Author: Li Ao Zhang Xingde
Source: "Archaeology Heilongjiang" WeChat public account
The original article was published in Northern Cultural Relics, No. 1, 2022
Small ceramic statue of pregnant woman (Source: China Net)
Hongshan culture is an archaeological culture with rich material figures unearthed, especially female statues, and in this archaeological culture with a history of about 1500 years, the admiration for women expressed through female statues accompanies it throughout, and plays a vital role in its civilization process, reflecting the development of this group's material and spiritual culture, and at the same time illustrating the unique background and road of this culture into civilization, so scholars have had many special discussions on this topic in the past. However, with the more accurate reading of the age of the Niuheliang Female Temple in recent years, we have been able to gain a deeper understanding of this problem on the basis of the understanding of cultural staging and the interaction of different archaeological cultures.
First, the discovery and chronology of female statues in Hongshan culture
At present, it can be confirmed that female statues belonging to the Hongshan culture have been found in Sites such as Chifeng Xishuiquan, Ao Han Xitai, Kazuo Dongshanzui, and Jianping Niuheliang.
A ceramic bust, numbered H1:3, was unearthed in Xishuiquan, which has a mutilated head and a protruding breast on the chest, with obvious female features, and the lower part is carved in vertical stripes around the perimeter, with a residual height of 3.8 cm (Fig. 1, 1). The pottery that is produced with xishuiquan H1:3 in ash pit No. 1 is a bowl, a large mouth jar and a lid (Figure 2), which is not introduced in the report of the ash pit itself, and from the pottery excavated, it should be an ordinary ash pit in the residential site.
The statue of the woman in Xitai was excavated from the site of the house number F4, and the excavation report did not publish the statue number, nor did it publish its photographs or line drawings, according to its text description, "the statue is exquisitely made and very complete." The individual is small, nude, highlighting the female breasts". The F4 of the excavated female statue is located in area B of the site, the site broke the F8 of the Xinglongwa culture period, and was broken by the F3 of the late Hongshan culture period, the F4 specific situation was not announced in the original report, from the site plan, it is a rounded rectangular semi-crypt building. Pottery that accompanies female statues include cylindrical jars, bowls, etc. (Fig. 3).
According to the staging study of Hongshan culture, the above two units are in the middle and late stages of the early Hongshan culture, and the Xitai F4 should be slightly later than the Xishuiquan H1.
Several female statues were excavated from the Dongshanzui site, and 4 images were published and specifically described. Among them, the numbers TD8:5 and TD9:7 are smaller, both are pregnant women with rounded bodies, the head and right arm and feet have been damaged, the left arm is bent in front of the chest, the abdomen is raised, the hips are hypertrophied, and there is a clear pubic mark, the lower limbs are erect and slightly curved, and one of the whole body is carefully polished, seems to be painted in color, and the residual height is 5 to 5.8 cm (Figure 1, 2, 3). The other two are ceramic sculptures on the upper and lower bodies of the statue, which are believed to belong to the same individual, the upper body fragment is 18 cm high and 22 cm wide, which is the arm and chest and abdomen part of the human body, the arms are wrapped around the body, and the hands are attached to the chest and abdomen (Fig. 1, 5); the lower body stumps are 12.5 in height and 22 cm wide, the inner cavity is empty, and there is a round hole in the left knee that leads straight to the inner cavity, which is the leg part of the cross-knee stack, sitting upright (Fig. 1, 6). From the size of the fragments, it can be inferred that the statue should be equivalent to about 1/2 of the life-size when the statue is intact. These two statue fragments do not have obvious gender characteristics, but because they are not far from the image of pregnant women, they have long been studied as female statues. According to the original report, there were several other fragments of the upper and lower bodies of the statues in this position near the above-mentioned statues, but they were not described in detail. The female ceramic sculptures of the Dongshanzui site are all from the loess layer on the periphery of the stone circle site in the site, of which the TD9:7 and TD8:5 pregnant woman statues were excavated in the loess layer on the east side of the stone circle site, and the upper and lower body fragments were excavated in the loess layer on the