This paper reviews the process of exploring the origin of Chinese civilization from the centurial history of Chinese archaeology. Based on the academic research results obtained over the years, combined with major archaeological discoveries, and leveraging the author’s knowledge, it discusses the cultural and social evolution process and achievements in different regions of China during the early, middle, late Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age, as well as how different regional civilizations took shape one after another and developed from diversity to unity. It also highlights the characteristics of Chinese civilization; particularly, from a geographical perspective and by comparing the Chinese and Western civilizations, it briefly demonstrates the historical background and reasons for the continuity, openness, and inclusiveness of Chinese civilization.

The discoveries of the Sanxingdui culture, including the magnificent ancient city, the splendid bronze ware clusters, the original characters, the great art, the grand ritual center, and other material civilizational elements, contain the essential and structural characteristics of the institutional civilization and spiritual civilization of the ancient Shu civilization and reflect the theocratic regime of the Sanxingdui civilization. As a symbol to command the ethnic groups from southwestern China, the ivory sacrificial ritual in the Sanxingdui culture played a significant role. The discoveries of silk residues and silk proteins at Sanxingdui provide important evidence for the historical records of the Shushan Clan and Cancong Clan, as well as the splendid clothing of the Large Standing Bronze Figure at Sanxingdui, and even the relationship between the Sanxingdui culture and the Southern Silk Road.

In the Qing Dynasty, agriculture as the state’s foundation was gaining increasing attention. In the 18th century, the rulers put forward the governance philosophy of “Revering Heaven and Serving Thy People” to meet the need of state governance. Therefore, the Ploughing Ceremony with distinct characteristics of the time was reconstructed to encourage farming and reinforce governance. Rulers of the Qing Dynasty paid special attention to the Ploughing Ceremony and made effort to turn it into a political ceremony with all the people participating so as to establish the image of the saintly emperor and provide values and norms for better operation of the empire. At the same time, in order to solve livelihood problems, rulers of the Qing Dynasty had a craving to the pro-ploughing ritual. Therefore, diligence had become the common ideal and belief during this period, and this provides certain impetus for social and economic development. The Ploughing Ceremony of the Qing Dynasty as an important part of the development of traditional Chinese etiquette culture, helped to shape the national spirit of hard work, and left a deep imprint on the development and continuation of the Chinese civilization.

The centralized system in ancient China originated from patriarchal cooperative agriculture in the pre-national era. The centralized system of government was established in the Xia, Shang, and Zhou “kingship power” era. In the “imperial power” era from the Qin Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, the authoritarian centralized system with imperial power as the core was increasingly strengthened. The evolution from “kingship power” to “imperial power” was an inevitable trend of China’s historical development, and the centralized power system had also been strengthened. As a dominant ideology, the thought of “Great Unity” provided a theoretical cornerstone for the centralized system in ancient China; the centralized system in ancient China provided the institutional guarantee for the official status of the idea of “Great Unity.” The system of centralization has been continuous in Chinese history, perfectly adaptable to Chinese traditional society, and interchangeable with the idea of “Great Unity,” providing an ideological basis and institutional guarantee for the formation, continuation, and development of a unified multi-ethnic country in China. The thought of “Great Unity” and centralization are the common values of the Chinese nation, which can provide useful reference for the current road of modernization.

Sticking to the stand of Chinese culture is the basic premise of promoting cultural self-confidence and self-improvement. Only by thinking rationally about the inheritance, borrow-in, development, and promotion of culture can we grasp the essence of sticking to the stand of Chinese culture. To inherit the traditional culture, we should combine the new practice with the requirements of the times and take its essence while discarding its dross. The key to learning from foreign cultures is to give priority to ourselves and use them for our purposes. We can not swallow it all down and blindly use it. To develop socialist culture, we should, on the one hand, respect the national cultural tradition and on the other hand, constantly innovate and create a new culture. To carry forward Chinese culture, we need to meet the people’s growing spiritual and cultural demands internally and strengthen the influence of the spread of Chinese civilization, promoting Chinese culture to the world.

Rule of virtue and rule of law are institutional tools for maintaining social order. This paper selects typical cases recorded in “Biographies of Honest and Law-Abiding” in the official history and summarizes the practices and experiences of the ancient rulers in implementing the rule of virtue and the rule of law in the practice of governance. The honest and upright officials with the rule of virtue as the foundation aimed to develop the economy, benefit the people and enrich the people, and then teach them and promote ethical indoctrination. However, they did not rely on indoctrination alone, and those who could not be indoctrinated were punished according to law. Punishment was based on indoctrination. Litigation was transformed into a process of indoctrination as much as possible, and the rule of virtue and the rule of law were integrated with the process of litigation. Through indoctrination, the Confucian ideal of “no litigation” was gradually achieved. However, with the development of the commodity economy, social problems became more complex. Some local officials went to great lengths to pursue “zero litigation” in order to flaunt their achievements,which however deviated from the Confucian concept of “benevolent government.”

