China's earliest jade, if calculated from the site of Xianren Cave in Haicheng City, Liaoning Province, is more than 12,000 years of jade artifact history; if the calculation is started from the Xiaonanshan ruins in Raohe County, Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province, it is more than 9,000 years of systematic jade history; if the Xinglongwa site in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region began to calculate, it is a systematic jade history of 8,000 years.
◎ Ruins of Xiaonanshan in Raohe County, Shuangyashan City, Heilongjiang Province
The Xiaonanshan Ruins are early Neolithic sites located on the west bank of the Ussuri River in Raohe County (Ningguta, where the Qing Dynasty issued prisoners) on the russian border of China, and xiaonanshan in Raohe Town.
The Xiaonanshan site is the easternmost Neolithic site in China, with a total area of more than 400,000 square meters, discovered in 1958, and did small-scale archaeological work in 1971, 1980 and 1991.
From 2015 to 2019, archaeologists have carried out many in-depth excavations, and more than 120 pieces of jade have been excavated, including jade, jade pipe, jade bi, jade ring, jade bead, dagger-shaped jade pendant, 觿-shaped jade pendant (curved bar), jade hammer and jade axe. These jades advanced China's tradition of using jade by nearly 1,000 years, and the Xiaonanshan site has become the earliest systematic jade site found in China.
On October 7, 2019, the Xiaonanshan site was selected into the list of the eighth batch of national key cultural relics protection units; in May 2020, the Xiaonanshan site was selected as one of the "Top Ten New Archaeological Discoveries in China in 2019". The 12 pieces of jade on the archaeological bulletin of the Xiaonanshan site are in line with the traditional jade style of the Central Plains, and at the same time bear some of the obvious characteristics of jade used at the site of Denisov Cave in Siberia and the site of Afengtov Mountain in the Russian Federation, which is an important development sequence of jade artifacts from North Asia to Northeast Asia.
According to archaeological theories, the types of jade represented by the jade pipe and the production technology represented by sand rope cutting began to spread from Xiaonanshan to all parts of Northeast Asia around 8,000, such as the Ghost Gate Cave Site in the Far East Primorsky Territory of the Russian Federation, the Kuwano Ruins of Jinjin Town in the Japanese Jomon Era, and the Xinglongwa Site in Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China, which opened the process of the jade revolution in the prehistoric civilization era.
——Excerpt from the author's original article "Jade, From North Asia to Northeast Asia"