southeast side of the stone circle site. The excavation report describes the hierarchical relationship between the stone circle site where the statue is located and the remains of the stone circle, which is "perfectly circular, 2.5 meters in diameter, paved in the upper part of the loess pile, stacked on top of a 50 cm thick loess layer, and surrounded by stone chips." The stone pieces are close to rectangular, about 30 cm long, mostly white limestone pieces, and the outward side is flat, so that the edge of the entire round platform appears very neat, and there is only a significant depression on the south side of the corresponding square base site. The stone circle is paved with a layer of similarly sized river pebbles, which are not found in the entire site accumulation or near the site, and should be deliberately selected from the river below the mountain." In the northeast side of the "stone circle-shaped platform site, about 80 cm deep from the surface, you can see a complete human skeleton by uncovering a layer of braised soil at the bottom of the loess layer, the human bone is raw soil, there is no clear tomb, only two irregular-shaped stone slabs are placed on both sides of the human bone and the foot end, and the range of the human skeleton can be roughly determined to be about 2 meters long and about 0.6 meters wide." The bones are lying on their backs and straight limbs, and there are no burial items, and there are large pieces of clay red pottery and a restorable clay black clay bowl covering the chest and abdomen of the bones. In the same layer as the human bones, 4 meters away from the stone circle site, there is also a multi-circular stone foundation site built on the original loess soil, which has been damaged, and "3 connected circular base sites can be distinguished." Two of them still have contours, nearly oval, one with a north-south diameter of 3.1 and an east-west diameter of 3.8 meters, and the other with a north-south diameter of 2.9 and an east-west diameter of 4.1 meters. Both sites are made of single-layer stone blocks, with two circles of large river pebbles at the edges, and smaller stones are laid inside the stone circles to form a table" According to the above text, the Dongshanzui site has a stone circle-shaped site superimposed loess layer, the red-burned soil surface at the bottom of the loess layer superimposed human bones and the layer relationship of the multi-circular stone base site, so whether it is a pregnant woman's image, or a seated statue, the position in the loess layer may determine its relationship with the stone circle-shaped altar and the multi-circular stone foundation site, but the report does not have relevant descriptions, so they may not be directly related to the stone circle-shaped altar building or the multi-circular stone foundation site, or stand in the loess layer during the stone circle-shaped altar period. Or it was buried by the loess layer after standing on the ground during the multi-circular stone foundation stage. The Dongshanzui Bulletin does not explain the meaning of the letters in the number of excavated artifacts, so it is not possible to judge the specific location of the excavated objects with different numbers and their possible position relationship with the portrait. Pottery with the same number as the pregnant woman's portrait layer number, including paired faience pottery pieces, checkered pottery pieces, pots and small mouth pots, etc., has entered the late stage of the late Hongshan culture, and the same should be true from the other artifact groups at the site that are also numbered as the first layer (Figure 4).
N5SCZZ2:4, a specimen excavated from the upper stone mound at the fifth site of Niuheliang, is a small female standing statue (Fig. 1, 4), which is located on the northeast side of the M1 of the upper stone mound No. 2 at the fifth site of Niuheliang, which should belong to the sealing layer of the mound. The N5Z2 mound has been severely damaged, the northern and western stones are no longer there, and the southern stones and tombs are still somewhat preserved. Judging from the small section of the stone wall preserved in the east, the stone mound should be a square or rectangular mound. There are 4 tombs preserved under the southern stone layer of the mound, N5Z2M1 is located on the easternmost side. The cylindrical vessels excavated from the accumulation of the mounds belong to the remains of the late Hongshan culture (Fig. 5). The head and right leg of the figure are mutilated, and the height of the figure is 9.6 cm. The breasts are raised, the arms are placed in front of the abdomen, the abdomen is slightly raised, the back is curved inward, and there are curved lines on both sides. The portrait has distinctly feminine features. The portrait is pressed smooth and naked, with only the left foot half of the tall boot shape.