The continuous growth of regulations in the Qing Dynasty has been documented and explained by voluminous literature. However, this study finds that this literature does not capture the full picture. The upward trend in the number of new regulations in The Great Qing Code is not sustained throughout the entire Qing Dynasty. Additionally, there are differences between various types of new regulations. The growth of regulations mainly occurs before the middle period of the Qianlong reign, but afterwards there is a decline. However, the decline in the growth rate of new regulations and precedents of the central government departments of the bureaucracy is relatively weaker and not as sustained as regulations in The Great Qing Code. With the change in the number, the structure of the regulations has also changed. The importance of “enacting regulations based on cases” increases compared with “enacting regulations based on high rank officers’ suggestions.”The tendency toward “criminalization” in The Great Qing Code is also strengthened. In the meantime, “governing officials” remains the main source of central regulations for The Great Qing Code. Governing officials also shapes the relationship between local government and society, and this provides a bit of room for private regulations to gain legal validity indirectly. This source of legislation increases the adaptability of the governance of the Qing Dynasty.

Unearthed bone hairpins from Yinxu, large in number and varying in type, are both utilitarian and symbolic in function. They were mainly buried with a small number of nobles, most of whom were female. This might demonstrate that the common burial custom at Yinxu was leaving hair untied after death. Buried bone hairpins are indicators of social status. A large number of bone hairpins unearthed from dwelling contexts suggests the Shang people’s preference for them, a continuous tradition since the Xiaqiyuan culture, indicating distinguishable hierarchy. Bone hairpins from Yinxu were necessary for daily life but also prestige goods, indicating differentiation in status, wealth, and hierarchy. Bone hairpins of the Yinxu style were used until the Western Zhou period. However, the rituality and symbolism behind the material gradually disappeared, which can be viewed as a material manifestation of reforms in power and ritual during the Shang and Zhou periods.

This paper attempts to collate archaeological discoveries of jade artifacts in the Central Plains of China at different stages of the prehistoric periods and investigate the jade artifacts’ geographical distributions, types, and employment statuses, to explore the jade employment features, concepts, and developments in the Central Plains. From the Peiligang period to the Longshan period, the jade employment culture in the Central Plains in the prehistoric periods obviously showed a formation process from scratch. The Central Plains was not the place of origin for the jade culture; instead, it was more about accepting external influences, developing its jade employment culture, and enjoying the advantages of a late-comer to develop rapidly. The late-comer advantages and the formation of a historical trend centered on the Central Plains enabled the jade culture to gather, merge, and popularize in the Central Plains in the prehistoric periods. The Central Plains not only served as a transit point for jade artifacts’ continued diffusion northward and westward but also further established jade artifacts as an indispensable factor in the early ritual system civilization and in their inheritance and development throughout historic periods.

Jade silkworms unearthed from the sites of the Hongshan culture reflect that the mulberry silkworms and tussah silkworms were recognized and utilized in the Liaoxi (west Liaohe River) valley from at least 5.5 to 5 thousand years ago. This not only makes the Yan-Liao region (extending from the Yanshan Mountains to the Liaohe River valley), where the west Liaohe River valley is located, become another prehistoric center of silkworm resource utilization besides the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, but also traces the earliest time and the area of the utilization of tussah silkworms in China from Shandong Peninsula in the Han Dynasty to the west Liaohe River valley in the Hongshan period. Meanwhile, the quantitative superiority of jade tussah silkworms implies that wild silkworm resources were still the main source of silk for the Neolithic inhabitants. The understanding and expression means of“taking jade as silkworm” and“turning silkworm into dragon” in the Hongshan culture coincide with those in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, and are a vivid portrayal of the Hongshan culture as a direct root of the Chinese civilization.

