Inner Mongolia Boar-dragon Jade

The largest and most vivid discovery is a jade boar-head dragon about 26 centimeters long and bent like the letter "C." It has a snake‘s body and a boar‘s head with a tight-lipped snout and bulging eyes. The relics found at Hongshan have led archeologists to conclude that the heads of Chinese dragons may have been inspired by boars in addition to horses and cattle.

Primitive people who struggled to survive by fishing and hunting developed the tradition of dragon worship. They revered important food sources such as pigs, deer, birds and snakes, said Tian Guanglin, an archeologist with Liaoning Normal University.

The dragon image coalesced into animal-head and snake-body in the Hongshan cultural period and remained unchanged until the Han dynasty, nearly 4,000 years later. Dragon images from Hongshan are the earliest standard image of dragons discovered in China.