Neolithic pottery urn records owner’s heroic deed through painting

Yangshao culture was a Neolithic culture, which advocated urn coffins. Here is a red, cylindrical pottery urn painted with a standing white stork holding a white fish in its beak. A zax is painted to the right of the stork. Some scholars hold that the painting is the rudiment of traditional Chinese painting.

Meanwhile, the urn is believed to be a burial item of a clan leader. The stork is the totem of the leader’s clan and the fish is the totem of an opposing clan. The zax symbolizes the leader’s power. Such painting metaphorically records the leader’s heroic deed.

Excavated from Yancun village in Ruzhou, Henan province, in 1978, the pottery urn is in the permanent collection of the National Museum of China.