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CHAPTER ONE

The Art of PREHISTORIC CHINA

(c. 3000 B.C.-c. 1500 B.C.)

CHINA CAN look back upon the oldest continuous artistic tradition existing in the world today. Other civilizations predated the Chinese—ancient Mesopotamia, dynastic Egypt, Minoan Crete, Jomon Japan, and those of prehistoric Iran and the Indus valley—but only in China does a current civilization extend back in unbroken continuity for well over four thousand years. Both the people and the culture descend directly from a civilization which took form during the third millennium before Christ. Many characteristics of prehistoric Chinese art persist or recur throughout these centuries in a continuity found in no other great civilization of today.

Like the legends of all cultures, those of China describe the origin of the world. In one common version, P'an Ku created the world by separating heaven and earth. During the next 400,000 years, the Twelve Emperors of Heaven and the Eleven Emperors of Earth reigned over the world. The Nine Emperors of Mankind reigned during the next 45,000 years. Then a sequence of sixteen ralers was followed by the three Great Sovereigns: Fu Hsi, Shên Nung, and Huang Ti. These last are credited with inventing the arts and crafts and founding Chinese civilization. Shên Nung taught the people to till the soil. Huang Ti, known as the Yellow Emperor, founded the imperial house of China.

The first two are usually represented with human heads and serpent bodies, suggesting a totemic concept, but Huang Ti, the Supreme Anees-tor, is depicted as entirely human. According to legend, he and his five successors civilized the Chinese people by teaching religious concepts and rules of moral conduct. With the fifth successor, legend crosses the threshold into history, for he, Emperor Yü, founded the first historical house, the Hsia dynasty. Thus legend melds with history in the person of the fifth lineal descendant of the legendary Yellow Emperor.

Modern studies indicate that there is more truth in these myths than was formerly believed. Archaeologists have found remains of a prehistoric man which date as far back as 500,000 B.C. This creature, known as Peking man, is one of the most ancient specimens of humanity yet discovered, establishing beyond doubt that eastern Asia was actually inhabited during the same ancient period spanned in Chinese legend. The brain capacity of this early man was not quite equal to that of modern man but was double that of the gorilla and the chimpanzee. His human status is bolstered by evidence that he shaped tools and used fire. However, it is not at all certain that Peking man was the actual ancestor of the modern Chinese.

The Ice Age interfered seriously with both the growth of human settlement and the preservation of archaeological evidence; consequently, very little has been discovered about the intervening millennia of Chinese prehistory before about 20,000 B.C. Habitation by hunting and gathering cultures after this date is evident from traces found in China, Manchuria, and Mongolia. Migrants from these cultures probably crossed the land bridge, now sunken to form the Bering Strait, to people the Americas. More and more, however, the people tended to live in regular settlements. By about 5000 B.C. they appear to have domesticated the pig and begun making coarse pottery. These people were the prehistoric, but direct, ancestors of historical China.

The earliest truly artistic works discovered in China are from a neolithic pottery culture of the third millennium B.C. The Swedish archaeologist J. G. Andersson discovered the first specimens of magnificent painted ceramic vessels from this period, called Yang Shao after the modern place name. The origin and early stages of Yang Shao pottery remain obscure. Definitive answers to puzzling questions await further excavations in Central Asia and adjacent territories linking China with western Asia and the Near East. Certainly, the early pottery culture of China owes much to that of the more ancient Mesopotamian and Iranian cultures. Highly developed by the fifth millennium B.C., these cultures used forms and decorative motifs markedly similar to those found in Yang Shao pieces of two thousand years later.

Chinese scholars, although usually reluctant to admit any Western influence upon ancient China, have acknowledged this evidence and admitted its implications. Some have taken the initiative in pursuing these threads. For instance, Li Chi, director of the Academia Sinica and author of a work on the beginnings of Chinese civilization, sees a somewhat degenerate form of the hero-and-beast motif of ancient Mesopotamia in some Chinese woodcarvings and bronze inscriptions bearing a face mask with two antithetically positioned tigers. Another similarity noted by Li Chi involves jars having phallic-shaped handles standing upright in their centers, found at Jembet Nasr in Mesopotamia, at Mohenjo-Daro in India, and at Yang Shao in China.