Other gender-recognizable statues at the Niuheliang site are from the site of the "Temple of the Goddess" at the first site of Niuheliang. No complete female statues have been seen in the ruins of the "Temple of the Goddess", but the female breast fragments with gender characteristics unearthed are all female clay sculptures, so it is considered that the statues in other parts are all parts of the female statues. The more important fragments of the statues are N1J1B:6-1 and N1J1B:6-2, which are two clay breast fragments excavated from the "Goddess Temple", 13 to 13.5 cm wide, with a smooth surface, fullness, and no nipples (Figure 1, 9, 10). In addition, two breast fragments were collected, namely N1J1 mining: 6 and N1J1 mining: 5, with diameters of 17 to 17.5 and 10.4 to 13.4 cm, respectively. There are also a large number of human statue fragments in the "goddess temple", including the head, nose, ears, hands, arms and so on. Among them, the most famous is the head of the goddess number N1J1B:1, which has a height of 22.4, a width of 21 ears, and a thickness of 14 cm. It is mutilated above the top of the head, with a hoop on the forehead and a vertical tie on the sideburns. The two eye orbits are embedded with jade with a diameter of 2.3 cm, and the eye surface is rounded and polished, and the back is made of nails, so that it can be deeply embedded in the eye socket. Nasal mutilation. Below the upper lip is veneered, revealing mussel-like patch marks showing teeth; the right ear is intact, the ear chakra is simplified, the left ear is mutilated, and a perforation is visible near the earlobe. The back and lower parts of the head are both stumps, and from the back of the head, the original head should be a high relief (Fig. 1, 11). Specimen N1J1B:5 is a fragment of the shoulder, up near the neck, down to the chest. The surface is curved and contoured, with a rounded feeling, and the feminine features are obvious (Fig. 1, 7). Specimen N1J1B:4 is a hand plastic part with a residual length of 22 cm and a width of 20 cm. The left hand, as a palm extension, five fingers outstretched, all not together, the fingers are slender, there is a fingertip performance, the thumb tip is slightly upturned, the whole hand is pressed, and the lower part of the hand is broken (Figure 1, 8). Excavation reports say that human body fragments belong to about 6-7 individuals, which can be divided into three specifications, such as about 3 times the human body, about 2 times the human body, and about the original size of the human body. The site of the "Goddess Temple" at the first site of Niuheliang is a semi-crypt building on a mountain beam at a considerable distance from the stone mound, the temple is divided into two units, the main body and the single body, the longest 22 from north to south, the narrowest place from east to west 2, the widest point 9 meters, and the direction of 20° south and west. The underground part of the wall is erect and rises in an arch from above the ground. From the remains, the building originally had wooden columns, which were attached to the inside of the columns with bunches of grass, and the outside of which was coated with grass and mud to form a wall. There are a variety of imitation wooden strips of different specifications on the wall, the most important thing is that the wall is decorated with murals, and the geometric shapes painted for Zhu and Bai are the earliest murals seen in China, which shows the difference between the residential ruins of ordinary residents in the same period, when it is a building that pours out the infinite wisdom and admiration of the ancestors. We have done chronological analysis of the remains represented by the "Female Temple" at the Niuheliang site, and on the basis of the original report dividing the entire site into three phases, we have identified that the stage of the "Female Temple" period is comparable to the late period of the Xiyin culture.
In addition, there are still a large number of reports related to the statues of people in the reports of banlashan, Niuheliang, Erdaoliang, Nasitai and other sites, but either gender characteristics cannot be identified, or the cultural nature is uncertain, so it is not discussed in this article.
Second, the origin and function of the image of small pregnant women
According to the above, the female statues of hongshan culture can be roughly divided into large and small according to the volume, the excavators of the "female temple" at the first site of Niuheliang and the fragments of the upper and lower bodies of Dongshanzui belong to large people, and the shape can reach 1/2 or even 3 times the size of the real person; and the statues excavated from Xishuiquan H1:3 and Xitai F4, Niuheliang N5SCZ2:4 are small, and the residual height is generally less than 10 cm. On this basis, it can be observed that small statues exist from beginning to end in the Hongshan culture, found in the settlement site in the early and middle periods, and also appear in the late Hongshan culture cemetery, and the statue mainly emphasizes the gender characteristics of women, especially the characteristics of pregnant women, while other parts are relatively brief; large statues appear in the early stage of the late Hongshan culture, all seen in religious sacrifice sites, the statue does not show female pregnancy, only with prominent breasts to show female characteristics.
