Sculpting a civilization

About 4,000 years ago, during the late Neolithic period, a group of people sculpted vivid animals, sophisticated portraits of deities, figurines and divine birds — all from pieces of jade as tiny as a fingernail.

How these prehistoric people produced such intricate jadeware at a time when tools were mostly made from stone is not yet known, but the jade culture of the time reveals not only the highest levels of craftsmanship, but also the development of a glamorous civilization in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River.

The ongoing exhibition, Mythological Jade of Shijiahe Culture, at Panlongcheng Site Museum in Wuhan, central China's Hubei province, offers visitors a rare chance to get a close and full view of jade pieces from a prehistoric civilization that lived around from 5,900 to 3,800 years ago.

On display are 172 sets of jade artifacts and related cultural relics loaned from 21 key museums and cultural institutions across the nation. While the jade pieces are mainly those unearthed at the Shijiahe site in Tianmen, Hubei province, the exhibition also presents relics from southwest China's Sanxingdui culture, east China's Liangzhu culture and Longshan culture from the Yellow River.