Andersson draws interesting comparisons between decorative motifs of Yang Shao vessels and those from Anau in Russian Turkestan and Tripolje in the Black Sea region; however, the striking similarities between designs decorating prehistoric Mesopotamian pottery and those of early China are of more significance. Beatrice Goff, in her book on symbols of prehistoric Mesopotamia, shows many figures—wavy lines, circles, spirals, triangles, dots, crosses, plants, birds, fish, and weeping human faces—each having exact equivalents in the neolithic ceramics of China. In short, little doubt remains but that the prehistoric pottery culture of China is heavily indebted to the far more ancient civilization of Mesopotamia.

The neolithic Yang Shao pottery culture spanned the millennium from about 2500 B.C. to about 1500 B.C., when Stone Age culture was generally replaced by the bronze culture of the Shang period. In outlying provincial regions such as Kansu, Sinkiang, southern Manchuria, and Yehol, however, prehistoric pottery styles persisted as late as 500 b.c.—long after these had been displaced by more advanced art forms in cultural centers such as Honan, Shensi, and Shansi.

In the earliest phase, 2500 B.C. to about 2200 B.C., the pottery was quite simple, resembling that of prehistoric Europe. Primarily a fine red ware with plain, polished surfaces, some pieces are decorated at the mouth rim with geometric designs in a red of deeper hue. Others have incised or cord-marked patterns. Predominant shapes are bowls with both round bases and flat bases, vases with ring-shaped mouths, and an early form of the tripod-shaped vessels so characteristic of Chinese design in later times. In addition to the red ware, shards of a coarser grey ware have been found.

The middle phase of Yang Shao culture, which Andersson dates from 2200 B.C. to 1700 B.C., climaxed this early civilization with some of the masterpieces of the neolithic potter. Remains from this period have been discovered in Honan, Shansi, Shensi, and Kansu provinces. New sites are currently being discovered. Middle Yang Shao pottery appears to have flourished in these centuries throughout northern China and, at a somewhat later period, in the border regions of Yehol, southern Manchuria, and Sinkiang. Pan-po-ts'un, near Sian, was excavated during the period 1953-55 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has proven the most rewarding of the sites scientifically explored. Some excellent examples of this middle Yang Shao pottery have also been found at Pan-shan in the western province of Kansu.

Middle Yang Shao pottery occurs in a greater variety of shapes— bowls, basins, cups, beakers, pots, jars, jugs, and hollow-legged tripods. The forms are simple and strong. Many are painted with designs in black, red, and brown. The decorative painted designs are, in fact, their most outstanding feature, distinguishing them from neolithic ceramics of other cultures throughout the world. A notable example of the middle Yang Shao artisans' skill is the painted vessel formerly in the Chait collection in New York (Plate 1). This jar, believed to have come from a burial site at Pan-shan in Kansu, has a clean, sturdy shape in light-grey ware tinged with red. Striking decorative patterns create a sense of extraordinary vitality. The brushwork is free and vigorous. The pattern lines are nicely related to the contours of the surfaces.

The many motifs appearing on these ancient vessels are surely symbolic in nature. The symbolism probably expressed concepts of fertility magic. Certainly the wavy lines on the Chait vessel represent water, since the ancient Chinese ideograph for water used the same lines. Since rainfall was a matter of life and death, the primitive artist hoped to produce the actual phenomenon through sympathetic magic by representing it in this manner. The lozenge-shaped forms enclosing the water symbols are another symbolic motif, sometimes said to represent the cowry shell and sometimes the female vulva. These were symbols of the related concepts of abundance and fecundity. The cowry shell was used as money in ancient China and is often found in graves, testifying to the wealth of the deceased. The third element of this design is the cross-hatched background pattern. Since the earliest vessels were made of reeds, this pattern probably represents only the woven surface of the prototype. Interestingly enough, a similar pattern occurs on prehistoric Mesopotamian pottery.

Another symbol commonly occurring on Yang Shao pottery as a main decorative motif is the spiral. Found also in later Chinese art, the spiral is known as the lei wen, or thunder pattern. Again, the character for thunder in archaic Chinese script resembles this spiral. Standing for thunder, storm, clouds, and rain, it also represents fertility.

Other basic, abstract figures used widely and bearing symbolic import in terms of fertility magic are the circle, which was also the early ideograph for the sun ; the triangle, resembling the female pubic region and common in many primitive cultures as a symbol of the Mother Goddess; the square, appearing with a cross inside as the archaic ideograph for a tilled field; and paired dots, thought to sometimes represent the visage of a primitive deity.

