrant goddess who was the female ancestor of the Hongshan people.

In addition, four altars were clearly discovered at the Niuheliang site. The function of the altars is to worship heaven, which shows that the Hongshan people had mastered relatively accurate knowledge of astronomy. In ancient China, there were distinctions between ancestor worship and deity worship. For example, in the Hongshan and Liangzhu Cultures, people used non-practical jade artifacts to worship a god, and the ceremony was presided over by a shaman. In the Yangshao Culture, people used pottery artifacts related to daily life to worship ancestors, conducted by their descendants. It can be observed from the site location and its surroundings that the Niuheliang site is a grand cultural landscape where humanity is integrated with nature, reflecting the unity of Heaven and Man, and acknowledging human communication with the divine and the cosmos. This shows that the surrounding environment was also an integral part of worship ceremonies.

The first phase of the proto-state period

The discovery of the Niuheliang site and precious jade artifacts in the site provides abundant and conclusive archaeological evidence that as early as 5,000 years ago, the social form of China had already developed into the proto-state period of primitive civilization.

Su Bingqi defined a proto-state as "a stable and independent political entity that is higher than clans and tribes." The Hongshan Culture not only had the basic conditions for forming a state, but also maintained some primitive characteristics to a certain extent, which are typical features of a proto-state.

The Niuheliang site is a religious worship site, and no contemporary human habitation sites have been found within a range of several hundred square kilometers outside of this site. This indicates that the level of the Niuheliang sacrificial site group is no longer a family sacrificial site set up within the living area, nor is it a clan or tribal sacrificial site taking the clan as the basic unit, but an independent ancestral temple area and tomb area built in a specially selected location far away from the living place.

Therefore, the discovery of the Niuheliang site indicates that the Hongshan Culture had reached the highest level of central settlement, which is another important symbol of entering the proto-state period.

The biggest feature of the Niuheliang rubble mound tombs is that, whether it is a single mound or multiple mounds in one site and regardless of their sizes, each site has a big central mound showing its royal identity, and other mounds are located on the south side of the central mound. This type of mound form with clear boundaries and strict hierarchy highlights the supreme status of the central mound owner, which is also the most typical example of social structural changes during the origin of civilization.

In addition, the discovery of the head sculpture of a goddess indicates that after thousands of years of evolution, the ancestors of the Hongshan Culture had cultivated an advanced stage of ancestor worship. In the goddess temple, the group of statues worship around the main statue, which reflects that the hierarchical differentiation dominated by the supreme figure had been fixed in religious form, and the primitive ritual system had become the bond that maintained social relationships, manifesting the maturity of the ritual system.

The root of Chinese civilization

The jade culture runs through the history of Chinese culture. A large number of very exquisite jade artifacts are buried in the large rubble mound tombs of the Niuheliang site. These jade artifacts are usually placed under the deceased's head, chest, side, or hand. The types of jade artifacts include the jade pig-dragon (玉猪龙 pronounced as yuzhulong in Chinese) as the artifact for primitive religious belief, the dual-connected and triple-connected jade disks hanging on the chest, the curling-cloud-shaped jade pendant, the flat and round jade ring, the barrel-shaped jade hoop, and the jade bird, jade pigeon, jade turtle, jade fish, jade beast, etc. All of them display exquisite craftsmanship and unique styles.

The people of Hongshan Culture believed that those who wore jade could communicate with the gods. In the late stage of the third phase of the Niuheliang site, more than 90% of the mounds with burial items were only buried with jade artifacts, indicating that the Hongshan Culture had a custom of using only jade artifacts as burial objects. The idea "to serve God with jade" derived from this custom became the embryonic form of the ritual system of the Xia, Shang (1600–1046 BC), and Zhou (1046–256 BC) dynasties in later generations.

In addition, a central axis formed in the Niuheliang site with temples in the north and altars in the south, and square sites in the north and circular sites in the south close to the north-south axis. The group of rubble mound tombs were placed on both sides and around this central axis, forming a wide ranging and organically combined group of sacrificial structures. This planning arrangement based on the north-south axis remained unchanged in later generations until the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1616–1911) dynasties.

Moreover, temple and altar, as the highest level of national ritual architectures for ancestor worship and heaven worship, have a structure and layout that has been used from the Hongshan Culture more than 5,000 years ago to the Ming and Qing dynasties (Temple of Heaven, Imperial Ancestral Temple, and Ming Tombs in Beijing), demonstrating a cultural awareness of respecting heaven and ancestors.