The discovery in Yangshao, Mianchi, Henan in 1921 marked the beginning of modern Chinese archaeology. Nowadays, Chinese archaeology has gone through a full 100 years. Through the hard work of generations of archaeologists, Chinese archaeology has achieved sustained growth and development. Chinese archaeology has been advancing for a century and has made great contributions to the construction of Chinese history and culture. Archaeology has important practical significance in contemporary times. Archaeological exploration is not limited to discovering the past, but also lies in the thoughts of gazing at history in the current context. Chinese archaeology in the new era is committed to integrating the spirit of this discipline into cultural construction and social life, so as to learn the new by reviewing the past. After more than 80 years of archaeological exploration, many large tombs of the Liangzhu culture were discovered one after another, mainly including burial of jade, from the 1970s to the end of the 1980s. The ritual jade artifacts such as cong (a long hollow piece of jade with rectangular sides) and bi (jade disk), as well as the differences in the levels of tombs, all reflect the high development of Liangzhu society. The ancient city of Liangzhu was discovered in 2007, and the water conservancy system was confirmed in 2015, pushing the Liangzhu culture to the height of national civilization. In 2019, the Archaeological Ruins of Liangzhu City was listed as a World Heritage site.

Terracotta warriors are an important part of the burial system of the Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum and are the funerary objects of military themes. The appearance of terracotta warriors broke through the architectural structure of burial pits in early tombs, expanded the scale and object of burial, and realized the complicated and hierarchical concept of burial. Its emergence is related to the blending of the pre-Qin tradition and the concepts at that time, such as the change of the concept of human sacrifice, the rise of the burial of figurines, the change of the concept of funerary objects and objects for the living, etc., together with the ruling strategy of the Qin Empire and Emperor Qin Shi Huang himself, which contributed to the formation of terracotta warriors.

Lithic technology, subsistence modes, mobility strategies, and habitation modes in the northern part of Northeast China co-evolved during the Paleolithic-Neolithic transitional period, from the end of the Pleistocene through the beginning of the Holocene, exhibiting notable continuity and the phases of development. The investigation of climate, environment, population, technology, subsistence, and mobility is helpful in understanding environmental adaptation strategies and reconstructing cultural adaptation processes. The study of paleoclimatic records in this region indicates that remarkable climatic turbulence during the late Pleistocene, alongside extreme fluctuations in temperature and humidity, significantly influenced human technological systems and behavior.

Since about 8,000 years ago in China, humans started to hold ceremonies to offer sacrifices to heaven and reverence for heaven at low-lying terraced landscapes or on circular mounds on the hilltops. Typical archaeological features and remains of such activities can be noticed at the Gaomiao, Niuheliang, and Lingjiatan sites, indicating that a somewhat complex cosmology and definite concept of reverence for heaven and acts of offering sacrifices to heaven had well begun in the Yangtze River, Yellow River, and west Liaohe River valleys in the Neolithic Age, which continued, with succession, integration, and development, through the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, and even into the the whole ancient China after the Qin and Han dynasties. The concept of reverene for heaven co-evolved with ancient astronomy, which had far-reaching influences on the political system, philosophical thinking, science and technology of acient China. Like the veneration of the dead, it has become the core cultural gene of the Chinese nation.

Filial piety was regarded by the Han government as the basis of its rule. It respected the elderly people and took care of them. Besides, it issued several decrees on the old-age support and established the old-age support system to care for the well-being of the elderly people. Based on the age of the elderly, the old-age support system of the Han Dynasty provided them with various benefits, such as granting them the privileged canes, awarding them millets, decreasing their off-springs’ taxes and corvee, or exempting them from these things. The newly published bamboo slip on old-age support in the Han bamboo slips of Xuanquan vividly reflects the old-age support system of the Han Dynasty. These bamboo slips clearly record the various preferential treatments enjoyed by elderly people of different age groups, which gives us a clearer understanding of age stratification in the old-age support system of the Han dynasty. During the period of the two Han dynasties, there was a gradual change in the old-age support policy of the Han Government. The old-age support bamboo slips were produced during the reign of Emperor Cheng of Western Han and the preferential treatment for the elderly people recorded in these bamboo slips is a reflection of the old-age support system of the late Western Han Dynasty.

This paper focuses on the iron smelting industry from the Han Dynasty to the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties, uses modern industrial theories to highlight the process of the development of the iron smelting industry, summarizes the characteristics of the transformation of production mode, and analyzes the impact of the transformation of production mode on the change of state governance. In ancient times, China’s iron smelting industry chose the technical path of pig iron smelting and casting. Based on the mature and developed pig iron smelting and casting technology, it shifted to a production mode based on steel forging from the late Eastern Han Dynasty to the Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties. The transformation caused changes like decentralization and localization in state governance at three levels: central government policies, iron smelting production organization, and the behaviors of grassroots individuals and social communities.