A more complex pattern, consisting of red bands flanked by small triangles, has the appearance of rows of teeth. Andersson has termed this the "death pattern," since neolithic vessels bearing this design have been found in China only in burial sites. When examining the elements of the death pattern, one is struck by the consistent use of the color red for this design. Red symbolized blood—hence life—in all primitive societies and usually can be presumed to have symbolic significance. Fertility deities were commonly painted red, and traces of red ochre are often found in burial sites. Red water, representing the essence of life, was believed by primitive man to confer immortality after death. This death pattern, composed of red bands symbolizing immortality and repeated triangles symbolizing fertility, in its linear, parallel arrangement, probably was meant to invoke new life in parallel continuity with the phenomenon of death.

Portrayals of the human figure or those of animals seem to have been comparatively rare in this primitive culture; however, both have occasionally been found in neolithic remains. The most remarkable are a number of pottery idols having human heads and star-shaped bases. Tears streaming down the cheeks indicate that they represent rain deities. Wavy parallel lines, triangles, and lozenges on their bases also suggest a connection with rain and fertility. Human figures having circles for heads, and faces with large eyes have also been found. Among animals represented, snakes, fish, and frogs are the most prevalent. Since, in later Chinese art, all are connected with the concepts of water and fertility, a close relation between these animals and the neolithic dependence upon the harvest can be inferred.

The third and last phase of Yang Shao pottery culture is usually called Ma Ch'ang, after the principal site where remains have been found. Probably representing a culture in transition from ceramic to bronze crafts and proper to the period from about 1700 to 1500 B.C., pottery of this order continued to be produced in Kansu well into historical times. Apparently deriving from the Pan-shan type of middle Yang Shao pottery, the vessels are coarser and the forms and designs are less attractive. The symbols are generally the same but have lost something of the earlier expressive power. Later phases of pottery culture followed this last phase of the Yang Shao, but these are uninteresting as art works. The forms of these wares are weak. The painted designs are carelessly executed and no longer related to surface contours. Certainly by this time the superior bronze culture of the Shang dynasty had displaced neolithic ceramic culture in all but the outlying backward regions.

Less ancient than the Yang Shao painted red ware but also artistically important, a second genre of neolithic pottery was contemporary with the last phase of Yang Shao. Called Lung-shan after the site in Shantung where the first examples were found, it was first thought to be of a purely local culture. In recent years, however, discoveries in Honan and other provinces support the belief that this pottery was made throughout northern China from about 1700 B.C. until the rise of Shang culture around 1500 B.C. This pottery is most commonly a grey ware, sometimes a black ware, decorated with comb marks, incised patterns, or impressed designs instead of painted designs. Among a great variety of shapes, some anticipate those of later Chinese art such as the li tripod, the tsun goblet, the tou fruit stand, and the ting. The silhouettes of Lung-shan vessels are sharper and more linear than those of the Yang Shao. Above all, these wares are more technically advanced, having been formed on the fully developed potter's wheel and fired in a process involving oxidation and reduction.

Especially fine are the black wares. Thin-walled and of a lustrous, jet-black color, these vessels can be very beautiful. Here again, as in the case of the Yang Shao red ware, there are close parallels with a similar black ware made in Iran at an earlier date, around 2000 B.C. in this case.

The grey pottery has been found at the same sites as has the black and even more extensively in northern China. Chêng Tê-k'un has suggested that they represent separate cultures. Others believe the grey to be merely a more common, ordinary form from a single pottery culture.

In either case, these black and grey wares provide a direct transition between late neolithic and historical times in terms of both design and decoration, implying a direct connection between the peoples of the prehistoric and historic eras. Some scholars have equated the Lung-shan culture with the earliest historical Chinese dynasty, the Hsia, which is supposed to have immediately preceded the Shang. But, pending confirmation by further archaeological discovery, this identification can only be speculative, or tentative at best.

Although pottery was the dominant art in prehistoric China, as in other neolithic cultures, other artistic media were widely used: stone, bone, wood, and precious stones such as turquoise and jade. The jade rings, pendants, and ritual implements are most remarkable from both the aesthetic and the technical points of view. Here, again, the continuity of Chinese culture is demonstrated. Jade has continued to play an important role in Chinese art. Used from the earliest times for ritual and ceremonial purposes, it has always been treasured by the Chinese above even silver and gold. Prehistoric jade artifacts, when worked with skill, combine excellent craftsmanship with exquisite design. These, along with the neolithic ceramic masterpieces, reveal the high aesthetic concepts possessed by the Chinese people in primitive times.