Hongshanren 红山人 - An Asia Youth Media Website

farm implements

summary drawing of variety of stone implements

Above: jade hand axe, seems too precious for actual use in tree cutting or butchery

Left: assortment of implements, some looking rather lethal so perhaps better placed in the Weapons section

Below: grind stone for breaking grains and plough

weapons

Hongshan, with no city walls and other fortification, was not highly militarized, and its tombs rarely have weapons as burial ornaments; the lethal objects found in residential sites seem to be for hunting and other household cutting/piecing needs

unearthed blades of various types in situ

others in display cases

Above: exquisite axe blade that can be tied to a wooden handle for use as weapon or tool

Left: nothing exquisite here - deadly looking spear head

Below: very down to earth version of axe, with signs of actual use

jade working tools

no actual jade worshops and tools have been found in the numerous Hongshan residential and burial sites; it is likely that quartz and harder stone fragments, mounted on wooden handles, were used to carve and shape jade, sand was used as a polishing medium, and thin threads pulled back and forth rubbing sand on jade were used to cut jade blocks into individual pieces, the same methods used for thousands of years till power tools became available in the modern age to work jade; thin wooden sticks, and bamboo or possibly metal tubes, dipped in sand and turned by pulling back and forth thin ropes coiled around them, maybe with the string mounted on a bow, were probably used to drill small and large holes, again the same methods used for centuries later

more controversial was the issue whether Hongshan craftsmen used a cutting disk, a spinning disk with a sharp edge, mounted on a handle pulled back and forth using coiled rope like the hole drilling tools; some archaelogists believe Hongshan preceded the age of metal, while others were less sure, but the following photos ought to establish the use of spinning disks clearly:

a groove made by a spinning disk is inevitably thicker in the middle and thinner at the ends; further, the line it makes can only be individually straight, so making a curve requires its formation in multiple sections; both signs are clearly visible on this Niuheliang collected pig dragon on the left and the item below

more pig dragons with the same signs

also on other types of jade objects

another type of groove appears on various objects

Above: a detail from the "large cloud object" unearthed in a Niuheliang tomb (you can see its whole form in one of the diagrams in the Jade page, cloud form section); the same kind of multiple grooves also appear in the several "arm shield" objects unearthed in the burial complex

Left: this somewhat mysterious object also has multiple wide grooves; like the last bird item shown on the Jade page, it shows some Shang style decorative motif, but the large round eyes seem to relate to those of the pig dragon, and the Y-shaped jade objects (none shown here) that made occasional appearances in the collections

Below: a photo illustrating the process of wide groove formation: a small spinning disk at right angle to the direction of the groove is slid along the line producing a characteristic "jumpy" appearance, with subsequent use of fine sand smoothening out the surface in the earlier two items