The Research On Prehistoric Jade Ornament Of Northeastern China

Jade ornament is a basic carrier of Chinese civilization, which is in nature a civilization of admiring-jade. The tradition of admiring- jade of ancient China has a distant source and a long stream. The materials newly discovered in archeology during recent years have shown that the origin of this tradition is closely related to prehistoric and ancient jade ornament of Northeastern China. A large number of jade ornaments from China Northeast were respectively unearthed in western and eastern Liaoning Province, Jilin Province and Heilongjiang Province. Generally, the development of these jade ornaments can be divided into three different stages—starting, flourishing and fading. Most of the jade ornament of the first stage belonged to imitation-tool category; during the second stage, the number of imitation-tool jade ornament evidently decreased, and the jade ornament of bionic category and special category turned to be in the majority; in the third stage, both the number and the categories of jade ornament were drastically reduced, living only a few kinds of shapes such as tube and bead. These changes should be closely associated with the development level of the society and the change of people's ideological concepts at that time. The appearance and the development of prehistoric jade ornament in Northeastern China suggest that the factor of traditional rites of Chinese civilization period appeared in the northeast region of China as early as Hongshan Cultural Period. The appearance of rites is the fundamental symbol that distinguishes civilized society from primitive society. Viewed from the angle of national cultural tradition, if the bronze- ceremony is considered as the materialized symbol of civilized ritual music society of dynasties of Xia, Shan, and Zhou, the prehistoric jade ornament of China Northeast originated from Xing Long wa Culture will be the basic carrier of the emergence, the expansion and the heritage of Chinese ancient ceremony from the Mid-Neolithic Age to the age when bronze and stone were used at the same time. The factor of Chinese ancient civilization born by the prehistoric jade ornament of Northeastern China has directly laid a solid foundation for the formation of Chinese civilization during the dynasties of Xia, Shan, and Zhou.