Heart of Hongshan still beats

Two peoples, one identity

Zhang Xingde, a professor of archaeology at Liaoning University who has spent more than four decades studying Hongshan culture, believes the reason that jade played a central role in Hongshan society lies in the very composition of the culture itself. It was a story of two distinct peoples who came together and forged a shared material and spiritual identity.

"Although the Hongshan people were relatively less developed in material terms, they also wanted to learn new things," Zhang says.

"And their absorption was not simple 'take-and-use' — it was innovation on the basis of what they took — in today's words, 'upholding tradition while breaking new ground'."

The breakthrough came from pottery. Between 2008 and 2010, the late archaeologist Zhang Zhongpei noticed something striking at the Weijiawopu site, a Hongshan culture settlement in Inner Mongolia. Pottery unearthed from different Hongshan sites had been made using two entirely different techniques.

One — the "clay-ring joining method" — was local to western Liaoning. The other — the "claystrip coiling method" — was characteristic of regions south of the Yanshan Mountains.

"This Hongshan is not that Hongshan," Zhang Zhongpei told her, and urged her to investigate further.

Years of research led Zhang Xingde to conclude that Hongshan culture emerged from the convergence of two distinct populations.

One group was the indigenous people of western Liaoning, descended from the earlier Xinglongwa and Zhaobaogou cultures — the region's earliest farming communities dating back some 8,000 years.

The other consisted of Neolithic migrants from the eastern foothills of the Taihang Mountains. Driven northward by population pressure as agriculture expanded, they entered the Liaohe River basin around 6,500 years ago.

According to Zhang, the two groups initially clashed, even engaging in warfare. The newcomers pushed the indigenous population north toward the Xar Moron River basin in what is now Inner Mongolia, the northern edge of the Hongshan cultural sphere.

It explains why Hongshan culture's early phase had no jade in the southern part of the region, even though the earlier Xinglongwa culture to the north was rich in jade, Zhang says.

Over time, however, the two peoples learned to coexist. They adopted each other's vessel forms while preserving their own pottery-making techniques. At Niuheliang, Zhang says, they built a shared ceremonial center where different communities could worship together.

For her, this cultural fusion explains jade's elevated status. The southern migrants brought no jade tradition, but they encountered a northern people for whom jade was already sacred. In the process of forging a shared identity at Niuheliang, jade was elevated from a regional tradition to the unifying symbol of a new society, invested with new cultural meaning.

Guo, the archaeologist, sees evidence of this fusion in Hongshan painted pottery itself. Hongshan painted pottery bears three distinct patterns — the rose from China's Central Plains, the dragon native to Hongshan and geometric diamond-grid patterns from the vast Eurasian steppe. They testify to a "pottery road" that linked east and west, north and south some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, with the western Liaohe River basin as a crucible of cultural fusion.

Many scholars in China and abroad have described Chinese civilization as a civilization of continuity, distinct from the cycles of rupture and replacement often associated with the ancient West.

Rooted in northeastern China's traditions while embracing influences from neighboring regions, Hongshan culture exemplifies that enduring pattern, they argue.

Guo believes this openness to outside influences helped shape Chinese civilization and ensured its continuity across millennia.

Niuheliang, he says, proves the continuity of Chinese civilization and is the root of ancient Chinese culture.

Contact the writers at yangfeiyue@chinadaily.com.cn