The Research On China's Neolithic Period Sacrificial Altar

China is the important place of the East Asian civilization origin, also is the world civilization important constituent. Therefore, to explore the origin and the formation of Chinese civilization have world significance. The Neolithic period,specially the Neolithic later period is being in the eve of the civilization, which period is particularly important in the exploration of the civilization origin. As the symbols of entering the civilized stage, such as writing, bronze, cities, ritual structures and other factors have been more and more accepted by the scholars. The first three categories of archaeological materials are rich and the study is also more fully ,but ritual structures are relatively weak. In recent years ritual structures are unceasingly excavated, especially the sacrificial altar, which arouses the academic circles' attention and plays a gradually prominent role in the exploration project.The paper is based on China's Neolithic period sacrificial altar, which conducts the summary research in order to make up the academic circles in this aspect insufficiency and offer a few ordinary introductory remarks so that others may obtain their valuable ideas. This paper launches the elaboration from following three parts:Partâ… , sacrificial altar origin and evolution. First, It begins with two Chinese characters of "TAN"and "JI",shows that the sacrifice is the essence of the sacrificial altar;Secondly, from the primitive religious perspective to explore the origin of the sacrificial altar,l think the sacrificial altar originated in primitive religion sacrificial offering activities; Finally,the paper clears off the evolution and the characteristic of various culture sacrificial altars, the key point is to introduce the Hongshang Culture sacrificial altar and the Liangzhu Culture sacrificial altar,because the materials of these two sacrificial altars are richest, in seeking the origin in the research to be also most typical.Partâ…¡, the character and function of sacrificial altar. This paper analyzes the sacrificial altar construction and the sacrificial offering phenomenon, cites the ancient documents and the ethnology materials, thinks the sacrificial altar has the function of offering sacrifices to gods of the Sky snd the Earth ,and discusses the reason.Then, this paper discusses the relation of the sacrificial altar and the graves in order to prove both close relation, the grave masters possibly are the witches and wizardes in the sacrificial altar ,who are engaged in the sacrificial offering activities, are often the same general set of divine right, ethnic, political even military power as one, bury in the graves and still receive posterity's sacrificial offering after their deaths. Therefore,the sacrificial altar has the function of the sacrificial offering ancestor, and also natural God.Partâ…¢, altar and the civilization origin and formation. First, this introduces the course of Chinese civilization origin research,the situation of various local civilization origin research and the sacrificial altar in civilized origin research;Secondly, This discusses both the relations, one is the evolution from the religious sacrificial altar to the ritual sacrificial altar, another is the origin and formation of Chinese Civilization. Actually, our country Neolithic period sacrificial altar namely has the primitiveness and the irregular plasticity of the religious sacrificial altar, simultaneously also has ritual characteristic of the later generation's acrificial altar. Neolithic later period sacrificial altar is being in this kind of transformation from savageness to civilization, also is the important way in which we explore the Chinese Civilization origin and formation.