If the discovery of a certain culture presents a comprehensive range of artifacts, unravels a huge number of historical mysteries, and even points to the origin of a civilization, there must be only one candidate to select: the Hongshan Culture.
Hongshan Culture, dating back five to six thousands years, derived its name from the Hongshan Mountain of Chifeng inside the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China.
The culture is known not only for its jade but also for its red pottery with black patterns and pottery decorated with Z-shaped designs. In recent years, the ruins of large buildings, tombs, a pottery goddess figure and many jade animal-carvings have been discovered. They point back down the years to the Hongshan Culture as a source of Chinese civilization.
As an important part of the Neolithic Age in Northern China, the Hongshan Culture was discovered in 1935 and covers an area from the Wuerjimulun River valley of Chifeng, Inner Mongolia in the north to Chaoyang, Lingyuan and the northern part of Hebei Province in the south, and extends eastward to cover Tongliao and Jinzhou.
It is characterized primarily by the ancient painted potteries, the "Z"-stripped potteries and the unique digging tools-stone spades and laurel leave-shaped two-holed stone knives. The potteries of Hongshan Culture fall into two types-clay potteries and sand-mixed potteries, both manually made.
The clay potteries are mostly red, usually in the forms of bowl, basin, jar and pots, etc., most of which are containers with small flat bottoms. Most of the clay potteries are decorated with black or purple stripes arranged mainly in parallel lines, triangles, scale-shaped patterns and occasionally in "Z"-shaped pressed stripes.
The stone ware of Hongshan Culture is made by grinding with the blades of stone knives finely ground and the edges and backs in curved symmetry, indicating a fairly developed agricultural economy of the culture.
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