The Liangzhu culture, dated to 3310 – 2250 B.C., is a late Neolithic culture located in Southeast China. Well known for its high quality jade artifacts, it succeeded the Majiabang culture and later became part of the Shang Dynasty. The Liangzhu culture is contemporary in timeline with the Longshan and Hongshan cultures to the north.  Many of the Liangzhu jade artifacts demonstrate a sophistication that was comparable in quality and mysticism to the Hongshan. In fact there is evidence of an overlap period of cultural conquest by the Liangzhu over the Hongshan.  Perhaps the most famous motif of the Liangzhu is the Tao Tai (Dragon demon face).

In 1936, Mr. Shi Xigeng discovered a late New Stone Age site around Liangzhu Town,Yuhang District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang. This was a most significant discovery as it uncovered a highly evolved civilization that had been lost in time.  In 1959, the Chinese archeologists who were working on these ancient sites named this ancient civilization the Liangzhu Culture.

Current discoveries reveal that the Liangzhu culture consists of over 100 sites, of which 30 have been excavated, residing south and east of Lake Tai on a peninsula formed by the Yangzi River and Hangzhou Bay. This peninsula, named Tai Hu Bandao, has played an important role in China throughout its history. Shanghai lies on the east seashore and to the southwest, the city of Hangzhou was the capitol of several dynasties in China’s past. Hangzhou was a small town during the Chalcolithic Liangzhu culture and was originally named “Liangzhu”.

Jade ritual and art object are the typical of Liangzhu Culture. So far, there are over 61 known different types of Liangzhu Culture Jades in various shapes and forms. During the Qing Dynasty, Emperor Qianlong had his servants and subjects collect jade and jade decorations of past dynasties to treasure his palace. The ancient jades from the Liangzhu culture were his most desired prizes. It is recorded in "Jade Collection" by Xu Shouji during Guangxu Period, that old jade unearthed around Liangzhu-An'xi area has been famous far and near and highly valued by generations.

The ancient Liangzhu economy was an agricultural based slave society. Unlike earlier Neolithic cultures of China who cultivated millet the Liangzhu cultivate rice in the lower Yangzi River valley area. By the third millennium BCE, farming had reached a highly advanced stage with the development of sophisticated tools and irrigation terracing techniques. Animal husbandry had also become highly advanced with the domestication of the Pig and the duck. Hunting and gathering was still a part of the social fiber but played a much less role on the dependency of a subsistence economy as earlier Neolithic cultures had. The abundance of food and the emergence of social stratification and a ruling class who raised armies provided the surpluses necessary for a large handicraft industry of jade workers to emerge.

The Liangzhu culture shows evidence of a very pronounced social structure, a reckless consumption of labor, extensive human sacrifice, and the iconography of power. These were people who created some of the finest jade works the world has every seen. In addition they also very highly advanced in the arts and sciences of metallurgy (gold works) and the making black-based and black-burnished pottery. It is also an established fact that their knowledge of mathematics was highly developed.

My research indicates (based on artifact evidence and 30 years of study) that the Liangzhu employed advanced optical technologies (magnification glass) to create many of their fine detailed jade works. The use of diamond tipped scribes and very likely bronze and iron (meteorite sourced) tools were also employed. The Liangzhu were Slab tomb builders that fortunately preserved their ancient jade and pottery artifacts. The Liangzhu jades that have been found in these ancient tombs have two prominent kinds of jades that were for ritual and mystical use. These are called Bi (pronounced B) and Tsung (pronounced Cong) jades. The Bi is a circular ring used to speak to and worship heaven, and the Tsung (Cong) is an elongated square tube used to worship Heaven and earth (Chi energy).

Recent finds from dwelling sites at Jiangsu province, suggest that the Liangzhu people concentrated their residences and townships on riverbanks, where there was easy access to water for agricultural and domestic usage, as well as for transportation needs. The houses were semi-subterranean, with pounded earth floors and straw-thatched roofs raised on wooden posts. Often a pig pen was built adjacent to such dwellings.

Since the 1970s, archeologist have excavated hundreds of Liangzhu burial sites ranging from small individual graves to very large and lavish furnished tombs. The most extravagant tombs   indicate a social elite and a very sophisticated society where Jade Objects were a cultural and spiritual centerpiece for the living and the dead. The sources of Liangzhu jade nephrite raw material is unknown and it is believed the demand for jade exhausted the possible sources that may have existed in China at the time of the Liangzhu.

Liangzhu jade artifacts are very rare and currently I am selling my 30-year collection of authentic Liangzhu Jade Objects at auction. If you are interested in placing in your hands some of the most amazing and mystically ancient Jade artifacts from the time of the Liangzhu then please click on the link below while I still have possess these ancient treasures.