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- Neolithic to Zhou
c.7000-third century B.C.
Because of its exquisite beauty, subtle colouring, and extreme hardness, jade ac�quired an exalted position in China at a very early date. Its durability and special ability to retain a keen edge naturally resulted in its use as weapons and tools in Neolithic China. A vast store of jade axes, scrapers, daggers, rings, pierced discs (bi), square cylinders (cong), and curved arc-shaped ornaments (huang), has been unearthed at several Neolithic sites in China. Deliberately assembled groups of jade in such places as graves, leads one to conclude that one particular cate�gory of people in this primitive society treasured jade as valuable possessions, which also possibly functioned as religious objects. Therefore, at this early stage in time there must have been a stratified society: the rulers who had the privilege of owning jade weapons and ornaments, and the others who did not.
Since very few jades from Neolithic times have been scientifically analyzed, they should be referred to as jade prototypes. The earliest carved jade-like mate�rials thus far excavated date to about 5000 B.C. and were located at Neolithic sites in Hemudu of Zhejiang province.8 The artifacts consisted of discs, round beads and tubular beads. Another notable Neolithic society with jade prototype artifacts, dating to about the third millennium B.C., is the Liangzhu culture at Zhang- lingshan, Caoxieshan and Wujin of Jiangsu province and at sites in Zhejiang and Anhui provinces. The majority of the excavated jade-like objects seem to be trem- olitic-actinolitic jade.9 Numerous congs, bis, huangs, slit discs, axes, animal masks, bracelets, hairpins and beads were unearthed at the Liangzhu sites. The congs and the bis formed the most prominent group of jade artifacts. The bis were of vari�ous sizes and often of uneven proportions, while the congs tended to be very tall and displayed the abstract pattern of plain bands and circles. The blades or axes followed the shape of contemporary tools made of stone. Simplified animal or de�monic masks, perhaps a forerunner of the taotie motif on Shang dynasty bronzes, were also found on jades excavated at Liangzhu sites. The taotie mask would be�come a very popular motif in Chinese art in the centuries to come. This mask ex�ists in a variety of forms, some being feline, others bovine in character. It may con�sist of a flattened face mask or two confronting profiles that form a full-face mask. Some Chinese scholars have suggested that the frequent occurrence of the taotie animal mask on burial jade might have been for the purpose of warding off evil.
By the late part of Neolithic times, a flourishing lithic industry had already been developed as shown by their technical skills of sawing, drilling, grinding and pol�ishing. Mr. Wang Zunguo of the Nanjing Museum is of the opinion that the arc�shaped scars found on some of the Liangzhu jade objects are evidence for the use of a wheel-saw made of sandstone containing quartz particles. It was previ�ously thought that wooden sticks or bamboo tubes were used with an abrasive to drill holes during this period. However, this may not be completely true. Drilling scars, V2 to 1 mm wide, have been detected on the walls of bis and congs, which leads one to believe that metal tubular drills, possibly made of bronze, may have existed.10
From the succession of Neolithic cultures in China, there emerged in about the twenty-first century B.C., the Xia kingdom�which recent archaeological finds have removed from the realm of unfounded tradition to actual fact. Be this as it
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