Hongshan Culture: Jade Dragons and the Niuheliang Goddess Temple

The Hongshan culture was a Neolithic farming culture of north-east China that flourished from about 4700 to 2900 BC in the Liao River region of western Liaoning, south-eastern Inner Mongolia and northern Hebei. It is famous for finely carved jade ornaments, including curled “pig-dragons”, and for the ritual complex at Niuheliang with its so-called Goddess Temple, stone altars and cairn tombs. Hongshan sites show that complex religious practices and social ranking developed in north-east China long before the first Chinese dynasties.

Discovery and name

The culture is named after Hongshanhou, a site near the city of Chifeng in Inner Mongolia. Hongshan means “Red Mountain”, after a nearby hill of reddish rock. Japanese archaeologists working in the region excavated at Hongshanhou in 1935, and Chinese archaeologists defined the Hongshan culture as a distinct archaeological culture in the 1950s.

For decades it was known mainly from pottery and stone tools. Its importance became clear only from the late 1970s and 1980s, with excavations at Dongshanzui in Kazuo County and above all at Niuheliang in western Liaoning, led by the Liaoning Provincial Institute of Archaeology under archaeologist Guo Dashun. The influential scholar Su Bingqi argued that these discoveries showed north-east China was one of several regions where early Chinese civilisation took shape.

Environment and daily life

The Hongshan region lies on the border between farmland and the steppe, in a landscape of hills, river valleys and loess. During the mid-Holocene the climate there was warmer and wetter than today, making farming possible over wide areas.

Hongshan people grew millet, the main cereal of northern China at the time, and raised pigs and dogs. They also hunted deer and other game and gathered wild plants. They lived in villages of semi-subterranean houses, often rectangular, dug partly into the ground and roofed with timber and thatch.

Their pottery included red vessels with black painted designs, showing contact with the painted-pottery tradition of the Yangshao culture farther south, alongside local pottery with comb-impressed patterns. Stone tools included hoes, polished axes and microblades, small sharp flint blades inherited from earlier hunter-gatherer traditions.

The Hongshan culture grew out of earlier local Neolithic cultures, notably Xinglongwa and Zhaobaogou, which had already produced small jade ornaments and settlements surrounded by ditches.

The Niuheliang ritual complex

Niuheliang (“Ox River Ridge”) lies on the border of Jianping and Lingyuan counties in Liaoning. Discovered in 1981 and excavated from 1983 onward, it is not a village but a ritual landscape spread across a range of hills, with more than a dozen localities containing platforms, cairns and burials. Most of its monuments date to the late Hongshan period, roughly 3600–3000 BC.

The best-known structure is the Goddess Temple, a long, irregular semi-subterranean building on a hilltop. Inside, excavators found fragments of painted clay walls and of clay human figures in various sizes, some apparently larger than life. The most striking find is a near life-size female head of painted clay with eyes inlaid with pieces of green jade. Fragments of clay animals, possibly a bear and a bird, were also found.

Near the temple lies a large earthen platform enclosed with stone, and on neighbouring hills stand stone cairns and altars. Some altars are round, built in three concentric tiers of stone, while others are square. Interpretations linking these shapes to later Chinese ideas of a round heaven and square earth are attractive but speculative.

Cairn burials and jade

The cairns at Niuheliang contain stone-lined graves. Many graves held few or no objects, but a small number of central or larger tombs contained jades placed on and around the body. Some burials contained jade and nothing else, not even pottery.

This pattern suggests a ranked society, in which certain individuals, perhaps religious leaders or heads of lineages, held special status that was expressed through jade. Jade is extremely hard and has to be worked by abrasion with sand and tools of stone, bone or bamboo, so each object represented many hours of skilled labour.

Hongshan jades

Hongshan jade carvers produced a distinctive range of objects. The most famous are the pig-dragons (zhulong), thick, curled pendants with a large animal head and a coiled body. Their faces have been compared to pigs, bears and other animals. Other forms include hook-cloud plaques, birds, turtles, rings and discs, and hoof-shaped tubes that may have been worn in the hair.

A large C-shaped jade dragon found in 1971 at Sanxingtala in Ongniud Banner, Inner Mongolia, is often called the earliest Chinese dragon. It is now in the National Museum of China. Whether such creatures were truly ancestors of the later Chinese dragon, or simply animal figures with their own local meaning, remains a matter of debate.

Because Hongshan jades fetch high prices, the art market is full of forgeries. Archaeologists stress that only objects from documented excavations can be securely attributed to the culture.

Decline and legacy

After about 3000 BC the Hongshan culture declined and was replaced by the Xiaoheyan culture, with simpler settlements and no comparable ritual centres. A shift toward a cooler and drier climate may have made farming harder, but the causes of the decline are uncertain.

Jade working, however, became a lasting feature of Chinese civilisation. Further south, the Liangzhu culture of the Yangtze delta produced its own spectacular jades from around 3300 BC, and later Bronze Age states, from the period of Erlitou onward, continued to use jade for ritual and display. Hongshan has therefore become central to discussions of how many regional traditions fed into the formation of Chinese civilisation.

Other sites and ritual objects

Niuheliang is not the only Hongshan ritual site. At Dongshanzui in Kazuo County, Liaoning, excavated between 1979 and 1982, archaeologists found a hilltop complex with a large square stone foundation and a round stone platform. Small clay figurines of women, some apparently pregnant, were found there, and they are often discussed alongside the clay figures of Niuheliang.

Other cemeteries, such as Hutougou in Fuxin, also contained stone-lined graves with jades. Across the Hongshan area, a distinctive kind of pottery appears at ritual places: tall, bottomless painted cylinders that were set upright in rows around the edges of cairns and platforms. Their purpose is unknown, but they clearly marked out sacred space.

Myths and facts

The name “Goddess Temple” was given by the excavators and reflects one interpretation, not a known ancient name. There is no written evidence for the beliefs of the Hongshan people, so the identity of the clay figures as goddesses, ancestors or other beings remains uncertain.

Some popular accounts describe Hongshan as an early state or kingdom. Su Bingqi did speak of an “ancient state” emerging in the region, but most archaeologists today see Hongshan as a ranked society with shared ritual centres rather than a state with kings, cities and writing.

Timeline

• c. 6200–5400 BC: The earlier Xinglongwa culture develops in the same region, already producing small jades.
• c. 4700 BC: The Hongshan culture emerges in the Liao River basin.
• c. 3600–3000 BC: The late Hongshan phase; the Niuheliang ritual complex is built and used.
• c. 2900 BC: Hongshan gives way to the Xiaoheyan culture.
• 1935: Japanese archaeologists excavate the type site at Hongshanhou near Chifeng.
• 1971: The C-shaped jade dragon is found at Sanxingtala, Inner Mongolia.
• 1981–1983: Niuheliang is discovered and excavations begin.

Why it matters

The Hongshan culture shows that north-east China had a distinctive and sophisticated Neolithic society, with ritual landscapes, ranked burials and masterful jade carving, by the 4th millennium BC. It challenges older views that Chinese civilisation spread outward from a single centre on the Yellow River, and its jades remain among the most admired works of prehistoric art in Asia.