Prehistoric Chinese religions are religious beliefs and practices of prehistoric peoples in China prior to the earliest intelligible writings in the region (). They most prominently comprise spiritual traditions of Neolithic and early Bronze Age cultures in various regions of China, which preceded the ancient religions documented during early Chinese dynasties. While many of these cultures shared similar faith and practices, each developed distinct features in its religious life. Modern studies of these religions are obstructed by the absence of contemporary written records.
Neolithic cultures in China appeared in various regions across the country. An early culture was the Peiligang (5000 BCE), of which the Jiahu site was regarded as a prominent variation. Around the fifth millennium BCE, many cultures such as Yangshao appeared and left behind various sites that allow investigations into their religious life. During the fourth and third millennia BCE, the Liangzhu culture flourished in the Yangtze River valley, while the Yellow River valley saw the development of cultures such as Dawenkou, Longshan, and Hongshan. These cultures are characterized by extensive traditions which indicate beliefs reminiscent of the posterior religion of the Shang dynasty (1046 BCE).
Around the late third and early second millennia BCE, Bronze Age sites emerged in China. Sites such as Erlitou entered a more advanced sociopolitical system and approached the definition of a state. As social stratification was increasingly integrated, evidences for ancestor worship appeared more clearly. The Erlitou site is widely regarded among Chinese academics as the site of the Xia dynasty which upheld traditional Chinese religion, despite inadequate evidence for the conflation. Abundant evidence for human sacrificial rituals also appeared during the early Bronze Age in China.
Many religious beliefs and practices of prehistoric China are claimed to be precursors of the Shang religion, which in turn influenced Chinese civilization. Certain traits such as animism, ancestor veneration and pyromancy characteristic of the Shang are found to be existent during the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Some practices, particularly ancestor worship, were among the prehistoric traditions that influenced modern Chinese life.
Overview of Chinese prehistory
Several Paleolithic sites in China have been dated to as early as 1.66 million years ago, with the existence of early humans such as the Peking Man, a Homo erectus that lived approximately 770 thousand years before present. The earliest examples of religion might have appeared during the Chinese Paleolithic, based on evidence collected at the Zhoukoudian site which has been interpreted as a sign for ritual cannibalism. However, later analysis has challenged that belief.
Modern studies
The traditional Chinese viewed the cultural formation of China as a continuous expansion of civilization from the Central Plain to the frontier areas regarded as 'barbarian' lands. This view resulted from traditional Chinese historiography which represented unitary political states. The location of the early Yangshao culture, discovered in 1921 by Johan G. Andersson, used to be thought of as evidence for this observation.
Modern studies of the Chinese past were influenced by various schools of thought, such as Marxist historiography in China and universal social evolution in the West. Some scholars applied the theory of human evolution from tribes to chiefdoms and states, identifying certain cultures in China as having social organizations falling within these categories. In the 1970s, a more complex view put the traditional cradle of Chinese civilization on equal grounds with many other regions regarding contribution to early China's formation. Although the theory formed independently, it bears strong similarities to new Western contemporary theories of social development, and thus received support from the West.
Neolithic cultures
By its definition as the involvement of agriculture in society, the Neolithic period in China began at different times in the many regions. The cultivation of rice in southern China used to be theorized to have begun around 5000 BCE, but more recent research has put the starting date back to as early as 7500 BCE; some examples of rice farming in the Yangtze River valley were even dated to 8000 years ago. In Jiangxi, evidences suggest that even during 10000 BCE the site of Diaotonghuan had already been transitioning from a wild rice gathering society to a rice farming one. Southern China was also known for early pottery-making, which appeared around the 12th millennium BCE.
Agriculture in China seems to have begun at the same time as pottery production and sedentary life, a distinction from several other regions. Most evidences, including both genetic and zooarchaeological data, indicate that cattle husbandry was introduced to China only during the late Neolithic, around 3600 to 2000 BCE. The earliest examples of cattle come from the regions of Gansu and Qinghai.
Neolithic cultures in the region may be divided into two large complexes, the Northwest (or Northcentral) and the East Coast. Cultures in these two complexes interacted with one another, and together they influenced the formation of Shang culture in the second millennium BCE.
The Peiligang () and Cishan (; 65005000 BCE) cultures are regarded as the first established agricultural peoples in China. At this period, settlements were usually of modest sizes and characterized by rudimentary structures. Peiligang and Cishan pottery were usually simple bowls and jars with little surface refinement. The remains of these two cultures suggest the established status of sedentary life and the use of millet as the main cultivating crop. One of the most prominent Peiligang site is Jiahu, with an extraordinary area covering 5.5 ha. Despite Peiligang being a millet farming culture, excavations at Jiahu have yielded examples of rice, suggesting an alternative food strategy. Isolated graphs were also found at this site.
