Study on the Rock Art at the Yin Mountains

As an ancient cultural relic, rock art is distributed all over the world. The ancestors recorded their social life and economic activities through rock art to express their understanding and knowledge of the world. Therefore, the study of rock art allows us to understand the early history and culture, religious beliefs and other aspects of the mankind. Rock art have become a direct basis for reproducing human history and thought.

Since ancient times, the Yinshan region has become a vast arena for ethnic groups in northern China to fight and merge because of its important geographical and strategic positions. Meanwhile, as the center and cradle of life for all ethnic groups in the north, the region has nurtured rich historical and cultural relics. Yinshan rock art is a unique historical and cultural relic created by the hunters and herdsmen in ancient northern China. From the late 1970s to the present, a large number of Yinshan rock art have been discovered and published in the world. This book collects 2,842 rock art in the Yinshan region that can be used as research materials, systematically sorts and classifies them, summarizes the distribution characteristics of rock art in each area and the distribution and evolution rules of main rock engraving types, and attempts to carry out stage research and chronological discussion. Moreover, Yinshan rock art is analyzed within the overall framework of Chinese rock art, so that we can have a more comprehensive understanding of the overall characteristics and status of Yinshan rock art, and on this basis, the basic framework of the type distribution and chronological sequence of Yinshan rock art is preliminarily established.