Female statues with prominent pregnancies were found in the Xinglongwa culture in western Liaoning more than 7,000 years ago, and continued to exist in the Zhao Baogou culture after that. Small female statues belonging to the Xinglongwa culture are found in the Baiyin Changhan and Xishan ruins in Linxi County.
The white-tone long khan portrait AF19:4 was excavated in the center of the site AF19 and inserted into the ground 40 cm from the stove site, and the portrait is stony, made of black-gray hard bedrock. The statue is 33.5 cm high, 12 cm wide and 15.7 cm thick. Naked, rugged in shape, with a long rounded triangle on the top of the head, a prominent forehead and large deeply sunken eyes, a wide nose, a cheekbone protrusion, a slightly longer jaw, a shallow mark under the nose to represent the mouth, two circular protrusions on both sides of the abdomen to represent the hands and connect to the arms, a circular bulge in the middle of the abdomen, a recess between the back of the neck to distinguish the head from the torso, the back is slightly arched, the hips are rounded, and the lower limbs are processed into a wedge shape in order to stand on the ground. The portrait is not prominent for sexual organs, but maternal features can still be seen from the slightly raised abdomen (Figures 6, 1). The site belongs to the Second Phase B of Baiyin Changhan and the fourth phase of Xinglongwa Culture, which is about 7200 years away from this year. The two figures found at the Xishan site in Linxi County are both collected objects, carved from gray and white granite, and are nude female figures, and the production methods and shapes of the two are basically the same. The proportion of the head in the overall shape is large, the round head is wide-shouldered, the eyes and mouth are expressed in a flat and long arc round socket, the nose is prominent, and the ears are large. The portrait has towering breasts, a bulging abdomen, a drooping upper arm, a lower arm bent over the abdomen, and a wedge of the lower limbs below the abdomen that is slightly square-pointed, possibly easy to plant. Individual sizes were 67 cm in height, 21 cm at its widest point, 46 cm in height, and 18.5 cm at its widest point (Fig. 6, 2, 3). The site found that there are Relics such as cylindrical pot pottery pieces, stone balls, stone leaves and stone grinding discs of the Xinglongwa culture, so it is judged that the stone carvings should also belong to the Xinglongwa culture. Zhao Baogou culture pregnant woman statue is found in Hebei Luanping County backstage sub-site, the site is divided into two cultural layers, of which the lower cultural layer belongs to zhao Baogou culture, sitting pregnant woman statues, are collected, stone, nude pregnant women image, a total of 6 statues. Among them: 14, pass height 32.7, shoulder width 23.5 cm, as a sitting posture, round face bald head, thick eyebrows, with a shady line to show slightly open eyes, the nose is wider and flat slightly raised in a triangle, the ears are obviously convex, and the mouth is closed. The end shoulders, the arms are bent and hugged on the abdomen, the rounded breasts are on the inside of the arms, the waist and abdomen are wide and fat, and the lower abdomen and the posterior waist are swollen, which is obvious in pregnant women. The hips are connected to the small pointed stone seats, the legs are curved inwards, and the feet are facing each other in front of the abdomen (Fig. 6, 4). Harvest: 15, height 34, shoulder width 17 cm. Do sit-down, round head round face, round shoulders, upper arm drooping, lower arm bent, hands relative to the abdomen, round belly. Knees bent, calves naturally sagging, feet folded under the abdomen (Fig. 6, 5). Harvest: 16, residual height 19, abdominal width 18.5, thickness 13 cm. The upper body is mutilated, and only below the abdomen remains. Elbows are flexed, hands wrapped around the upper abdomen, and