Soundbites

From the point of view of science and research, Hongshan culture is indeed an important part of what could be called the "World Heritage of Humanity".

It has significance not only for later Chinese cultural history but also for our knowledge of the cultural and social development of humanity itself.

The complexity of Hongshan communities relates to very different phenomena of human activity and early human society.

Hongshan culture itself appears as a complex of local communities scattered over a large area and sparsely populated. The basic idea behind the complexity here is "communication" in its spatial and temporal extension. Communication also seems to play an important role behind social stratification and labor coordination.

What we see in the artifacts and relics of Hongshan culture is not only symbolic nature inherent in communicative activities, but an elaborate complex of symbolic power attributed to it, so that it becomes the basis of social organization.

The relics of Hongshan culture reflect how a human community thinks of itself and how self-consciousness is expressed in the symbolic language of ritual artifacts and activities.

Both the communicative and the symbolic aspects make complexity a trajectory of human civilization. And yet, behind complexity as a motor and sign of human civilization and development, there is also the doubt of a power purely based on symbols. Human action should be bound in some way to natural processes and conditions to ensure that it can thrive and be beneficial to humanity over time.