All these fully prove that the Hongshan Culture is the root of Chinese culture. Its city planning pattern, sacrificial customs, and traditional ritual centered around jade in the Niuheliang Site are deeply imprinted in the Chinese civilization.

Cultural exchange of Hongshan Culture with its contemporaries

In its evolution into a proto-state, the Hongshan Culture was influenced not only by the local history and culture, and the fishing and hunting culture of Northeast China, but also by frequent exchanges with neighboring areas, especially the Central Plains.

The copper smelting remains at the Niuheliang site reveal some clues to ancient cultural exchanges. Firstly, the discovery of copper-smelting crucible fragments at the Niuheliang site indicates that copper smelting activities existed in this area a long time ago. Despite the uncertainty in dating due to strata disturbance, these findings have attracted the attention of metallurgical historians, suggesting that this region may be associated with a broader network of metallurgical technologies. Secondly, the red copper ring decorations found in the rubble mound tomb are also reliable evidence of early copper production.

The discovery of the combing pottery casting mold and bird-shaped casting mold at the Xitai site in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, further confirms the advanced copper smelting technology in the Hongshan Culture. These findings are consistent with the copper casting pottery mold and copper-handled spear found at the Lower Xiajiadian Culture Site, indicating the spread and development of copper smelting technology in this region.

The Hongshan Culture was also deeply rooted in the prehistoric culture of Northeast China. The Chahai-Xinglongwa Culture, characterized by jade pendant (玦 pronounced as jue in Chinese), pottery fragments with dragon pattern, stone bearing, and stone sculpture of a goddess face, was the origin of the Hongshan Culture. For example, a pair of jade pendants unearthed from the Xinglongwa Site have the same texture and color as the jade unearthed from the Hongshan Culture.

A group of jade artifacts in traditional Chinese shapes dating back nearly 10,000 years have been discovered at the Xiaonanshan site on the bank of the Ussuri River in Heilongjiang Province. Jade artifacts dating back nearly 10,000 years have also been discovered at the Shuangta Site in Baicheng city in Nenjiang River Basin of Jilin Province.

In the Xiaonanshan and other sites in the Changbai Mountain and the Heilongjiang River areas, the economic activities were mainly hunting, gathering, and fishing. Although the Chahai-Xinglongwa Culture and Hongshan Culture in the West Liaohe River Basin had already cultivated crops, the people still relied mainly on fishing and hunting.

Despite being eventually replaced by agricultural civilization, hunting and fishing activities had their own advantages. Having inherited millions of years of accumulated experience from the Paleolithic era, hunter-gatherers migrated in search of preys and covered large areas, allowing for extensive contact with neighboring cultural groups and fostering cultural openness. Their high degree of reverence and respect for nature due to its dependence on natural resources was the economic foundation for the large-scale sacrificial architecture of the Hongshan Culture, as well as the prerequisite for the development of jade artifacts, figure sculptures, and various sacrificial relics.

In addition, the Hongshan Culture also had frequent contact and exchange with the Yangshao Culture in the Central Plains and the grassland cultures in the western regions. Painted pottery is one of the most typical manifestations of this cultural integration. The hook-linked pattern is a simplification of the floral pattern of Miaodigou type in the Yangshao Culture, while the dragon scale pattern is local traditional decorative pattern that absorbs the Yangshao Culture's painted pottery techniques. Many geometric patterns similar to those found in Central and West Asia may have been influenced by the cultures of the western regions.

Therefore, the Hongshan Culture not only absorbed the painted pottery techniques of the Yangshao Culture in the Central Plains, but also techniques from the western regions.

The integration of diverse cultures has generated infinite vitality and cultural inheritance, allowing new elements such as jade culture, sacrifice, and painted pottery that have emerged through exchange and integration to endure over time. These new elements have become a chain of evidence for the uninterrupted development of Chinese civilization.

The author is Guo Dashun, a researcher of Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

Liu Xian /Editor    Lei Jing /Translator

Yang Xinhua /Chief Editor    Liu Xian /Coordination Editor

Liu Li /Reviewer

Zhang Weiwei /Copyeditor    Tan Yujie /Image Editor

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