legs squatting around the bulging round abdomen, feet facing each other (Fig. 6, 9). Harvest: 17, height 32.5, shoulder width 16 cm. Damage to the chest, abdomen, face and right ear. The body is slightly slender, with a rounded head and a round face, thick eyebrows and bulges connected to the bridge of the nose, and a willow leaf-shaped groove is carved to indicate the eyes. The ears are oblong, and the ear is also carved with willow leaf-shaped grooves to show the details. Slippery shoulders, breast protrusions. The upper arm droops, the lower arm is bent, and the hand is held on the upper abdomen (Figure 6, 6). Harvest: 18, residual height 20, shoulder width 8.5 cm. Head mutilation. Sit in a straight posture with a straight back. There is a raised braid at the back of the neck, braided with a "human" glyph braid, 5 cm long and 2 cm wide. Round breasts, upper arms drooping, elbows flexed, hands interlaced in the abdomen, grooved dorsal ridges, pits in the pubic area, squat legs, calves obliquely folded inwards, both feet mutilated. There is a cylindrical base under the hips (Fig. 6, 8). Harvest: 19, height 9.5, shoulder width 5.5 cm. The sitting posture is more upright, the back is straight, the head is round, the face is round, the eyebrows are curved, the eyes are small, the frontal bone is slightly higher, and the mouth is slightly open. The chest and abdomen are flat and slightly concave. The arms are naturally drooping, and the genitals are carved with vertical grooves (Fig. 6, 7). The report classifies the above statues into the lower cultural layer of the site, that is, the Zhao Baogou cultural period, which dates back to 7200-6500 years ago. The female image that appeared in the early days of Hongshan culture, in addition to the difference in material, has a continuity with the female image of the stone carving of Xinglongwa culture and Zhao Baogou culture in terms of time and shape, indicating that the emergence of the image of pregnant women in Hongshan culture is a kind of inheritance of local traditions.
At present, the Neolithic site of nude female statues found in China and the Fufeng Case Plate Site in Shaanxi Province, the excavated ceramic sculpture of a nude pregnant woman only has a torso part, a residual height of 6.8 cm, a full breast protrusion, a round abdomen, a beautiful curve in the waist, a plump body shape, and the characteristics of pregnant women at a glance (Figure 7, 5). The pottery luxury mouth pointed bottom bottle bowl and shallow belly basin produced with the nude female statue belong to the Banpo Four-Stage Culture (Figure 7, 1-4), and the relative age is consistent with the late Hongshan Culture. No tradition of female statues has been found in the Central Plains before, so even if the Banpo IV culture and the Hongshan culture have some connection in the nude female statues, the direction of dissemination should be that the influence of the latter on the former is more reasonable.
The function of small female statues in the Hongshan culture, from the small individuals from the source, the workmanship is not exquisite, the emphasis on female gender characteristics, the emphasis on pregnancy, the function it undertakes should not be changed much, from the development of the living room to the placement of cemeteries or religious sites, may be related to the expansion of the scale of the group that holds the ceremony, from the family unit to the clan or tribe or even larger scale. And the efficacy of these female statues in the ceremony, combined with domestic and foreign archaeological data and ethnological data, they are the ancients pray for fertility in the concept of witchcraft, that is, to see them as the female figures with a harvest effect in fertility witchcraft is the most credible, through the ceremony, the reproductive ability of pregnant women is transmitted to the earth, hoping that the earth will be fertile, and vice versa.