In the local administrative procedures of the Ming Dynasty, very commonly submitted documents included those co-signed by a number of village leaders, local students, and gentry representatives. Such a way of document submission in the early and middle Ming Dynasty was known as the co-signed document submission, and then, as of the end of the Ming Dynasty, mostly, the public document submission. Starting from the middle Ming Dynasty, there were some document submissions signed as “whole school” or “whole county.” These submissions are not only an important means of reflecting the expectations of the local community to the government, but also an important basis for local officials to report on local affairs to the higher authorities. By the end of the Ming Dynasty, the status of the public document submission was increasingly prominent, and its application rules also tended to mature. For some local affairs, the public document submission of a specific group, as an evidence of the expectation of the local community, became the necessary documentary reference for the government’s decision-making.

For a long time, scholars viewed the relationship between virtue and law from the perspective of dichotomy, or viewed the nature of ancient Chinese “law is punishment.” Based on the proposition that virtue and law complement and harmonize with each other by pre-Qin Confucians, contemporary scholars propose the integration of virtue and law and the concept of “virtuous rule of law.” From the perspective of historical development, law is a governance tool adapted to the complexity of society and the need to enrich the country and strengthen the army. From the logic of the development of political thoughts, law is a proposition to realize “impartiality” and oppose “partiality,” which has the spiritual essence of universality, objectivity, and impartiality. According to Xunzi, law is a system of love based on justice and principles; ritual rules have not only the function of social norms, but also the function of moral education. The aim of law, established, deliberated, and practiced by persons of character, is to achieve a kingly virtue-centered society full of rite, music, justice, order, harmony, and happiness. In Xunzi’s political philosophy, the idea of “virtuous rule of law” is finally realized.

Attaching importance to people’s livelihood is not only an important measure for rulers to consolidate their power, but also a concrete expression of Confucianism’s people-oriented thinking in state governance. Based on his own experience and his understanding of social relations in the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, regarded the people at the bottom as the “foundation of the state,” and his concern for people’s livelihood became an important part of his governance. The development of China’s unified multi-ethnic state, including the Ming Dynasty, has repeatedly shown one fact: between success and failure, there are only two words—people’s livelihood.

Harappa and Erlitou are representative sites of the Indus and early Chinese civilizations respectively. With different geographical environments, the two regions took different paths to civilization. The Indus civilization established early“city-states” based on regional groups. Under the influence of the loose power structure of the“city-states,” the Harappan culture formed an open economic system that was market-oriented. Foreign trade was prosperous and played an important role in its economy. The early Chinese civilization established a wide-area kingship state. Under the influence of the pyramidal power structure, the economic system of the Erlitou culture was dominated by the state and served the ruling class. Foreign trade accounted for a low proportion of its economy. Differences between the two sites are the epitome of those between the development patterns of the two early civilizations and have important research value.

This paper conducts a thorough investigation into the graves dating from the early Western Zhou to the middle Spring and Autumn period where fish-shaped coffin ornaments were unearthed, summarizes the characteristics of these fish-shaped coffin ornaments in terms of shapes and regions, and discusses the relationship between the distribution of the string coffin ornaments in the graves and the age of the graves and the status of the grave owners. The development of the string coffin ornaments including the fish-shaped ones is divided into three major stages in this paper, namely the period from the early period of the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the early period of the late Western Zhou Dynasty, the period from the late period of the late Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle Spring and Autumn period, and the period after the middle Spring and Autumn.

The use of ding-tripod in Chu tombs was well established in the Warring States period and in most cases, it was strictly implemented. However, exceptions do exist. For example, in tomb of Marquis Yi of the Zeng state, archaeologists found two qiao-ding, which consists of two ding- tripods, one with a fitted lid and the other with a hooped lid. In the tomb No. 1 at Jiuliandun, a ding-tripod with a hooped lid was intentionally used and served as xu-ding. This paper attempts to understand burial rituals of the Chu state during the Warring State period by examining the tomb inventories (catalogues of funerary goods in the tombs) unearthed from the tomb No. 2 at Baoshan. It proposes that the use of ding-tripod in tombs was often adjusted according to the burial rituals.

Nihewan and Zhoukoudian are important areas where early humans and cultures originated and reproduced in northern China and even East Asia. Geologically, both site groups belong to the Haihe River valley; chronologically, the Nihewan sites date to ca. 1.7 million years ago, and the Zhoukoudian sites date to ca. 0.5 million years ago; and culturally, both are dominated by the small-flake-tool culture. Thus, it is speculated that the early culture in the Zhoukoudian sites came from the migrants from the Nihewan Basin who facilitated cultural diffusion in the area; in turn, it also affected the culture in the Nihewan area during the subsequent development. This paper proposes the development path of the Paleolithic culture in northern China, that is, early humans in this region roughly experienced three stages of subsistence from lake-dependent to cave-dependent and then to river-dependent.

