The so-called “painted pottery”came into being when our ancestors were entering the Neolithic Age and began living on primitive crop farming and livestock breeding after giving up a life on hunting and collection of eatable seeds and plants. In plain language, “painted pottery” is the collective reference to Neolithic pottery utensils with decorative patterns painted on their surfaces before their bodies were baked in fire to become hard. Colors of the patterns painted on pottery utensils were not to fade after the firing process.
    “Painted pottery cultures,” so to speak, are found to have existed in numerous places in the world as evidence to wisdom of the prehistory human being and progress of human history from the Paleolithic Age into the Neolithic Age. The painted pottery culture found in areas along the upper and middle reaches of China’s Yellow River, however, is recognized as among the most brilliant. In particular, the Dadiwan culture that existed about 8,000 years ago is one of the oldest.
    Dadiwan, a small, outlying village in Qin’an County in east Gansu Province, would have remained anonymous forever but for the discovery in the area of some prehistory pottery utensils bearing decorative patterns. The discovery has led to the belief that the area could be a habitat of the earliest Chinese.
    The Dadiwan culture has numerous dismembered branches that existed in areas down the Yellow River. One of these is known as the Yangshao culture which, verified as in existence some 6,000-5,000 years ago, was discovered for the first time in 1921 in Yangshao Village in the central China province of Henan.
    Scientists believe that the Yangshao culture came as a result of the development of the Dadiwan culture. The Yangshao culture can be divided into several types. Painted pottery utensils unearthed from Banpo up the Yellow River in Shaanxi Province are a collective representative of the Yangshao culture in the early stage of its development. Most decorative patterns on such utensils are done in black while the background is red, and they resemble animals and human faces or in geometric forms that are done with straight lines.