Third, the origin and nature of large female statues
In addition to the difference in volume size and size of small statues in the early stage of the Hongshan culture, the difference between large statues and small statues is also more obvious: First, although some of the large statues are unburned, the sculptural techniques and forms of expression are obviously more accurate, and all parts of the human body are shaped exquisitely, do not show female pregnancy, and only show female characteristics with prominent breasts; second, once large female statues appear, they are associated with religious sacrifice sites, and the forms and construction techniques of these sacrifice sites are much higher than ordinary residential sites. Large statues appeared at the same time as the utensils used for sacrifice and offering. If the altars and cups at the Dongshanzui site are small, with petal-shaped broad-foot polished clay black pottery cups formed by the separation of dwarf circles at the bottom, and the relationship between other small cups and large statues is not enough to determine the position from the layer, it is accurate that the large female statues in the "Female Temple" of Niuheliang appear at the same time as the sacrificial utensils in the temple site. Although the "Goddess Temple" still adopts the semi-crypt architectural form, but the central axisymical layout, the interior imitation wood structure and fresco decoration, showing the sacredness of the building, among which the excavated faience pottery skeletonized large vessel, the abdominal diameter reaches more than 1 meter, clay red pottery, hard texture, large mouth deep abdomen, skin coating Zhu, which has a black color painted polygonal pattern, the body is also applied with a number of rectangular cutouts, from the volume point of view is obviously not an ordinary living utensils, should belong to the special sacrificial utensils. Another bean-shaped perforated smoker cover, pottery orange-red, delicate texture, lid plate folded abdomen wide edge, the center of the bottom of the plate has a round hole and the cover handle through, the bottom surface into groups decorated with a fine embossed "Zigzag" pattern, interspersed with rectangular cutholes, each group of 5 holes, are arranged symmetrically according to the length of the order, the cover handle is a flared mouth. The overall shape of the lid resembles an upside-down pottery bean. In addition, there are pottery bowls and other drinking utensils in the "Goddess Temple" (Figure 8). According to this, these female statues may be regarded by people as gods who give them gifts and protection, and are distinguished from small statues as voodoo props. However, these idols also take the form of nudes, showing female characteristics, indicating that their properties have a certain correlation with small statues.
Why was there a need to create such a God, and what kind of God was it? If the large statues are placed in the perspective of the staging of the Hongshan culture, in the cultural pattern changes in northern China 6,000 years ago and in the social context faced by the ancient culture of western Liaoning, it may help to understand the reasons for their emergence and even the nature of the gods they represent.
Around 6,000 years ago, the development of Banpo culture entered the historian period, the population further expanded to the surrounding areas, the upper reaches of the Wei River, the central and western parts of the Guanxi River have also become its important distribution areas, affecting the Flowing Yellow River to reach today's Shanxi, Henan, north to the Inner Mongolia Hetao and Daihai regions, in the northwest of the mountain, Henan Wangwan and Inner Mongolia's Shihu Mountain, Lujiapo and Yangwan and other sites can see the traces of its cultural elements, these places from the perspective of archaeological and cultural genealogy belong to the kettle and the foot (Ding), pot, Bean is the main combination of the Plain Noodle Pottery Group, which evolved into the remains of the first and second phases of Beiqi, the first and second remains of Wangwan and the first phase of Lujiapo due to the influence of the Shijia period. Among them, the branch that expanded northward in the History period Banpo culture eventually settled in today's south-central Inner Mongolia, forming the Baini kiln culture. The place it passes through is the Remnants of the Shihushan Type of The First Phase Culture of the Hougang Phase I Culture of the Dingju-based Sumian Pottery Group and its descendants Lujiapo Phase I, while in the Baini Kiln Culture, the former factor has almost completely disappeared, indicating that this ethnic group withdrew from this region under the expulsion of the Shijia period Banpo culture, or entered western Liaoning or some of them retreated into their hometown Hebei. Just as the Historian period Banpo culture developed to the north at the same time, the first and second phases of Beiqu also quietly rose in the collision with the former, forming a new archaeological culture - Xiyin culture (also known as Miaodigou culture), which soon developed into the center of contemporaneous culture in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, and gradually expanded the space to the surrounding areas, the result is that in the Weihe River Basin, the original distribution area of the Banpo culture in the middle reaches of the Yellow River, on top of the Banpo cultural sites, is basically superimpoed by the remnants of the Xiyin culture, and the Banpo culture continues to retreat to the periphery of the Xiyin culture. The substitution of the two cultures shown was achieved by the rapid expulsion of the Western Yin culture to the periphery. Only the Baini kiln culture has