The system of Three Courts and Five Gates is an essential content of the designs of the capitals and palaces of ancient China. The Three Courts and Five Gates planning of the Daming Palace is the adoption of this rule and the application to the spatial designing of the palace city. The archaeological fieldwork revealed that within the Daming Palace, the Three Courts pattern with three walls as the borders, and Hanyuan Hall, Xuanzheng Hall, and Zichen Hall as the centers formed the outer court, middle court, and inner court plan, which was the embodiment of the new interpretation of the Tang Dynasty to the traditional Three Courts and Five Gates ritual system. Through the trimming of the archaeological data fetched in the past 60 years about the southern part, which is the official affair zone, of the Daming Palace, this paper discusses the spatial structure of the Three Courts and Five Gates pattern of the Daming Palace, and analyzes the substantial relationship between this pattern and the political demands of the ruling class.

Chinese civilization has unique characteristics in the world civilization history. Its most prominent characteristic is the continuity of the “5,000-year” civilization. Over 5,000 years ago, different civilizations appeared in different regions of China and the civilizations mainly included their different early-stage theocracy and reign modes. Among these civilizations, the civilization that was handed on from generation to generation was the states with a reign mode that originated in the Longshan culture of Central China and its successors such as the Xia Dynasty, the Shang Dynasty, the Zhou Dynasty, the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty. This can be illustrated by the 5,000-year continuous inheritance of the country, people, and territory of China, proved by the 5,000-year inheritance and development of capitals, royal tombs, ritual and ceremonial buildings and vessels, and characters as the national culture (or major tradition) and resurrected by the capital’s centralization,“OneGate Three-Passage” pattern,“centralization of the main hall of the court” and the“Left Ancestral Temple and Right Altar” pattern, and the central axis of the capital, the four doors on four sides of the capital and court, etc. as the materialized forms of the core ideas of center and moderation. These materialized forms of the unbroken civilization became more and more in the past 5,000 years, which indicates that the ideas of center and moderation became stronger and stronger and were constantly deepened. The ideological roots of the 5,000-year unbroken Chinese civilization are the ideas of center and moderation, which are the ideological basis for the state identity and the core value of the Chinese national history.

With the society moving from decentralization to a whole and the strengthening of centralization, the state gradually enhanced the involvement in rural community. At the same time, the management of people-land relationship tended to be refined. The original Xiang-Li system, which was suitable to decentralized community, was no longer needed by the state, and would be inevitably replaced by smaller rural organizations that were suitable to centralized community. In this context, the Du-Bao system emerged as the times required. During this process, the combination of the Bao-Jia system, territory division, and mapping technique played a key role in pushing forward the refinement management of people-land relationship. From the Xiang-Li system to the Du-Bao system, from rural officials to rural servants, when rural power was transferred to the government, more new rural authority systems that embodied the state will replaced the traditional rural authority system. There was a lack of obvious dominant class such as aristocratic families and gentry representatives in rural community in the Song Dynasty. Such a unique era provided an excellent opportunity for the state forces to go deep into and change rural community. For this reason, thestate authority upon rural areas in the Song Dynasty exceeded the Han and Tang dynasties, and even the subsequent Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.

The fable in the “Outer Congeries of Sayings: The Upper Right Series” of Han Feizi about the public welfare competition between Duke Jing of Qi and his imperial clan members and powerful officials contains the concept that people can choose their rulers through peaceful means. In other words, those who desire to gain ruling power would compete in public welfare and win by obtaining greater support from the people. This concept is significantly different from the Changing of the Mandate of Heaven in the Ages of Tang and Wu and other claims that rely on violent actions to implement people’s will. Although Han Fei opposed this concept, it provides a unique design or imagination of implementing the “popular opinion theory” during the pre-Qin period (before 221 BC). The views on the public opinion theory in early texts such as the Book of Documents and the Confucian and Mencian schools of thought may be regarded as the basis or source of the aforementioned design. This design is rooted in social conditions such as the traditional system of enfeoffment (fenfeng) and the traditional military system of integrating the army and people (bing min heyi) in the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) but declined with the transformation of the social structure during the period of Warring States (403-221BCE) and Qin (221-206 BCE) and Han (206 BCE-220) dynasties, and was almost forgotten. From this perspective, the early public opinion theories, including the fable of public welfare, were not initially some kind of pedantic utopianism.