Contemporary cultures of Peiligang and Cishan include Dadiwan, Luoguantai, and Lijiacun or Baijia, which belonged to the Northwest. Agriculture of these cultures might have originated from northern Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. The Houli culture in Shandong (5500 BCE) shared similar characteristics, but traces of millet agriculture have yet to be found here.
The Yangshao culture (50003000 BCE) has its type-sites located in Shaanxi, Shanxi and Henan. Yangshao sites until the 1990s numbered up to over 800, with each typically consisting of a residential area, a cemetery and kilns. These sites together with local types in the extended Yangshao area were divided into three phases. Some Yangshao societies, such as a village site named Jiangzhai, are considered matrilineal. Yangshao sites show signs of political-economic domination, and some academics have proposed that the culture its late phase more resembled a 'chiefdom' rather than a 'segmentary lineage system' as previously theorized.
East Coast cultures emerged together with Yangshao, albeit with distinct material culture. The Dawenkou culture arose in the Shandong region since 4300 BCE and lasted until the middle third millennium BCE. The early Dawenkou was an egalitarian tribal society with little evidence of prestige goods or burial differentiations. Social ranks appeared in this culture during its middle phase (2900 BCE), and by the late phase it had been characterized by hierarchically ordered social groups. Dawenkou maintained interactions with Yangshao, demonstrated by similarities among their ceramics.
Another contemporary culture named Hongshan flourished around the Liao River from 4000 to 2500 BCE. Hongshan settlements were partially allied with Yangshao, although walls and complex residences seen in the Yangshao sites are unknown in Hongshan settlements. The end of Yangshao coincides with the emergence of the Liangzhu culture in the Yangtze River valley approximately 5000 years ago. Liangzhu sites exhibit traits of an advanced society such as city walls, class stratification, labor division and extensive dam systems. The remarkable production and ritual use of jades were another two characterizing traits of Liangzhu peoples, with the number of jades reaching tens of thousands.
The middle Yangtze in South China was also inhabited by peoples of various cultures contemporary with those of the East Coast. Prominent examples include the Daxi (3000 BCE), Qujialing (3000 BCE), and Shijiahe. They featured their own characteristics but also combined cultural traits from both eastern and western regions, as indicated by their artifacts.
Further regional differentiation during the late Neolithic was highlighted by the Longshan culture which spanned over the entire third millennium BCE. Social integration was further intensified and hierarchies emerged in Longshan sites, together with rammed earth walls that define a more sophisticated social system than Yangshao. The largest Longshan site was found in modern Taosi (Shanxi province) which is characterized by extensive elite control and a solar observatory considered among the world's oldest. The Taosi observatory was possibly used by astronomers to produce a ritual calendar that may have been an ancestor of the late Shang religious calendrical system. As a Longshan type-site, Taosi was also an extremely stratified society, where only one tenth of its population might have controlled up to 90% of total wealth.
Far from Yangshao, Longshan and Liangzhu, Sichuan province was also a region of prominent Neolithic cultures. The late Neolithic Baodun culture flourished in the Chengdu plain before ending around 1700 BCE. Other significant sites in the Chengdu plain include Yingpanshan (2600 BCE) and Gaoshan (2000 BCE) which housed elaborate residential and utilitarian complexes.
Early Bronze Age cultures
The Chinese Bronze Age commenced around 2000 BCE. Bronze Age cultures inherited religious traditions of the Neolithic, with various identical practices ranging from iconography to burial patterns. The emergence of early states in the region correlated with the increasing prevalence of public religious activities.
The beginning of the second millennium BCE was marked by the rise of state formation in China with the emergence of the Erlitou culture, which descended from the previous Longshan culture and was heavily influenced by Longshan cultural characteristics. Erlitou opened a new period different from the previous Neolithic peoples in that it had a strong presence of royal authority, an enlarged political apparatus and extensive military powers. Lasting from 1500 BCE, Erlitou can be described as the first proper Bronze Age state in China, with its sites featuring not only small bronze objects but also items of much larger size and higher technological complexity.
Erlitou elites were able to exercise authority over source supply and transportation within a considerable area, in addition to their control over up to 30,000 urban residents. Most scholars in China and some among the Western academia consider Erlitou to be the material culture of the Xia, the first traditional dynasty of China that allegedly existed at the same time as Erlitou itself. No evidence, however, is enough to either confirm the identification or reject it.
To the west of Erlitou was the Qijia culture, whose excavation sites are located in the Loess Plateau, Hexi Corridor and even as far as eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. It marked Northwest China's transition from late Neolithic to early and middle Bronze Age. All Qijia sites show signs of a sedentary lifestyle with a mix of agricultural and pastoral production. Their bronzes include daggers, axes, rings, and mirrors.