preserved the main factors of the Banpo culture more completely, and has become an archaeological culture that coexists with the north and south of the Xiyin culture. At the same time, in the northern part of the Xiyin cultural center area, that is, the Jinzhong Jinbei region, the Xiyin people rushed the Sumian Tao group - Hougang people to the north, although those places are rarely visited, but the road is not smooth, in the Hougang people's stubborn resistance, and finally the residents of the Xiyin culture stopped in the north of Jinbei, and turned along the Sangan River to the east into today's Hebei, completely eliminating the Hougang people in today's Hebei, directly bordering and confronting the Hongshan culture. As a result, the Hongshan culture, which was originally born for the collision of two different ethnic groups in the indigenous culture of western Liaoning and the first phase of Hougang culture, encountered the re-impact of the descendants of the Hougang I culture in the south-central part of Inner Mongolia and the retreat of the Northern Jin Dynasty in the Middle and Jin Dynasties, and the western part was threatened by the advancing white clay kiln culture, and the southern part was the Xiyin culture that was in the limelight, and a new crisis caused by the collision of ethnic groups appeared. Hongshan culture, an archaeological and cultural community that includes descendants of the Zhao Baogou culture, descendants of the Fuhe culture, and even descendants of the lower culture of Xinle, which are all from the Xinglongwa cultural mother group, and have become inseparable in the evolution of hundreds of years, and the descendants of the Hougang phase I culture, which have achieved certain consistency after nearly a thousand years of cultural identity from the external appearance to the spiritual world, are facing the situation of population integration and resource redistribution. At this time, the emergence of large female deities represented by the "female temple" of Niuheliang and the place of worship is no accident, in this historical background, with the help of a long tradition of female worship to create a goddess, as a community consistent mother god, ancestor god, earth god has the meaning of unity, symbiosis, order, is in line with social needs.
As noted above, this worship of the goddess takes on the surface in the form of blood relatives, but it reflects the very opposite, that is, the formation of a geographical and administrative social organization that breaks down blood relations, and this way of constructing a larger and more universal social organization by establishing common objects of worship is common in the history of the world. This phenomenon abounded in the Mediterranean world and in the ancient Near East. For example, when people try to combine independent ministries into a single city-state, they tend to look for a common protector as the object of worship of the city-state. In the 4th century BC, the originally independent arkadian tribes were combined into a single city-state, and the city of Megalopolis was established as the religious and administrative center of the city-state, and the market center of the city stood the temple of Zeus, and Zeus became the protector of Alcardia. As one of the many city-states in a region rose to prominence in the struggle for hegemony, hegemony was established in the region, and the gods worshipped by the local city-states were also established, which may take the form of blood kinship and patriarchy, but also reflect the expansion of the social community geographically and administratively. For example, when the states of ancient Egypt were annexed to each other and a region thus gained dominance over other regions, its local gods became gods, above other gods, such as Heliopolis in the first intermediate period as the capital of the Ninth and Tenth Dynasties under the rule of Egypt, its local god Atun was worshipped as the creator god, and the other major Egyptian gods were formed as his creation into a family of gods. With the conquest of the ancient Mediterranean world by the Romans, Egypt, Greece and Italy all became part of the Roman Empire, and in order to adapt to the birth of a wider and more administratively integrated social organization, the gods and goddesses in various places began to further integrate, and the gods in the mythological systems of different regions were compared with each other. For example, Isis of Egypt is equivalent to Dimitri of Greece. Eventually, the main gods of the regions were mixed into a single deity, and thus Osiris of Egypt, Zeus of Greece, and Jupiter of Rome were mixed with the great god of Serapis, which also marked the political organization of the Mediterranean world under the Roman emperor into a vast and tight unity.
Therefore, the emergence of large female statues and supporting female temples is the manifestation of the opening of the civilization process of Hongshan culture. Since then, the unity of the various groups in the culture that transcend blood relations and transcend ethnic groups, under the belief in the goddess, the common ancestor, from the hierarchical world of gods with different sizes and orderly positions in the female temples of niuheliang site, to the structural stratification of the tomb units in different places in Niuheliang, to the hierarchical and institutionalization of the real society shown by the different combinations of jade ceremonial vessels in the tombs of Jishizuka, which is in line with the characteristics of the ancient country that Su Bingqi said was "a stable and independent political entity above the tribe".
Author Affilications:School of History, Liaoning University
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